Table of Contents:
  • 1. Introduction: Colloquy on the judicial approach. Objections to utilizing the federal courts; Arguments favoring a judicial approach
  • 2. Federal courts and the black vote before 1957. State-action stage; Registrar-oriented stage; Extra-legal stage
  • 3. Congress enacts. Accent on voting; Jury trial battle; First law in eighty-two years; Half-loaf/whole-loaf controversy; Revisions: registrars or referees; Second law in three years
  • 4. President reacts. 1957- An administration against itself; 1960- Administration moderation; 1961-1963- Emphasis on executive fiat
  • 5. Judicial aggressiveness. Registrar practices in three black belt counties; Judge as registrar; Judge sets standards; Judge as overseer
  • 6. Judicial resistance. Fight to inspect records; "An interminable pleading duel": Forrest County, Mississippi; Delay, inaction, and a suit against the judge: Bolivar County, Mississippi; Delay, details, and a Pyrrhic victory: Jefferson Davis County, Mississippi.
  • 7. "Training the judge": Judicial gradualism
  • 8. Intimidation: the courts and "political termites". Physical reprisal and intimidation by prosecution; Mass economic retaliation: the Tennessee sharecroppers; The economic squeeze: a Louisiana farmer; To hire and fire: the Mississippi schoolteacher
  • 9. White judges and black ballots: Some observations. The trial situation as impetus; the fate of registration obstacles
  • 10. The Voting Rights Act of 1965 and beyond. Protest and politics; Progress and persistent problems.