Where do you get a “4”? It looks to me like a “6”.
If the birth certificate was coded for federal purposes, then according to the instruction manual, the code for this box would be either a "1" a "2" a "3" or a "4". (See pp. 13-14)
Of those choices, to my eyes based on the half of the number we can see it can only be a "4".
If the handwritten numbers were NOT done for federal purposes, then we still need to learn why these numbers were placed on the document and what they mean.
And, of course, if the handwritten numbers were NOT done for federal purposes then the whole debate about the "1961 manual" or the "1968 manual" and does "9" mean "not stated" or "other non-white" under the federal manual is an irrelevant debate, and has nothing to do with this document.
If the number really is a "5" or a "6", then it would appear these handwritten numbers were NOT done for federal coding purposes.
Someone pointed out that the date of revision on the manual we have is August 14 1961 -- I very much doubt they changed the actual numbers used in mid-year, because then they would have had to go back and re-do months and months of work of coding and card-punching.