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"92 3 J The Realities The above rights are obviously hypothetical. First of all, rights vary widely from state to state. Seconclly, your rights are only as good as the willing- ness of the authorities in any situation to permit you to have them. Law enforcement agencies , particularly though not exclusively by any means! in the South need constantly to be reminded that such rights exist, and that they exist for everybody, regardless of race, social class, or sex. Therefore the above outline should not be taken as "legal advice," but rather as a guideline to what §h_9;i_i5i_ happen in a general way when you are arrested. - The U. S. Commission on Civil Rights has _regu-- larly detailed instance after instance of the deprivation of persons constitutional rights, as well as the failure of polgr-9 to protest pg;-sons asserting their constitutional rights. See its reports for 1959, 1961, and 1963.! Ln addition. many local ordinances and state laws have been passed especially to control civil rights demonstrations {some have been overturned on appeal to the federal courts!. A realistic view would therefore be that consti- tutional rights are an extremely relative matter, and that in many instances involving civil rights activity, the civil rights worker may as well forget they exist. As the U. S. Civil Rights Commission concluded in 1961 and certainly there is little evidence to suggest improve- 94 ment since!, "police brutality in the United States today is a serious and continuing problem in many parts of the country. . . Negroes feel the brunt of official bru- tality proportionally more than any other group. . _. approximately two out of every three complaints _ received by the Department of Justice! originated in the 17 Southern States and the District of Columbia. . ." Nevertheless, persons arrested should go through the