The Fount

There were no cots in the cloakrooms, no pajama-clad Senators rubbing sleep from their eyes as quorum bells clanged in the middle of the night, no filibustering recitals of recipes for chicken gumbo and shrimp jambalaya. There was just a straightforward, rather lackluster debate that was cut off after a mere 24 days when the Senate invoked cloture. Next day, when President Johnson's voting-rights bill came to a final vote, the Senate approved it by a lopsided 77-to-19 margin and sent it to the House, where its passage is all but a foregone conclusion.

Throughout the debate, it was apparent that the forces of the segregationist South were beaten--and knew it. "The way things are," North Carolina Democrat Sam Ervin said wryly, "I don't think I could even get a denunciation of the Crucifixion in the bill." When Georgia's Richard Brevard Russell, field general for the segregationists in a dozen civil rights battles of yore, returned to the Senate chamber from a long illness the day before the cloture motion came to a vote, he needed no more than a glance to see that the cause was hopeless. "If there is anything I could do," he said, "I would do it. But I assume the die is cast."

For Cloture. When the roll call on the crucial cloture vote began, Majority Leader Mike Mansfield and Minority Leader Everett Dirksen were fairly confident that they had the required two-thirds majority. But a shred of doubt remained right up to the end. "It's a case of depending on the Republican side," said Mansfield. That meant Ev Dirksen, and Dirksen had done his job of persuasion well. "This involves more than you," he told wavering colleagues. "It's the party. Don't drop me in the mud."

All told, only nine Republicans joined 21 Democrats to reject cloture. Dirksen mustered 23 Republicans, who together with 47 Democrats carried the motion 70 to 30--three votes more than were needed. It was the second time that the Senate had ever cut off debate on a civil rights bill.

Automatic Trigger. The heart of the Senate bill is the "automatic triggering device." Under its terms, federal registrars (or "examiners," as the bill calls them) will be empowered to suspend literacy tests and register voters without them in states and counties where 1) such tests were used as a voting qualification as of last Nov. 1, and 2) less than 50% of the voting-age population were registered to vote or actually cast ballots in the 1964 presidential election. The device will automatically send federal examiners into Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, South Carolina, and a number of counties in other states including North Carolina and Virginia. The triggering device was the main feature of the bill drafted by Administration lawyers and Dirksen's staff, but the Senate added a few wrinkles of its own by providing that: >In any county where the U.S. Census Director finds that less than 25% of the adult Negro population is registered, federal examiners may be appointed.

>Anyone who has completed the sixth grade (eighth grade in some states) in a school operated under the U.S. flag will be allowed to vote, even if he cannot read, write, understand or interpret English. This amendment, co-sponsored by Republican Jacob Javits and Democrat Bobby Kennedy, chiefly affects some 330,000 Spanish-speaking Puerto Ricans in New York City and is perhaps the most dubious part of the bill.

>Federal poll watchers will observe elections in areas found guilty of past discrimination.

>"Innocent" counties within states found guilty of discrimination will be exempted if at least 50% of their non-white voting-age population is registered, and if they can prove to federal judges that they do not discriminate against any voters. This amendment was sponsored by Louisiana's Russell Long, the Senate's Democratic whip.

>The U.S. Attorney General will challenge the constitutionality of poll taxes levied in state and local elections in Alabama, Mississippi, Texas and Virginia (the 24th Amendment bars poll taxes in federal elections). At the same time, the bill declares that such taxes amount to an infringement on the right to vote by discriminating against the poor, and particularly Negroes.

Quite Enough. The main effect of the bill will be to enfranchise some 3,000,-000 Negroes, mostly Southern. It is impossible to reckon how many will avail themselves of the right. But almost certainly, enough of them will register and vote to change the complexion of Southern politics.

The bill ventures to accomplish nothing more than to guarantee Negroes a right that is embedded in the 15th Amendment. But that is quite enough. For the right to vote is the fount from which all the other rights so long denied to Negroes must eventually flow.

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