An appraisal of the present condition of the Southern Negro voter provides some of the necessary perspective for determining his future status. Reliable information on his numerical strength is obtained with some difficulty since few states require reports of registration to a central agency or the racial identification of registrants. However, in one of the most extensive surveys yet made of Negro registration, the Southern Regional Council found in the summer of 1956 that at least 1,238,038 Negroes were registered in the eleven Southern states. Intensive registration campaigns continued in some areas up to the 1956 general election, and, at that time, more Negroes than the Council determined may have been qualified to cast their votes. One of these campaigns was conducted in North Carolina where the state NAACP Conference held registration clinics and reported that Negro registrants increased from 125,000 in January, 1956 to 145,000 in November, 1956; the registration determined by the Council in the summer had been 135,000. Though one may feel that this and similar efforts would have added substantial numbers to the Southern Regional Council's findings, one should not lose sight of the purging which U. S. Assistant Attorney General Warren Olney reported taking place in Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia and North Carolina,. and which nullified, to some extent, the increased registration of late 1956. In 1940, Negro registration in the South was estimated at 140,000. The invalidation of the white primary cleared the way for increased registration, so that, by 1947, the 140,000 Negro registrants had more than quadrupled. The estimates of the Southern Regional Council since 1947 are given below. For the majority of the states the 1956 total is the summation of county estimates obtained by consultants who conducted surveys in each of the states, excepting Mississippi. The 1,238,038 figure for 1956 is an increase of 229,424 since 1952 and evidences steady growth. However, the present number of registrants falls far short of the potential, if potential is defined as those over 18 in Georgia and over 21 in the other states. The 1950 Census reported 21,863,625 persons above the voting age, 4,980,743 of whom were nonwhite. Negro registration in 1956 is only 24.9 per cent of the nonwhites over 21 and indicates the large number of Negroes who remain ineligible to cast a ballot. Though persons other than Negroes are a part of the nonwhite total, their influence on the above percentage would be negligible since the majority of the non-