of America, and that the solution of the problem lay in the immediate passage by Congress of the Civil Rights Bill then being considered.[1]
Not unlike his colleagues, Richard H. Cain, a representative from South Carolina to the Forty-third and Forty-fifth Congresses, gave to the matter of civil rights much of his time and energy. Replying in part to Vance of North Carolina, Cain denied that the Civil Rights Bill, if passed, would be without the limits of the Constitution or that it would enforce "social equality," maintaining that the regulation of that condition was without the province of legislation. Cain asserted that the Negroes of South Carolina did not enjoy, in public places, all the "rights, privileges and immunities" accorded to other citizens and showed that the admission of Negro students to the University of South Carolina had not effected its destruction. He did not believe that the passage of the bill would alienate from the Negroes the white men of the South who were then friendly to them. Cain reviewed, furthermore, the history of the part played by the Negro in the economic and industrial development of the nation, pointed out the importance of giving to him, in every State, the best possible school facilities, asserted the right of the Negro by statutory enactment to his full civil liberties, and insisted that in the name of justice he should demand for himself all the rights, privileges and immunities accorded to other citizens.[2] Conforming in principle to the doctrine that he had pronounced, Cain introduced before Congress a bill supplementary to the Civil Rights Act.[3]
Much of the energy of James E. O'Hara, a representative from North Carolina, in the Forty-eighth and Forty-ninth Congresses, was directed toward the protection of the Negro in the exercise of his civil rights.[4] During the course of his remarks on the bill to regulate interstate commerce,
