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this country to abolish slavery and in the
first sentence of that Constitution, you will
find the Constitutional Convention dele-
gates of that period stirringly proclaiming
a variety of rights and freedom.
THE CHAIRMAN: You have three-
quarters of a minute.
DELEGATE WAGANDT: It looks like
I will have to skip a little.
I would mention some of the problems
of racism in the early nineteen hundreds
when we tried to disfranchise the Negro
through a variety of constitutional amend-
ments. Now we like to think we have
reached a more enlightened era.
Truly great progress has been made, but
still discrimination exacts its toll, and we
do not know what the future holds, but we
do know that Maryland has the oppor-
tunity here and now to stand forthrightly
against discrimination and for equal jus-
tice.
THE CHAIRMAN: Your time has ex-
pired.
DELEGATE WAGANDT: On behalf of
human dignity, I urge your support of this
amendment.
THE CHAIRMAN: Delegate Hard-
wicke.
DELEGATE HARDWICKE : Mr. Chair-
man, in speaking for the Committee's posi-
tion, I want to say that I privately have
very great sympathy for the minority posi-
tion and may very well vote for it, but I
think that I understand sufficiently well
what the majority of the Committee had
in mind to express it and to show the
soundness of the Committee's position as
well.
This Committee unanimously felt, and
believed, that the State should be color-
blind. I have no compunction to say that
every member of this Committee recog-
nized the colorblind principle, fully and
completely, and felt that if they could find
language which would state adequately
and correctly the principle of colorblind-
ness, in this constitution, that they would
do a great service to the State.
We sought in meeting after meeting to
arrive at adequate language which would
express the colorblind principle.
We considered the language of the draft
constitution prepared by the Commission.
That language was very similar to that
proposed by the Minority Report. It went
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a little bit further. It talked about the
State, its political subdivisions, and then
it talked about no discrimination by gov-
ernmental action.
However, a majority of the Committee
felt the language, governmental action,
was uncertain and that it did not do any-
thing different from what the case law of
the 14th Amendment did.
I think I should say also that nearly
half the Committee felt that the problem
of discrimination was not the problem of
the State, but was a problem of discrimina-
tion in public matters, public areas, and
that what ought to be banned was public
discrimination as opposed to private dis-
crimination.
However, a majority of the Committee
did not feel also that that was a meaning-
ful concept, and decided that the most
meaningful, precise and correct statement
of discrimination could be made by the
simple adoption of due process and equal
protection from the federal 14th Amend-
ment, and that is what you have before
you.
That is the Committee majority report.
There is a great deal of merit in that.
Due process and equal protection have pro-
vided the greatest area of growth and the
destruction of discrimination in this coun-
try that any language or any concept has
ever permitted.
The concept of due process and the con-
cept of equal protection under the laws is
deeply rooted in the English system. The
majority of the Committee felt that you
could not do any better.
Now, let me say this. How much more
explicit can we get when we say "no per-
son shall be denied." That means no person.
You do not get into the problems of wheth-
er to include sex, or religion, or who is to
be included.
The Committee majority report says no
person shall be denied the equal protection
of the laws, no person shall be denied due
process. That answers every single possible
problem. We were aware of all of the
points that were brought out by Delegate
Mitchell and we felt that those problems
were answered by the Majority Report, by
the language "no person".
Let me say this to you, that Maryland
ought to be in the mainstream of Ameri-
can life and development. The shoals on
either side of the river, the shallow water
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