Federal Protection of Civil Liberties

Report Outline
Postwar Dangers to Civil Liberties
Development of Federal Civil Rights
Extent of Federal Enforcement Power

Postwar Dangers to Civil Liberties

Increase in Civil Rights Cases Since War

Expansion of federal power and authority to curb violations of rights guaranteed to citizens by the Constitution of the United States will shortly be asked of Congress by the Executive Branch of the government. And independent measures will be pressed by Republican members of the House and Senate at the present session to prohibit certain specific abuses in the broad field covered by the term “civil liberties.”

Since the close of World War II, there has been an increase in the number of Klan-like “hate” groups and a rising tide of incidents involving mob violence and police brutality. Yet state-local law enforcement agencies in some areas have shown inability or unwillingness to safeguard the civil rights of citizens, and the Department of Justice at Washington at present has only meager authority to prosecute criminal violations of constitutional guarantees.

The outstanding case of mob violence to go unpunished in 1946 was the shotgun lynching, July 25, of four Negroes in Walton County, Georgia. State officials professed an inability to obtain sufficient evidence for trials on murder charges. The Justice Department conducted a separate inquiry in which agents of the Federal Bureau of Investigation questioned more than 2,500 persons. The facts were then presented to a federal grand jury in an effort to obtain indictments under federal civil rights statutes.