On March 18, 1965, Representative Emanuel Celler (D-NY), chair of the House Committee on the Judiciary, introduced the administration bill, H.R. 6400. The 77-year-old chair of the House Committee on the Judiciary stated that people preventing African Americans from voting “must be smashed and banished” and that any obstruction of the bill’s passage was “inexcusable.” Although he sponsored the administration bill, Celler believed, as did Senator Edward Kennedy, that the federal government had the constitutional power to ban state and local poll taxes. This working draft of H.R. 6400 indicates that by April 10 Celler had revised section 10 of the bill to include a ban on all poll taxes.