A Round for the South

When the smoke cleared away after the first clash in the Senate's civil rights battle last week, the Southerners had won a surprising victory, and the stunned civil-righters were in tactical retreat. The battle was far from over; it was still almost certain that, after weeks of oratory and cloakroom maneuvering, the Senate would pass some kind of civil rights bill. But the Southerners were cockily confident that the bill would say much less than the Administration measures passed by the House in June.

Strategist and hero of the Southerners' victory of the week was their chosen general, Georgia's courtly bachelor, Richard

Brevard Russell. Before the fighting broke out, Dick Russell made up his mind to avoid, or at least postpone, the old-fashioned Southern filibuster. Instead, he set out to drain some of the blood from the bill with amendments--keeping the filibuster in reserve as a last resort.

Meat or Poison. Looking for weak spots, Lawyer Russell studied the four-part Administration bill with exquisite care. Part I, authorizing a presidential civil rights commission with merely investigative powers, looks comparatively harmless to Southern eyes. So does Part II, authorizing an additional Assistant Attorney General in the Justice Department. The meat (or poison) of the bill is in Parts III and IV, empowering the Attorney General to seek federal court injunctions to prevent interference with civil rights. While Part IV deals solely with voting rights, Part III covers voting and a lot more besides, including "equal privileges and immunities under the laws." The scope of Part III is set forth not in the text of the bill itself but in a dusty old law that the bill refers to--a measure passed in 1871 to curb Ku Klux Klan efforts to keep Negroes from voting, serving on juries, holding public office, etc.

When California's Minority Leader William Fife Knowland moved last week to bring the civil rights bill before the Senate (a formality that usually takes only a few minutes), Russell & Co. launched a heavy-artillery attack on Part III. Taking advantage of the fact that the bill's backers had advertised it as primarily a right-to-vote measure, the Southerners charged that the Justice Department was trying to sneak Part III past the Congress as a sinister stowaway aboard an innocent-looking vessel. Part III, they thundered, echoing Dick Russell's speech of a fortnight ago (TIME, July 15), was drafted by "crafty and designing" lawyers with the secret purpose of enabling Attorney General Herbert Brownell to destroy the South's social order through enforced integration--and racial intermarriage, too, chimed in Mississippi's James Oliver Eastland. After a while, many a conscientious Senator could no longer see the facts for the smoke.

Climate of Compromise. Through it all, Russell tried to keep a posture of reasonableness. Switching his firing order, he summoned Arkansas' William Fulbright and Alabama's John Sparkman to take their speechmaking turns early in the week; as certified moderates, the pair should get a good press and a respectful hearing from wavering Senators. Unintentionally helping the Southerners create a climate of compromise, Dwight Eisenhower received Dick Russell at the White House as a sort of Ambassador from the Southland, conferred with him in private for 50 minutes. The President agreed to no basic concessions, but the impression was widespread in Washington that he did. Trying to repair the damage, Vice President Richard Nixon told a dinner of the "85 Club" (a score of freshman Republican members of the 85th Congress) that the Administration would not accept any major changes in the bill. But in Senate cloakrooms the compromise rumors kept buzzing.

With their shrewd strategy of compromise talk, plus heavy attack, the Southerners managed to persuade many a mind, in the Senate and outside it, that Part III should go. Said the won-over New York Times: "It is the part of wisdom to take one step at a time and concentrate now, in this law, on the basic right of a free ballot." In the Senate, several Republicans openly advocated knocking Part III out of the bill. Indeed, South Dakota Republicans Francis Case and Karl Mundt drafted amendments to do just that. In a gallant attempt to make the Democrats look like the party of civil rights, Tennessee's Albert Gore toyed with a grand design to torpedo the Administration bill and substitute in its place a drastically shrunken Democratic civil rights bill.

The Real Goal. At week's end the Southerners caucused in Dick Russell's office and decided that, with the battle going their way for the moment, it was safe to let the Senate vote this week on Bill Knowland's motion to bring the bill to the floor. Russell, Knowland and Majority Leader Lyndon Johnson got together and set a definite date for the vote. That formality over, debate on the bill itself will begin--and amendments will be in order.

In their elation the Southerners even convinced themselves that they can reach their real goal: an amendment requiring jury trials for defendants charged with contempt for violating civil rights injunctions under the bill. Such an amendment would weaken the effects of the law --juries being what they are--and endear Dick Russell to Dixie as a Robert E. Lee of parliamentary warfare.

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