Breaking the Racial Barrier

Most cities saddled with an ineffectual mayor and aldermen can vote them out of office. But voters in the District of Columbia, whose city council is the United States Congress and whose mayor the President, have no such easy recourse. The barbed problem of segregation illustrates their powerless position; the citizens can do nothing but hope that their preoccupied administrators will eventually offer a solution.

The Negro population has been growing steadily in Washington for twenty years. In the schools there are new four thousand more Negro children than white. But this increase in number has not brought increased toleration; Negroes are barred from most restaurants and Negro school facilities are overcrowded and inferior.

The President, in his State of the Union message, promised relief for this city split by color barriers. First, he promised to ask restaurateurs and other offenders to end their discrimination. Then Attorney General Herbert Brownell appealed a lower court order which had invalidated an old anti-segregation law. Neither gesture will end discrimination. A pleading word from the President is not so apt to reform bigots as the prospect of court action. And a technicality has rendered the previous anti-segregation act illegal.

The one decisive answer is to pass a determined, modern anti-segregation bill.

"You can't legislate against prejudice" is a complacent old saw for justifying a segregated status quo. Discrimination, however, can be outlawed as a step toward eliminating prejudice. In 1948, Truman effectively barred any consideration of color in filling government posts and ended segregation in government restaurants. A new anti-segregation act could do the same for schools and commercial establishments.

The Administration and Congress are pledged to eliminate second-class citizenship. Rather than rely on Presidential pleas or reversed Court decisions, they should present their local constituents with the strong bill necessary to end discrimination in the District of Columbia.