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M __,_ tt__•y____._c~ Sen. l-lart Shifts tlie Ground, Puts ~ ife Into R ights Heari·n g WASHINGTON- The Negro spiritual goes : " Everybody talkin' 'bout Heaven, Ain't going ther~Heaven." WeH, they were talking about Heaven at, of aN places, the civil rights bearing before the Senate Commerce Committee. And because one was a liberal Demorcratic senator from Michigan and the other was the segregationist go\·ernor of Alabam a they couldn't agree on whether in paradise there would be separate but equal faciliUes for the races. Gov. Wallace stmck bhe ce" I think there is one and in Heaven will be like," he said lestial chord first and later obfact I know there is one. I ber eprovingly. viously wished he hadn't. lieve be made the whole human The governor had for two days family and be loves all manThe pugnacious, pug-no ed been freely predicting what would kind, and any man who would governor had had a happy happen here if the Senate mistreat anyone on account of morning twanging out easy anpassed the civil rights bill. He his color, I feel sorry for swers to easy questions played had admonished the Defense them." ,to him lzy like-minded Sen. department to look away from Thurmond, Democrat of South Any other man would have Dixie. He had prophesied a arolina. said "amen" to that, but Sen. white uprising and the end of "Governor," asked the sena- Hart is highly unconventional the free enterprise system. tor , "Do you believe in equal and he promptly put to Wallace But Hart's shifting of the opportunity for all men, be they the most arresting question yet ground to the hereafter put him heard in the repetitious hearwhite, black or tan?" off. His code does not permit ings. "Of course I do," the govhim to speculate, as Hart in" What will Heaven be like? ernor came in. And then his vited him to do, about the eatWill it be segregated?" thoughts, you might say, soared. ing facilities in Heaven, proWallace was plainly shocked. "I am not one of these invided the human family does "I don't think that you or I, tellectuals who thinks there is eat in eternity. either one, knows exactly what no God," he said with pride. He said stiffly be thought that segregation on earth was i11 th e best interests of both races . If Hart nettled the governor witl1 his theology, he confused him with his open-mindedness. He admitted he didn't lmow sometlbing, which Wallace would never do. He said be didn't. know what a Negro parent would do if be were a member of the Armed For ces who had grown up in the North and were assigned to the South and had to explain local conditions to his children. Hart asked to be excu ed fo r fur ther civil r ights duty downstairs in the auditorium where a large crowd and the Senate J udiciary Committee, of which he is also a member, had gathered to hear the attorney general. After some inaudible exchanges about whether the Southern senators should be heard first, it was decided that Mr. Kennedy should go back to the J ustice department while the committee heard the views of Sen. Ervin, Democrat of North Carolina . Hart came through loud and clear on I.he auditorium 's chancy amplifying system. He said : "We came closer to disaster in Birmingham than in Cuba." If he keeps up the performance of the past week, Hart may prove that a man need e neither a windbag nor a demagogue to make a name for him · self in the troubled fi eld o! ci\' il r ights. �