FRIENDLY, Circuit Judge.
We have here appeals concerning some sixty persons from orders of the District Courts for the Eastern and Southern Districts of New York, remanding to the New York courts criminal proceedings sought to be removed pursuant to 28 U. [257]*257S.C. § 1443,1 a statute which goes back to the Civil Rights Act of 1866, 14 Stat. 27. The appeals are the first to be taken to this court as a result of § 901 of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, Pub.L. 88-352, which limited the general prohibition of review of remand orders “on appeal or otherwise,” 28 U.S.C. § 1447(d),2 by adding a clause “except that an order remanding a case to the State court from which it was removed pursuant to section 1443 of this title shall be reviewable by appeal or otherwise.”
In the light of the rule, established before the prohibition of direct review, that an order of remand was not a final judgment subject to appeal under what is now 28 U.S.C. § 1291, but could be tested only by mandamus, Chicago & Alton R.R. v. Wiswall, 90 U.S. (23 Wall.) 507, 23 L.Ed. 103 (1875), and the failure of the framers of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 to amend 28 U.S.C. § 1292(a) to add remand orders under 28 U.S.C. § 1443 as a new category of appealable interlocutory orders, it could be argued with some force that review here would lie only through mandamus. If necessary, despite some prior decisions of this court discussed in United States v. O’Connor, 291 F.2d 520, 524 (2 Cir.1961), we would be prepared to treat the instant appeals as petitions for such writs. However, in view of the Congressional pur-
pose as revealed in the legislative history, H.Rep.No. 914, 88th Cong., 2d Sess. (1963); 110 Cong.Rec. 6739 (daily ed. April 6, 1964) (remarks of Senator Dodd), and the cumbersome nature of mandamus, we shall construe the 1964 statute, despite its inartistic drafting in this respect, as sufficiently revealing an intention to authorize appeals from orders of remand under 28 U.S.C. § 1443.
Galamison and nearly fifty other appellants were named as defendants in prosecutions in Queens County, New York, for various acts which disrupted highway and subway traffic to the New York World’s Fair in order to publicize their grievances over what Galamison’s removal petition characterizes as “the denial of equal protection of the laws to Negroes in the City, State and Nation with reference to housing, education, employment, police action and other areas of local and national life too numerous to mention.” Two appellants were arrested in Bronx County after passing out leaflets at a public school urging a protest against lack of integration. Eight more were being prosecuted in New York County for staging a sit-in at City Hall in the course of a protest on -the same subject. All filed petitions removing the criminal cases against them to the federal courts.3 The state having moved to remand, Judge Rosling in the Eastern [258]*258District of New York, dealing with the Queens County cases, and Judge Cannella in the Southern District of New York, dealing with the Bronx and New York County cases, granted the motions without conducting the evidentiary hearings which appellants had sought primarily, if not exclusively, with reference to their claims under § 1443(1). Appeals having been taken, judges of this court stayed the remand orders -to enable us to consider the important and largely novel questions presented.
At the argument before us, counsel for the appellants expressly disclaimed reliance on the first clause of § 1443, and staked -the cases entirely on the .second. The district attorneys asked us to disregard informalities in the removal petitions and dispose of appellants’ claim under § 1443(2) on the merits — a proposal which appellants applauded. Reading the petitions in the spirit which the State has invited and in the light of appellants’ thorough briefs, we construe them as asserting that appellants’ acts of protest and resistance were “under color of authority” of one or more of three “law[s] providing -for equal rights”— the guarantees of free speech ánd petition embodied in the due process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, the equal protection clause of that Amendment, and statutory protection of rights conferred by the Constitution, notably 42 U.S.G. §§ 1981 and 1983.4 Alternatively the petitions sugest that appellants’ refusal to obey police commands was “on the ground that it would be inconsistent with" the same three sets of laws.
We pause at this point for a word concerning our dissenting brother’s position that the petitions are so defective that we ought simply to vacate all the orders of remand and have everyone start over again. While the petitions may not have been drawn with the expertness desired and might well have been insufficient properly to raise the question of removal under § 1443(1), there is not and never has been any such difficulty in discerning what is here at issue as the dissent suggests. The Queens County cases concern widely publicized mass demonstrations in public places — the streets and the subway. The New York County cases concern demonstrations in City Hall. No one asserts that Negroes in New York City are subjected to unequal treatment in any of these places or that the demonstrations were intended to remove discrimination there; the protests were directed at alleged unequal treatment generally “in the City, State and Nation." This leaves the cases from Bronx County. We shall assume that the school at which these two appellants were distributing leaflets was in their view a segregated one; on the other hand, there is not a word in the petitions, nor has there been the slightest suggestion from counsel, that the appellants were or had children in that school.
It would indeed be pleasant if we could conscientiously avoid decision here. The interpretative problems are difficult, due to the age of the statute, the lack of decisions thereunder and the mangling which it has undergone; it is unfortunate that, in subjecting remands under § 1443 to review, the draftsmen of the Civil Rights [259]*259Act of 1964, understandably preoccupied with more pressing issues, did not attempt to clarify what that venerable statute meant. The pain of decision is exacerbated when one choice may somewhat impair expectations entertained by persons of good will whose objectives we admire, and the other, in our view, would do violence to institutions and relations we hold equally dear, the continued efficient functioning of which has far greater long-run importance to minorities than the special relief here sought. But, as Judge Learned Hand so frequently reminded us, often in more colorful language, it is “a judge’s duty to decide, not to debate,” The Spirit of Liberty 100 (1959 paperback ed.) — and here to construe, not to suggest a variety of possible constructions without coming to rest on any one. Apart from desiderata as to the instant prosecutions, the district courts in this circuit require guidance as to other cases that have been accumulating while we have had these under advisement. And it will be more helpful to the Supreme Court and to the Congress — and it is well to remember it is a statute we are expounding — for us to expose the problems raised by the removal petitions here before us and state what we consider their proper solution under existing law, rather than postpone the issue by remanding these cases and having them back six months hence with the issues no different then than now.
We turn initially to the history of the statute. Section 1443 stems from § 3 of the first Civil Rights Act, 14 Stat. 27 (1866), quite obviously enacted under the power conferred by the recently adopted Thirteenth Amendment and prior to the adoption of the Fourteenth. Section 1 of the Act declared that, with exceptions not here relevant, “all persons born in the United States * * * of every race and color, without regard to any previous condition of slavery or involuntary servitude * * * shall have the same right * * * to make and enforce contracts, to sue, be parties, and give evidence, to inherit, purchase, lease, sell, hold, and convey real and personal property, and to full and equal benefit of all laws and proceedings for the security of person and property, as is enjoyed by white citi2;ens, and shall be subject to like punishment, pains, and penalties, and to none other * * * ” Section 2 made it a crime for any person “under color of any law, statute, ordinance, regulation, or custom” to deprive any person of any right secured by the Act. There follows the removal provision, § 3, the first sentence of which we quote in the margin.5
[260]*260The Act of May 31, 1870, 16 Stat. 140, reenacted the Civil Rights Act of 1866, safeguarded the equal rights of citizens to vote, and defined, among others, the crime of conspiring to injure a citizen in the exercise of rights “granted or secured to him by the Constitution or laws of the United States,” now 18 U.S.C. § 241. Although the new act had added a major new statutory right and expanded original federal jurisdiction in several respects, the 1866 removal provision was not broadened significantly. An amenda-tory Act of Feb. 28, 1871, 16 Stat. 433, created a scheme for supervising federal elections and made certain provisions for removal in voting rights cases.
The first important change of language in the removal section came in the Revised Statutes of 1875 and 1878, the former of which constituted “positive law.” 6 In codifying the laws these revisions distributed what had become the considerable bundle of provisions concerning civil rights among four titles. Title XXIV, entitled “Civil Rights,” included the former § 1 of the Civil Rights Act of 1866, divided into two sections, 1977 and 1978, which have been carried forward as 42 U.S.C. §§ 1981 and 1982. The civil liability which § 1 of the Act to Enforce the Provisions of the Fourteenth Amendment, 17 Stat. 13 (1871), had created in respect of any person who, under color of any state law, subjected another person “to the deprivation of any rights, privileges, or immunities secured by the Constitution of the United States,” was broadened to include “the Constitution and laws”; this became § 1979, now 42 U.S.C. § 1983. Title XXVI, The Elective Franchise, comprised all the rights, rules and civil liabilities related to voting. Criminal provisions concerning civil rights and voting appeared in Chapter 7 of Title LXX, “Crimes.” The jurisdictional provisions, both for original jurisdiction and on removal, were placed in Chapter 7 of Title XIII, “The Judiciary.” The removal provision, § 3 of the Civil Rights Act, became § 641, reading as follows:
“When any civil suit or criminal prosecution is commenced in any State court, for any cause whatsoever, against any person who is -denied or cannot enforce in the judicial tribunals of the State, or in the part of the State where such suit or prosecution is pending, any right secured to him by any law providing for the equal civil rights of citizens of the United States, or of all persons within the jurisdiction of the United States, or against any officer, civil or military, or other person, for any arrest or imprisonment or other trespasses or wrongs, made or committed by virtue of or under color of authority derived from any law providing for equal rights as aforesaid, or for refusing to do any act on the ground that it would be inconsistent with such law, such suit or prosecution may, upon the petition of such defendant, filed in said State court at any time before the trial or-final hearing of the cause, stating the facts and verified by oath, be removed, for trial, into the next circuit court to be held in the district where it is pending.”
Section 641 was carried forward into § 81 of the Judicial Code of 1911, 36 Stat. 1096, without any real change. In contrast, the 1948 codification greatly altered [261]*261the language. Procedural details were split off into other sections; the structure was rearranged by putting the verb “may be removed” before both clauses instead of after both and by separating the clauses with numbers; the words “any officer, civil or military, or other person” in the second clause were dropped, with nothing supplied to replace them; “arrest or imprisonment or other trespasses or wrongs, made or committed by virtue of or under color of authority” was contracted to “any act under color of authority”; and the “as aforesaid” after “any law providing for equal rights” in clause (2) was eliminated. At the same time an important change, obviously of substance and clearly so indicated in the Reviser’s Note, was made in the removal provision, § 1442, dealing with federal officers. The corresponding provision in Rev. Stat. § 643, carried forward in § 33 of the 1911 Code, 36 Stat. 1097, had covered civil suits or criminal proceedings against officers or other persons acting under the revenue laws.7 Section 1442(a) (1) of the 1948 Code expanded this coverage to allow removal by “any officer of the United States or any agency thereof, or person acting under him, for any act under color of such office or on account of any right, title or authority claimed under any Act of Congress for the apprehension or punishment of criminals or the collection of the revenue.”
I. This history assists us in disposing of the State’s first argument in support of remand, namely, that the two clauses of § 1443 must be read together and the conditions of both satisfied. The argument derives from the action of the 1948 Reviser in eliminating the venerable words “any officer, civil or military, or other person” and also the “or” which had always separated the two clauses, thus leaving clause (2) without any referent and arguably linking it to clause (1), But the State’s textual argument is overborne by a multitude of other considerations. Until 1948 the two clauses were grammatically parallel and were always separated by an “or”; and the 1948 Congress could not have meant that an officer seeking to avail himself of the second clause, which often would have afforded his sole basis for removal, would also have to meet the tests of the first. An intention on the part of the 1948 Congress to collapse two independent grounds of removal, recognized for three-quarters of a century, into a single one, more limited than either, ought not be assumed unless compelled by the language or supported by legislative history. But there is no such history and the linguistic difficulties in reading the two clauses as alternatives are more grammatical than semantic — it is not really hard to see that Congress was driving at two' things rather than at one; indeed, the difficulties in such a reading are rather less formidable than those entailed in an attempt to read the second clause as limiting the first. The general scheme of the jurisdiction sections of the Judicial Code is that numbered clauses are alternatives, see, e.g., §§ 1332(a), 1333, 1343, 1442(a). We treat the omission of a referent in § 1443(2) as an unwise attempt by the Reviser to achieve compactness; what referent should be supplied is a different question, discussed in Section III below.
II. We deal next with the State’s argument that appellants’ acts went beyond the proper bounds of the freedom of speech and petition that the Constitution guarantees. The short answer, when the argument is stated in this breadth, is that these are the very questions which, under appellants’ construction of § 1443(2), Congress meant to have decided in a federal trial; a defendant seeding removal under that section does not have to prove preliminarily that [262]*262he will prevail. It is true that a particular case might go so far beyond any possible scope of the right relied on as to transcend the most expansive reading of § 1443(2); it could not be seriously contended, for example, that assaulting a state official for delay on his part in achieving integration was protected by any provision of the Constitution. But the State has not shown that the appellants here fail on this ground.
III. We thus reach a more serious contention, namely, that § 1443(2) covers only officers and those persons assisting them or acting in some way on behalf of government. To say that clause (2) contains no description of who may invoke it is not a sufficient answer; some referent must be supplied.
Appellants say that the original language of the Civil Rights Act, allowing “any officer * * * or other person” to remove, must also have permitted removal by persons not acting officially, that is, persons merely exercising certain civil rights. This juxtaposition of “officer” and “other person” was carried forward into every revision from Rev. Stat. § 641 onwards until 1948, and the 1948 revision surely did not mean to narrow removal. But, although ejusdem generis, relied on by the State to limit “or other person” to a quasi-official, is a dubious aid, see the opposing instances in Llewellyn, The Common Law Tradition: Deciding Appeals 526-27 (1960), there are extremely substantial arguments in support of the State’s construction.
One begins with the troubling question why if “other person” in fact meant “any person,” Congress did not simply repeat in the second or “authority” clause of § 3 of the Act of 1866 and § 641 of the Revised Statutes, these words which it had already used in the first or “denial” clause. Next, since the first clause was directed only toward freedmen’s rights, symmetry would suggest that the second clause concerned only acts of enforcement. “Arrest or imprisonment, trespasses, or wrongs,” were precisely the probable charges against enforcement officers and these assisting them; and a statute speaking of such acts “done or committed by virtue of or under color of authority derived from” specified laws reads far more readily on persons engaged in some sort of enforcement than on those whose rights were being enforced, as to whom words like “acts founded upon” would have been much more appropriate. The inclusion of “or other person” can readily be explained without going so far as appellants urge. In anticipation of massive local resistance Congress devoted §§ 4-10 of the Civil Rights Act of 1866 to provisions compelling and facilitating the arrest and prosecution of violators of § 2, the criminal sanction for § 1 rights. These sections authorized and required district attorneys to prosecute under § 2, fined marshals who declined to serve warrants, authorized federal commissioners to “appoint, in writing * * * any one or more suitable persons, from time to time” to serve warrants, empowered the persons so appointed “to summon and call to their aid the bystanders or posse comitatus of the proper county, or such portion of the * * * forces of the United States” as was needed, and made interference with warrant service a further federal crime. Although the “one or more suitable persons” might be deemed “officers,” the bystanders and the posse comitatus were not, and were surely among those covered by “other person.” The argument for a limited construction of “other person” in the “authority” clause is aided by the consideration that the 1866 Act conferred original jurisdiction only for the “denial” category. The freedmen would need that resource, whereas officers and persons acting under or in aid of them normally would not. Finally, the derivation of § 3 of the 1866 Act from § 5 of the Habeas Corpus Act of 1863, see fn. 5, argues against appellants’ broad construction. The “any other person” in the 1863 act was someone who had been deputized by the President or by Congress to do something, not a person asserting his own rights. It is rather logical to assume that Congress had the same kind of “person” in mind when it used the same phrase in [263]*263the Givil'Rights Act of 1866 and repeated it in § 641 of the Revised Statutes.
Appellants’ counterargument as to the meaning of the Reconstruction legislation rests largely on the basis that when Congress wanted to limit a removal provision to officers and persons acting under or in aid of them, it knew how to say so. The first such act, 3 Stat. 198 (1815), had referred to “any collector, naval officer, surveyor, inspector, or any other officer, eivil or military, or any other person aiding or assisting, agreeable to the provisions of this act, or under colour thereof, for any thing done, or omitted to be done, as an officer of the customs, or for any thing done by virtue of this act or under colour thereof * * * ” 8 And the very Congress that adopted the Civil Rights Act of 1866 provided for removal of any civil or criminal action “against any officer of the United States, appointed under or acting by authority of [certain prior revenue acts] * * * or against any person acting under or by authority of any such officer on account of any act done under color of his office, or against-any person holding property ¿or estate by title derived from any such officer, concerning such property or estate, and affecting the validity of [the revenue laws] * * * ” 14 Stat. 171.
Moreover, appellants contend that even if the State were right as to the meaning of the Reconstruction legislation, a broadening change was- effected- in 1948 since, the Reviser’s surgery having left clause (2) without a referent, the “any person”* of clause (1) is a readier source than the words in predecessor statutes. This argument gains support from the condensation of the historic “for any arrest or imprisonment or other trespasses or wrongs, made or committed by virtue of or under color of authority derived from any law providing for equal- rights as aforesaid,” language rather strongly suggesting enforcement aptivity, into the more neutral “for any act under color of authority derived from any law providing for equal rights.” Force is added by the simultaneous broadening of § 1442(a) (2) dealing with federal officers, which we have outlined above, a change which makes § 1443(2) largely redundant if it is confined to officers and persons acting under them.
Against this is the point that the 1948 Reviser gave no indication, that § 1443 was being substantively changed; the Note to the section spoke only of changes in phraseology, and a Congress preoccupied with other matters doubtless took him at his word. The courts have had frequent occasion to become familiar with the penchant of the 1948 Reviser for making a “quite unnecessary change in phraseology, apparently motivated in part by a stylistic preference,” Gilmore & Black, The Law of Admiralty 35 (1957), without adequately considering the consequences arguably incident to the alteration and consequently without informing Congress of its possible effect. In the case of the “saving to suitors” clause, 28 U.S.C. § 1333(1), discussed in the cited text, the Supreme Court found that the words of 1789 were a better guide to current Congressional purpose than those of 1948. Madruga v. Superior Court, 346 U.S. 556, 560 & n. 12, 74 S.Ct. 298, 98 L.Ed. 290 (1954). And in Fourco Glass Co. v. Transmirra Prods. Corp., 353 U.S. 222, 227, 77 S.Ct. 787, 790, 1 L.Ed.2d 786 (1957), the Court gave effect to “statements made by several of the persons having importantly to do with the 1948 revision * * * that no changes of law or policy are to be presumed from changes of language in the revision unless an intent to make such changes is clearly expressed.”
While it has seemed worthwhile to set forth these arguments and counterarguments in detail, we find it unnecessary in this case to decide between them. For the appeals fail on other grounds although these are not unrelated to. the point just discussed.
[264]*264IV. We next consider whether appellants’ claims under the equal protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment and its statutory precursor, 42 U.S.C. § 1981, meet the “color of authority” or inconsistency requirements of § 1443(2).
We begin by returning to the text we must construe. We have agreed with appellants that § 1443(2) affords a ground for removal separate from § 1443 (1) , and we are henceforth assuming, ar-guendo, that § 1443(2) is not limited to officers or persons acting at their instance or on their behalf. It is undisputed, as the textual history demonstrates, that the laws referred to in the two clauses are the same, despite the more abbreviated language of the second. Yet a person relying on “a right under any law providing for the equal civil rights of citizens of the United States” may remove only if he “is denied or cannot enforce” that right in the state courts, whereas a person whose act is “under color of authority derived from” such a law may remove without any such limitation. It necessarily follows that “under color of authority derived from” in § 1443(2) has a narrower meaning than “a right under” in § 1443(1), since otherwise, in almost all cases covered by the first clause, which clearly covers deprivations of substantive rights and not merely procedural inequalities, the requirement of showing denial or inability to enforce would be avoided by resort to the second.
We gain a valuable insight into the meaning of “color of authority” if we reflect on the cases at which § 1443 (2) was primarily aimed and to which it indubitably applies — acts of officers or quasi-officers. The officer granted removal under § 3 of the Civil Rights Act of 1866 and its predecessor, § 5 of the Habeas Corpus Act of 1863, would not have been relying on a general constitutional guarantee but on a specific statute or order telling him to act. Cf. Hodgson v. Millward, 12 Fed.Cas. No. 6,568 (C.C. Pa.1863), approved in Braun v. Sauer-wein, 77 U.S. (10 Wall.) 218, 224, 19 L.Ed. 895 (1869).9 A private person claiming the benefit of § 1443(2) can stand no better; he must point to some law that directs or encourages him to act in a certain manner, not merely to a generalized constitutional provision that will give him a defense or to an equally general statute that may impose civil or criminal liability on persons interfering with him.
Unwillingness to recognize this lies at the basis of our brother’s dissent. It may be true enough that in common usage and understanding a person would be thought to have “color of authority” —although this is not exactly the ordinary discourse of laymen — to do any act which he can successfully defend or for interference with which he can recover damages or ask the government to prosecute. But the issue is not the usage and understanding of ordinary words but the meaning of technical words in the particular context in which Congress used them in the two clauses of § 3 of the Civil Rights Act of 1866 as this has been carried forward into 28 U.S.C. § 1443. “If the history of the interpretation of judiciary legislation teaches anything, it teaches the duty to reject treating such statutes as a wooden set of self-sufficient words * * * ” Romero v. International Terminal Operating Co., 358 U.S. 354, 379 (1959). A Court much closer to the Reconstruction legislation than we are, Bigelow v. Forrest, 76 U.S. (9 Wall.) 339, 348-349, 19 L.Ed. 696, 79 S.Ct. 468, 484, 3 L.Ed.2d 368 (1869), applying the removal provision of the Habeas Corpus Act of 1863, see fn. 5, decided squarely that even when there was a specific statute or presidential order, not every act deriving its foundation [265]*265therefrom was “under color of authority of the statute or order for removal purposes.
Our problem as to the equal protection clause and 42 U.S.C. § 1981 is thus not whether these are laws providing for equal rights, as they clearly are, but whether they confer “color of authority,” in the sense of § 1443(2), to perform the acts that are the subject of the state prosecution. We find ourselves unable to give an affirmative answer. Although alleged denial of equal protection in schools and other respects afforded the motivation and was the subject of appellants’ acts, neither the equal protection clause nor § 1981 confers “color of authority” to perform acts which a state alleges to be in violation of laws of general application intended to preserve the peace from disturbance by anyone. The constitutional provision and the statute are addressed to preventing inequality in the treatment of conduct, and to that great purpose alone. They give no constitutional defense, let alone “authority,” for disregard of laws providing for the equal punishment of disturbers of the peace simply because the disturbances were in the course of protests over alleged denial of equality in schools, hous-mg or economic opportunity — any more than the Second Amendment bestows “authority” to disturb the peace in the course of a protest over an alleged denial of the right to keep arms or the Fourth Amendment does so with respect to a protest over police methods. A different case from any here before us would be presented if the act complained of in the state suit was performed in the defendant’s exercise of an equal right, such as the right to equal accommodations under § 201 of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which Congress has singled out for federal protection. In such a case it could be contended that Congress “authorized” self-help to enforce such a specifically granted right,10 and that the same principle would include a protest by the aggrieved person at a segregated place of accommodation on the theory that the greater includes the less. That would be altogether different from saying that other protests over lack of equal treatment, such as those at issue on these appeals, derive “color of authority” from the equal protection clause or equal rights statutes; the relevant provision here is the First Amendment as incorporated in the due process clause of the Fourteenth, see Cox v. Louisiana, 379 U.S. 536, 85 S.Ct. 453, 13 L.Ed.2d 471 (1965), [266]*266and vite will later discuss appellants' claims in that regard. Similarly, submission to the orders of law officers to desist from conduct forbidden by general state penal laws is not “inconsistent” with the equal protection clause or with § 1981 simply because the conduct was a protest over lack of equal protection; neither the constitutional provision nor the statute directs anyone to resist.11
Appellants do not urge that New York has administered its penal laws in a discriminatory manner, so that conduct which the statutes forbid on their face would nevertheless be tolerated if carried on by a different group or for a different cause, see Yick Wo v. Hopkins, 118 U.S. 356, 6 S.Ct. 1064, 30 L.Ed. 220 (1886) ; Niemotko v. State of Maryland, 340 U.S. 268, 71 S.Ct. 325, 95 L.Ed. 267 (1951); Fowler v. State of Rhode Island, 345 U.S. 67, 73 S.Ct. 526, 97 L.Ed. 828 (1953), and they have made no suggestion that they wished to or properly could amend the petitions to assert this. Even if this had been plausibly asserted, it would still do some violence to the Structure of § 1443, as we have analyzed this, to say that the equal protection clause or 42 U.S.C. § 1981 gives “color of authority” to perform an act, forbidden by nondiscriminatory legislation, which the state can constitutionally punish if only it punishes all persons doing acts of the same kind, and thus afford basis for removal under § 1443(2) without the necessity of alleging denial or inability to enforce rights under these laws in the state courts, as would be required under § 1443(1). Whatever the ultimate resolution of such questions may be, they are not before us on these appeals.
It is wholly consistent with the scheme of the removal statute to say that generalized guarantees of equal rights do not afford color of authority under the second clause of § 1443. Such guarantees are within the first clause; even if the second clause should be held to include private citizens, it was drawn with primary reference to officers and persons acting at their instance; and we see no basis for the dissent’s suggestion that our construction would frequently make it unavailable even to them.
Y. Appellants’ contentions based on statutes such as 42 U.S.C. §§ 1983 and 1985 and 18 U.S.C. §§ 241-242, creating civil claims or imposing criminal penalties for deprivation of constitutional rights, are unfounded for two reasons. As will be explained in section VI of this opinion, we do not believe that such statutes, coextensive with the whole reach of the Constitution, are laws providing for equal rights to which alone § 1443 is addressed. And, as already shown, in order for a statute to provide “color of authority” to perform an act in the special context of § 1443(2), it must do more than protect conduct by giving remedies to the offended party. In that sense, all that is “authorized” by the statutes here under discussion is the award of damages or of criminal punishment. And it is in no way “inconsistent” with them for the victim to suffer the deprivation and then bring a civil suit or request the bringing of a criminal prosecution — the very purpose for which the statutes were designed.
VI. We thus turn to appellants’ claims based on the prohibition, in the due process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, of deprivation of “liberty,” including the freedom of speech and petition guaranteed by the First Amendment. We hold that quite apart from the question of “color of authority,” which would also require resolution in this context, the claims fail on the ground that these basic guarantees are not laws [267]*267providing for “equal” civil rights to which § 1443 is confined.
It is clear that rights of this sort were not in the contemplation of the framers of § 3 of the Civil Rights Act of 1866. In that act, adopted prior to ratification of the Fourteenth Amendment, what has become § 1443(2) permitted removal only “for any arrest or imprisonment, trespasses, or wrongs done or committed by virtue or under color of authority derived from this act” and the Freedmeri’s Bureau Acts. None of these statutes has any provision remotely relating to the general protection of freedom of speech or petition against state infringement, and there would hardly have been constitutional basis for so providing. After the ratification of the Fourteenth Amendment, Congress left the cross-reference unchanged until the passage of the Revised Statutes of 1875, and it added no additional removal provisions here significant in the interval.12 But the Revised Statutes altered the cross-reference to “any law providing for equal [civil] rights.” The issue posed is whether it was thereby intended that a claim that an act, challenged by a civil suit or criminal prosecution in a state court as a disturbance of the peace, was protected by the constitutional guarantee of liberty, would satisfy the requirement of showing that the act was “made or committed by virtue of or under color of authority derived from” a “law providing for equal [civil] rights,” or that a similar claim with respect to any refusal to act so challenged was “on the ground that it would be inconsistent with such law.”13
It would be strange if what was represented to be a mere codification accomplished so great a substantive change. The issue is not whether the Reconstruction Congress would have been capable of so drastic an alteration in judicial jurisdiction. The point rather is that it would be a flight of fancy to attribute, on the basis of a readily explicable change in wording, such an undisclosed purpose to a Congress which was aiming only to “revise, simplify, codify, arrange, and consolidate” existing statutes, and was so intent on avoiding substantive alterations that it designated a lawyer for the purpose of eradicating any such changes made by the codifying commis[268]*268sion.14 The need for the 1875 Revisers” altering the cross-reference in § 3 of the Act of 1866 arose, as has been explained, from the very fact of codification and the consequent separation of the removal provisions from the rights and authorizations to which they referred. It is far more reasonable to conclude that the Revisers were thinking of laws stated in egalitarian terms, notably those that had been § 1 of the Civil Rights Act and had become Rev.Stat. §§ 1977-1978, now 42 U.S.C. §§ 1981-1982, which is what they said, than that they meant to extend the right of removal to any person claiming the “liberty” protected by the newly adopted amendment, whose effect in that respect was, to say the least, then uncertain.
This view that no significant change with respect to removal was intended is confirmed by the Revisers’ choice of the phrase best suited to convey the thought that only rights like those originally defined in § 1 of the Civil Rights Act of 1866 were to continue to constitute a basis therefor — “any law providing for equal rights.” T-he rights protected by § 1 of the Civil Rights Act of 1866 were not absolutes but relatives; they were rights to equality — the limit of Congressional power when the legislation had to be rested solely on the Thirteenth Amendment. Appellants say that since the rights of freedom of speech and of petition are guaranteed to all and not just to some, they also are “equal” civil rights. But this truism, which is the strength of the argument, is also its weakness. What is so obvious to appellants must have been just as obvious to Congress, and “equal” would thus have been surplusage. That the Reconstruction Congress knew how to speak more broadly is evidenced by § 1 of the Act of April 20, 1871, 17 Stat. 13, later Rev.Stat. § 1979, and now 42 U.S.C. § 1983, referring to the deprivation of “any rights, privileges, or immunities” and particularly by Rev.Stat. § 629 Sixteenth, now 28 U.S.C. § 1343(3), giving the circuit courts original jurisdiction of suits for the deprivation under color of state authority “of any right, privilege, or immunity, secured by the Constitution of the United States, or of any right secured by any law providing for equal rights of citizens of the United States, or of all persons within the jurisdiction of the United States.” Congress thus recognized the existence of a special body of laws providing for equal rights distinguishable from the universal protections of the Constitution. It was these equal rights laws, which had been referred to in the removal section as enacted in 1866 and were carried forward into the Revised Statutes, that furnished á basis for removal.
If there is thus no reason for thinking that Congress intended any significant substantive change -in the cross-reference of the removal statute when it made the revision of 1875, there is equally little reason for believing that it had that purpose in the revisions of 1911 or of 1948. Because of the Supreme Court’s restrictive interpretation of what is now § 1443(1), see infra, and the prohibition of appellate review of orders of remand, the civil rights removal statute had been little used, and nothing suggests that the 1911 and 1948 Congresses were in any way concerned about this. We do not wish to be misunderstood as saying that the cross-reference today covers only those equal rights laws that existed in 1866. As Congress enacts new laws relating to equal rights, the cross-reference in § 1443 takes them in; unques- ' tionably the Civil Rights Act of 1964 is a law providing for equal rights within the removal statute. But that is very different from saying that every civil right conferred on all is so included.
On this point we receive also the welcome aid of authority. One of the claims in Gibson v. State of Mississippi, 162 U.S. 565, 586, 16 S.Ct. 904, 908, 40 L.Ed. 1075 (1896), where removal had been [269]*269sought under the “denial” clause, was “that the statute under which the grand jury was organized was ex post facto, when applied to the case of the present defendant * * * ” The first Mr. Justice Harlan remarked, “This question does not depend upon section 641 of the Revised Statutes, but upon the clause of the Constitution forbidding a State to pass an ex post facto law,” so that the claim was relevant only to the correctness of the state court judgment and not to that of the order of remand. Yet the right of protection against an ex post facto law is surely a civil right secured by the Constitution and, on appellants’ theory, an “equal” civil right which was being denied by the state. Similarly, Steele v. Superior Court of California, 164 F.2d 781, 782 (9 Cir. 1947), cert. denied, 333 U.S. 861, 68 S.Ct. 739, 92 L.Ed. 1140 (1948), held that the practice of admitting evidence obtained by unlawful search and seizure then followed in California did not render a prosecution removable under the “denial” clause, since although there might be a denial of a civil right, there was no denial of equal civil rights, “such as a discrimination against a particular race.” 15 Finally, Douglas v. City of Jeannette, 319 U.S. 157, 63 S.Ct. 877, 87 L.Ed. 1324 (1943), ends strong inferential support to the conclusion that a claimed violation of the liberty guaranteed by the due process clause does not afford ground for removal. This was an action in a federal court to enjoin a threatened state criminal prosecution which, it was alleged, would deprive the plaintiffs of rights to freedom of speech and of religion — a prosecution which, on the view of the appellants here, could have been removed under the present § 1443(2). The Court held that the action had been properly brought under what has become 28 U.S. C. § 1343(3) giving federal jurisdiction over suits to enforce claims under Rev. Stat. § 1979, now 42 U.S.C. § 1983, but that an injunction against the state prosecution had been correctly denied. It said, 319 U.S. at 163, 63 S.Ct. at 881, that “Congress, by its legislation, has adopted the policy, with certain well defined statutory exceptions, of leaving generally to the state courts the trial of criminal cases arising under state laws, subject to review by this Court of any federal questions involved,” and “Where the threatened prosecution is by state officers for alleged violations of a state law, the state courts are the final arbiters of its meaning and application, subject only to review by this Court on federal grounds appropriately asserted.” These remarks would hardly have been appropriate if the Court had thought the criminal proceeding sought to be enjoined was one whose removal was authorized under the “well defined statutory exceptions.”16
Our view that § 1443(2) applies only to rights that are granted in terms of equality and not to the whole gamut of constitutional rights, is strengthened by the very different effects of the two constructions on federal-state relations. The former construction would mean, e. g., — if the obstacle discussed in Section III of this opinion can be surmounted — that a freedman who was arrested for occupying property he had purchased [270]*270or for fighting off an evictor might remove on the basis that he was acting “by virtue of or under color of authority derived from” Rev.Stat. § 1978, or, in today’s terms, that the same might be true of persons utilizing self-enforcement in respect of the rights “to the full and equal enjoyment of the goods, services, facilities, privileges, advantages, and accommodations of any place of public accommodation,” granted by § 201(a) of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. It could be argued in such cases that Congress had focused upon a particular problem and had decided that allowing removal to persons who had engaged in self-help to achieve certain specific goals was necessary to effectuate its purpose.
Such a construction would be altogether different from saying that the Congresses of 1875, of 1911, or of 1948 meant to authorize removal whenever a state suit or prosecution concerned what allegedly was an unconstitutional deprivation of the universal right to “liberty.” Even if there were basis for somehow limiting this to civil rights demonstrators, the burden cast on the federal courts would be formidable, as recent events have shown. But a claim of such deprivation would also exist in the case of a suit or prosecution for publishing an allegedly lewd or subversive book, for exhibiting an obscene moving picture, for a speech claimed to constitute an incitement to riot, for libel of a public official, for parading for a political cause without a permit, for violating a Sunday law, for refusing to obey a public health measure offensive to a religious belief, or in other cases too numerous to mention. Neither do we see any reasonable basis whereby, on appellants’ argument, only rights to liberty of the First Amendment type would afford basis for removal. Prosecutions for the practice of professions without a license, for the sale of articles alleged to be unconstitutionally banned, or for conduct which, it is claimed, the state has not prohibited with required specificity — all these and many more would come within the sweep of § 1443(2). Compare Hornsby v. Allen, 326 F.2d 605, rehearing denied, 330 F.2d 55 (5 Cir. 1964). Although the unexpected character of such a wholesale transfer of jurisdiction from state to federal courts, the disruption of relationships incident to making the federal courts a major forum for state criminal trials, often at places remote from the scene of the crime, and the burden that would be placed on federal tribunals ill-equipped to shoulder new tasks of such magnitude, would not justify refusal to respond to a clear Congressional command, such considerations suggest the need for carefully attending to what Congress meant by § 1443(2) and its predecessors. Realizing the hindrance to interpretation resulting from the prohibition of direct review of remand orders since 1887, we think the presumption is still “powerful that such a far-reaching dislocating construction * * * was not uncovered by judges, lawyers or scholars for * * * years because it is not there.” Romero v. International Terminal Operating Co., supra, 358 U.S. at 370-371, 79 S.Ct. at 479.
In recognition of the disruptive character of such a construction, the dissent seems to suggest a principle limiting invocation of the due process clause as regards § 1443(2) to cases where a protest concerns an alleged denial of substantive equal protection. But the guarantee of liberty in the due process clause either is or is not a law providing for equal rights within the removal statute, and if it gives “color of authority” for one type of protest, it does so for all. The First Amendment as incorporated in the Fourteenth protects speech and petition regardless of subject-matter; protests about nuclear armament, or substandard wages, or the grant or denial of public aid to parochial schools, are protected to the same degree as protests over the racial composition of public schools.
Because of the extensive review of the historical development of the relevant legislation demanded by the importance and the novelty of the issues and in order [271]*271to promote certainty as to our decision, we here summarize our conclusions:
(1) We reject the State’s contention that the “denial” and the “authority” clauses of the civil rights removal statute should be read as one; the statute permits removal in either of two distinct categories of cases, today as it has since 1866.
(2) We reject any view that the “authority” clause of the civil rights removal statute can be invoked only if the petitioner preliminarily demonstrates that the challenged conduct was within the federal law relied on, the very issue on which he seeks a federal trial — subject only to the caveat that particular conduct may have gone so far beyond any possible interpretation of the rights allegedly conferred as not to furnish a colorable basis for removal.
(3) We do not decide whether the “authority” clause is limited to officers and persons assisting them or acting in some way on behalf of government, or whether private citizens exercising equal rights, such as the beneficiaries of the equal rights statutes of the Reconstruction era and of certain provisions of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, may invoke the “authority” clause of the statute as well as the “denial” clause.
(4) When the removal statute speaks of “color of authority derived from” a law providing for equal rights, it refers to a situation where the lawmakers manifested an affirmative intention that a beneficiary of such a law should be able to do something and not merely to one where he may have a valid defense or be entitled to have civil or criminal liability imposed on those interfering with him.
(5) When the removal statute speaks of “any law providing for equal rights,” it refers to those laws that are couched in terms of equality, such as the historic and the recent equal rights statutes, as distinguished from' laws, of which the due process clause and 42 U.S.C. § 1983 are sufficient examples, that confer equal rights in the sense, vital to our way of life, of bestowing them upon all.
It should be made clear that the obstacles we perceive to applying § 1443(2) to removal by civil rights demonstrators would not be at all present in cases where an appropriate showing was made for the invocation of § 1443(1). An allegation that Negroes engaged in civil rights demonstrations were being punished in the state courts whereas white persons engaging in similar demonstrations for other causes were not, cf. Cox v. Louisiana, supra, or that Negro demonstrators were required to post high bail whereas whites were not, would constitute clear instances of denial to “any person” of the right, provided by 42 U.S.C. § 1981, that all “shall be subject to like punishment, pains, penalties, taxes, licenses, and exactions of every kind, and to no other.” There is no possible doubt that § 1443(1) applies to the grantees of equal rights under the equal protection clause and egalitarian statutes,17 and it imposes no requirement of showing “color of authority” or “inconsistency” although it does demand a substantial claim of denial or inability to enforce. The difficulty is that what is now § 1443(1) was largely deprived of effect by the decisions in Virginia v. Rives, 100 U.S. 313, 25 L.Ed. 667 (1880); Neal v. Delaware, 103 U.S. 370, 26 L.Ed. 567 (1881); and Com. of Kentucky v. Powers, 201 U.S. 1, 26 S.Ct. 387, 50 L.Ed. 633 (1906), which limited its application to denial by state laws as distinguished from state practice. The Congressional debate on Title IX of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 indicated a not unreasonable expectation that these restrictive decisions would be reexamined, see 110 Cong. Rec. 6739-40 (daily ed. April 6, 1964) (remarks of Senator Dodd), and the question is now before the Fourth Circuit in Baines v. City of Danville, No. 9080, and McGhee v. City of Danville, No. 9082. If that expectation should go unfulfilled, Congress may well do the re[272]*272examining or otherwise amend the centenarian civil rights removal statute— not, of course, by restricting the statute, as the dissent suggests, but by removing the restriction that had been judicially imposed on the first clause and by clarifying the scope of the second. But the relative inutility of § 1443(1) in the interval affords no warrant for embracing within the second clause of § 1443 cases of the type with which the first clause seems to be concerned, by means of a latitudinarian construction, unsupported by language and contrary to history, which, in order to meet conditions unhappily and, we hope, temporarily prevailing in a few states, would swamp the federal courts throughout the country with prosecutions removed as concerning acts allegedly protected by guarantees of the Fourteenth Amendment.
Although we fully recognize the merits of a case-by-case approach with respect to constitutional determinations, including any that may be relevant to these petitioners, we find this singularly unattractive as applied to the question where a suit should be tried — an issue which in the interests of both parties should be speedily determined without the necessity of lengthy preliminary hearings, on the very issues that will arise on the trial itself, by a court to which removal is sought. Removal under § 1443(2), unlike § 1443(1), does not depend on conditions in a particular state or as to a particular trial; it ought be possible for a court to lay down some general principles for its construction. Our dissenting brother is qjiite right in saying that we have not succeeded in furnishing a definition of “color of authority” that will automatically determine every case, and we plead guilty to having postponed the issue whether § 1443(2) may ever be invoked by persons other than officers or quasi-officers to a case where its decision is required. But at least we have taken the difficult road of deciding these cases as best we can, thereby giving indications that also ought be somewhat useful for the decision of others, rather than permitting these serious questions to rest in limbo while words which could not alter the result are added to the removal petitions, lengthy hearings are held in the district courts and- the proceedings ultimately return here.
The orders of remand are affirmed.