“Part of the Government Activity”: Testimony from an African-American Taxpayer Unable to Vote in Alabama

Although the 15th Amendment, ratified in 1870, guaranteed citizens the right to vote regardless of race, by 1957 only 20 percent of eligible African Americans voted, due in part to intimidation and discriminatory state requirements such as poll taxes and literacy tests. The Civil Rights Act of 1957, the first such Act since 1875, ostensibly sought to remedy the situation, but in its final weakened form, the legislation served more as a symbol. For example, an amendment allowed officials charged with denying voting rights to be tried by juries, service on which was restricted in the South to whites only. The law, however, also created the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, an independent government agency of six commissioners formed to investigate charges of civil rights deprivations, collect information on discrimination, and advise the President and Congress on the topic. In the following 1958 hearing, a taxpaying African American related roadblocks he encountered when trying to register to vote.

TESTIMONY OF HOSEA GUICE, MILSTEAD, MACON COUNTY, ALA.

Vice Chairman [Robert G.] STOREY. Your name and age and place of residence, please.

Mr. GUICE. My name is Hosea Guice, 55 years old, born in Lee County, Ala.

Vice Chairman STOREY. And how long have you lived in Alabama?

Mr. GUICE. In Alabama all of my life.

Vice Chairman STOREY. Where are you living now?

Mr. GUICE. In Macon County, Ala.

Vice Chairman STOREY. At what place?

Mr. GUICE. In Milstead Community, about 13 miles out from Tuskegee.

Vice Chairman STOREY. And how long have you lived there?

Mr. GUICE. Since 1942 at this particular place.

Vice Chairman STOREY. What is your business?

Mr. GUICE. Farming is my business.

Vice Chairman STOREY. How long have you been a farmer?

Mr. GUICE. All my life. Nothing else, only just little, minor jobs; but principally farming.

Vice Chairman STOREY. Is your wife living?

Mr. GUICE. She is.

Vice Chairman STOREY. Have you any children?

Mr. GUICE. Yes, sir.

Vice Chairman STOREY. How many?

Mr. GUICE. I got three daughters, and, of course, another boy was raised there with me, related. I raised him.

Vice Chairman STOREY. He is a relative, then?

Mr. GUICE. That’s right.

Vice Chairman STOREY. Do you own your own farm?

Mr. GUICE. Yes sir; I do.

Vice Chairman STOREY. What size is it?

Mr. GUICE. A hundred and seventeen acres.

Vice Chairman STOREY. Do you mind saying whether it is paid for or not?

Mr. GUICE. Not quite paid for.

Vice Chairman STOREY. Still a mortgage on it?

Mr. GUICE. Yes; a little bit. A little bit.

Vice Chairman STOREY. Do you have your own farming equipment?

Mr. GUICE. I do.

Vice Chairman STOREY. Paid your taxes?

Mr. GUICE. Sure.

Vice Chairman STOREY. Got any mental or physical disabilities, as far as you know?

Mr. GUICE. No, sir. I haven’t found them yet.

Vice Chairman STOREY. Have you ever been convicted of a crime?

Mr. GUICE. No, sir; I haven’t.

Vice Chairman STOREY. What is your education, if any?

Mr. GUICE. Well, I finished the sixth grade. That’s as far as I got—the sixth grade.

Vice Chairman STOREY. The sixth grade?

Mr. GUICE. Yes, sir.

Vice Chairman STOREY. Did you go to work after that?

Mr. GUICE. Well, I did. I went to work, the first farm work, see.

Vice Chairman STOREY. Can you read and write?

Mr. GUICE. I can.

Vice Chairman STOREY. Do you take any newspapers or magazines and read them?

Mr. GUICE. I sure do, every day.

Vice Chairman STOREY. Try to keep up with current events?

Mr. GUICE. I do, every day.

Vice Chairman STOREY. Are you a registered voter?

Mr. GUICE. No, sir; I am not.

Vice Chairman STOREY. Have you ever made application?

Mr. GUICE. Yes, sir.

Vice Chairman STOREY. When?

Mr. GUICE. The first application I made—the best I can recollect it was about 1954, I think it was, the first one.

Vice Chairman STOREY. Did you go to the board of registrars?

Mr. GUICE. Yes, sir.

Vice Chairman STOREY. In your county?

Mr. GUICE. Yes, sir; I did.

Vice Chairman STOREY. Did you go through a similar procedure as these other witnesses?

Mr. GUICE. I did, only except reading a portion of the Constitution. I wasn’t asked to do that, see, but other than that I went through it.

Vice Chairman STOREY. And how long did you wait to see if you heard from that one before you did anything else?

Mr. GUICE. Well, I never did go back to see about the first one. However, I come up to all the requirements that I was asked to come up to, but I never did hear anything from it. I didn’t nurse that first one that I made. I didn’t go back to nurse it.

Vice Chairman STOREY. You didn’t go back to nurse it?

Mr. GUICE. Yes, sir, the first time.

Vice Chairman STOREY. All right. What did you do? Did you make another application?

Mr. GUICE. I did.

Vice Chairman STOREY. When?

Mr. GUICE. I made an application—the best I can recollect it was shortly—it was the last of January of 1957, I think it was.

Vice Chairman STOREY. Did you fill out new forms?

Mr. GUICE. I did. I filled out another application.

Vice Chairman STOREY. Did they ask you to read or write anything?

Mr. GUICE. Nothing but to fill that application out. They didn’t actually—

Vice Chairman STOREY. The one like we introduced here?

Mr. GUICE. That’s right.

Vice Chairman STOREY. Did you ever hear anything from that application?

Mr. GUICE. No, sir.

Of course, I went back. After I thought I had give ample time, I—

Vice Chairman STOREY. About when did you go back?

Mr. GUICE. About 2 weeks later.

Vice Chairman STOREY. Did you talk to any of the election officials?

Mr. GUICE. Yes, sir. I talked to the gentleman—

Vice Chairman STOREY. Who?

Mr. GUICE. One of the members of the board there.

Vice Chairman STOREY. Who?

Mr. GUICE. In the person of Mr. Bentley.

Vice Chairman STOREY. All right. What did he tell you, if anything?

Mr. GUICE. He told me—I asked him about my application; I didn’t come out, and so forth. He told me—he says, “Guice, you missed one little question.”

I asked him did I have a chance to correct it. He said I did. “When we meet again, you’ll have a chance to correct it.”

That’s the answer he give me.

Vice Chairman STOREY. Did you go back again?

Mr. GUICE. No, sir; I didn’t go back.

Vice Chairman STOREY. Did he tell you what the particular thing you missed was?

Mr. GUICE. No, sir; he did not tell me that, and I—

Vice Chairman STOREY. And you haven’t been back since?

Mr. GUICE. I didn’t go back because I would read or hear when they were going to get together, and when I’d get on my way up there or when I would go they wouldn’t be together then, and, just through a misunderstanding, they just kept me confused, you see.

Vice Chairman STOREY. How many times did you go back?

Mr. GUICE. One more time, after meeting him and talking to him. I went back for the particular purpose of investigating some more, but he—

Vice Chairman STOREY. Did you go back the time the board said it would be in session?

Mr. GUICE. I did.

Vice Chairman STOREY. Or that you learned it would be in session?

Mr. GUICE. That’s right. That I learned they would be.

Vice Chairman STOREY. Were they in session when you went back?

Mr. GUICE. No, sir. They weren’t in session that day.

Vice Chairman STOREY. Would you tell us why you want to vote?

Mr. GUICE. Well, I feel like I’m entitled to it. I have come up to the other requirements to make myself a citizen, and I feel I would like to be a registered voter; they ought to give that to me. It’s like I want to become a part of the government activity, and so forth.

Vice Chairman STOREY. You don’t have any connection with Tuskegee Institute?

Mr. GUICE. No, sir.

Vice Chairman STOREY. In any way?

Mr. GUICE. No. sir.

Vice Chairman STOREY. Any other questions?

Commissioner [Theodore M.] HESBURGH. Just one.

Mr. Guice, have you paid taxes all your life?

Mr. GUICE. All my life?

No, sir. Since 1942.

Commissioner HESBURGH. Since 1942?

Mr. GUICE. Every year since 1942 I have been paying taxes.

Vice Chairman STOREY. Any others?

Commissioner [J. Ernest] WILKINS. What do you raise on your farm, Mr. Guice?

Mr. GUICE. Principally cotton.

Commissioner WILKINS. Cotton?

Mr. GUICE. Cotton is the principal one. Corn and peas; all the things practically that goes with farming.

Commissioner WILKINS. Do you have any opinion, Mr. Guice, as to the reasons why you have never heard anything further about your application?

Mr. GUICE. Well, I have never been arrested and always has been a law-abiding citizen; to the best of my opinion has no mental deficiency, and my mind couldn’t fall on nothing but only, since I come up to these other requirements, that I was just a Negro. That’s all.

Source: Hearings, United States Commission on Civil Rights, Montgomery, Alabama, (December 8 and 9, 1958) in Steven F. Lawson and Charles Payne, Debating the Civil Rights Movement, 1945–1968 (Lanham, Maryland: Rowan & Littlefield Publishers, Inc., 1998), 65–73.