The Purpose and Powers of the Senate, Part LXXXVI: “The Forces Which Imprison So Many”

            Though the tabling of Senator Richard Russell’s threatened point of order on March 27^th, 1962 essentially ensured that Spessard Holland’s proposed anti-poll-tax amendment was no longer in danger of being declared procedurally unconstitutional, there were still a handful of roadblocks which its various supporters would need to clear before the approval of the Senate could be said to be a done thing. The next to appear came in the form of an alternative proposal by one Jacob Javits of New York. Javits was in favour of Holland’s amendment in theory, provided that there was no other way to achieve the same end. But for his part, the New Yorker believed that there was another way, and moreover that this other way was far likelier to succeed. “I feel very deeply [,]” he said upon being granted the floor,

That if we are to do anything, after the pain and anguish which we always go through in these matters, let us do something now instead of deferring the day when we will do something. Aside from every other argument on this subject […] the argument which seems to be the most persuasive is this: If we pass a constitutional amendment and it is approved by the States, we will still have to be back here to pass a statute, because no amendment to the Constitution is self-operative. We must pass a law to implement it. Therefore, why go through all of this circumlocution if we can constitutionally […] do the same thing by statute now? Do we want a repetition of the events of the last 2 weeks, if it is completely unnecessary?

Javits was reflecting upon both the specific attempt that had just been made by a small cohort of Southern senators to prevent a full consideration of Spessard Holland’s proposed anti-poll-tax amendment as well as the larger trend of Southern Democrats greeting every measure that even vaguely whiffed of “civil rights” as a threat to the fundamental cohesion of the American republic. Specifically, he explained, he was prompted by yet another display of “the pain and anguish which we always go through in these matters” and wished to avoid further “circumlocution.” When one recalls the recent history of civil rights legislation in Congress – i.e., the nearly-abortive passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1957 and the similarly agonizing passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1960 – Javits’ point would seem to be well made. With few exceptions, Southern Democrats had gone out of their way since Brown v. Board of Education (1954) to make the further consolidation of structural and legal equality in the United States the procedural equivalent of pulling teeth. And if that was going to continue to be the case – and the preceding two weeks had shown that it most definitely would be – then why not take every opportunity to seek the path of least resistance?

            So it was that Javits proposed a legislative rather than constitutional approach. The reasons for this were several. First, he argued, there was the simple fact that even the successful passage of an anti-poll-tax amendment would not settle the matter forever as far as Congress was concerned. Most amendments, Javits explained, that banned existing practises required enforcement legislation to be passed in order to make them effective. Which meant that, provided Holland’s amendment was approved by Congress and ratified by the states, Congress would still have to return to the topic of poll taxes in the form of an anti-poll-tax bill. At which point, predictably, the same cohort of Southern Democrats who had just tried to stymie the passage of an anti-poll-tax amendment would once more spring into action to quash a piece of anti-poll-tax legislation. So why not simply take the opportunity to pass anti-poll-tax legislation now? Why not make the abolition of poll taxes a painful but ultimately successful one-step process rather than a painful but ultimately successful two or three step process? That is, assuming the parts of the process that had to take place outside the auspices of the Senate would go off without a hitch. Javits was not so sure of this. His second major concern, to that end, was whether or not the House would deign to cooperate.

            More than once, the New Yorker went on to avow, within the last several years preceding the present debate on Holland’s amendment proposal, a majority in the House of Representatives had voted to approve legislation that sought to ban the poll tax at the federal level. And in 1961, in spite of an affirmative vote by the Senate on a joint resolution which included an anti-poll-tax amendment authored by Spessard Holland, the House had rejected said proposal while approving the rest of the resolution’s contents. Based on past behaviour, then, it seemed likelier to Javits that the House would respond favourably to a legislative ban on poll taxes than it would to a constitutional one. Bearing this in mind, the New Yorker believed that he and his fellow senators, “must ask ourselves the logical question: Why do it the hard way? Why not do it the direct way which is available to us, and in which the other body has time and again shown a disposition to join?” Granted, certain objections had been raised to this approach, specifically as to the constitutionality of altering voter qualifications at the state level by way of congressional fiat. But I think [,]” said Javits,

Constitutionality is firmly based upon a number of grounds, all of which are recited in my amendment itself, in which the Congress finds as a fact that the poll tax is an attempt to interfere with the manner of holding elections and primaries, a tax on primaries, an abridgment of rights and privileges of citizens of the United States, a tax on such rights and privileges, an obstruction of the operations of the Federal Government, and an impairment of the republican form of government. This relates to the various elements of the Constitution upon which I depend in urging the constitutionality of such an approach as this.

The phrase “the manner of holding elections” was of particular importance under the circumstances. Article I, Section 4 of the Constitution states that, “The Times, Places and Manner of holding Elections for Senators and Representatives, shall be prescribed in each State by the Legislature thereof; but the Congress may at any time by Law make or alter such Regulations [.]” In order to demonstrate by what means banning poll taxes via legislation was constitutional, therefore, Javits had to convincingly argue that the setting of voter qualifications fell within the rubric of the “manner” in elections were held.  

            In order to accomplish this, Senator Javits turned – of all places – to the words of Strom Thurmond, former Governor of South Carolina and then a senator from that same state. During the ultimately successful campaign against the poll tax that had taken place in the Palmetto State in 1947, Governor Thurmond asserted that, “There has been much misguided agitation about the poll tax as a qualification for voting. Capacity, in accordance with the other constitutional provisions, to exercise the right of franchise should be the only qualification of an elector.” This, Javits added, was precisely how he felt himself. “Any kind of financial or property prerequisite for voting is not a qualification [,]” he thus avowed.

It seems to me that that concept is borne out by the cases, particularly the one case upon which the proponents of the constitutional amendment theory constantly rely, the case of Breedlove v. Suttles […] decided in 1937. There the Supreme Court refers throughout to the poll tax not as a qualification for voting—or, to use the words of the Governor of South Carolina, as relating to capacity—but as a "prerequisite of voting." I respectfully submit that treated as a prerequisite, as a condition precedent for voting, it falls far more within the time, place, and manner of holding elections, over which article I, section 4, of the Constitution gives Congress the power, than it does within the term "qualifications," over which article I, section 2, gives the States power.

Looked at in a certain way, Javits – and, apparently, Strom Thurmond – would seem to have a point. If poll taxes were a prerequisite for voting rather than a qualification – if they were merely a means of registering rather than a measure of intellectual or moral capacity – then it would seem entirely appropriate for them to be considered part and parcel of “the manner” of holding elections. Their payment or nonpayment accordingly did not denote whether a person was “qualified” to vote as much as they simply indicated individual completion or non-completion of an administrative requirement.

            Sure as Senator Javits was of the wisdom of his preferred approach, few of his colleagues were quite so confident. Kentucky Republican John Sherman Cooper (1901-1991), for one, was deeply concerned as to the constitutionality of the New Yorker’s proposal. Javits’ assertions notwithstanding, there was simply no way to know for certain whether the Supreme Court would uphold an anti-poll-tax bill or declare it null and void. And so, rather than risk having to delay the invalidation of poll taxes at the national level until the meeting of some later session of Congress – accompanied, once again, by the customary “pain and anguish” – Cooper supported the passage of a constitutional amendment to the same exact end. It would be, if nothing else, a sure thing if it was ratified. Similarly, Javits and Holland went back and forth for quite some time about whose proposed amendment to S.J. Res. 29 made the most sense. The New Yorker believed a statute was the speediest approach – “I am for doing something,” he said, “and that if we want to do something we should adopt my amendment.” The Floridian, on the other hand, was of the same belief as Cooper that an amendment was likelier to bear up under constitutional scrutiny. In the end, only Paul Douglas of Illinois made a particularly spirited defence of Javits’s proposal. But it was, it must be said, particularly spirited.

            First, in specific reference to the arguments that had been made by various other senators concerning the questionable constitutionality of Javits’s approach, Douglas opined that any such declarations constituted little more than speculation. In the past, senators had often sought to predict whether or not a particular statute that had just received congressional approval would be upheld by the Supreme Court. And it seemed to Douglas that they were more often wrong than right. Bearing this in mind – that is, the proven unreliability of any such predictions – the Illinoisan believed it made the most sense to simply proceed as the situation at hand appeared to dictate. It was a fact that a majority in the Senate wanted to see poll taxes abolished at the federal level. And it was also a fact that, while a constitutional amendment could certainly achieve the desired result, it would require the cooperation of a majority of the states and the passage of some kind of enforcing legislation to do so. But the same result might have also been achieved simply by supporting Javits’s anti-poll-tax bill and ensuring its passage through the Senate. And as the latter method was the simpler of the two, it was the one that Douglas favoured.

            This was not all that Paul Douglas had to say, however. A noted economist and an ardent liberal, Douglas had a very particular view of the Jim Crow regime, the American South, and the historical factors that seemed to bind the two together. And evidently, he believed that a debate on the legitimacy of poll taxes presented an ideal opportunity to share the thesis he had developed with his fellow senators. Key to this thesis – per Douglas’s opening remarks – was the work of liberal Southern historian C. Vann Woodward (1908-1999), a figure who had been much derided by his fellow Southerners over the course of the 1950s as having wilfully maligned and misinterpreted their culture and traditions while arguing that racial segregation was driven by economics more than anything. Notwithstanding criticisms such as this intended to diminish the significance of Woodward’s various conclusions, Douglas avowed that the man was as much a Southerner as any of those who continued to cling to Jim Crow and the “Lost Cause” narrative. “If his credentials should be further questioned,” the senator accordingly remarked, “let it be recorded that one of his grandfathers fought in the Confederate Army for 4 years, and it is my impression that he was wounded defending the Stars and Bars. Certainly, as a good southern soldier, he showed his patriotism by trying to kill as many northerners as he could.” This was intended, to be sure, as a somewhat facetious remark, but in truth it did not differ much from the kinds of things of which Southern senators regularly boasted.

Recall that the debate surrounding Holland’s anti-poll-tax amendment had started with a lament on the part of Richard Russell that his kin had paid so dearly during the American Civil War for being so bold as to believed that, “one Southerner could lick four Yankees.” They paid in blood, of course, for this mistake, drawn, “By the bayonets of the soldiers of our friend from Illinois and other States who overpowered us in the most calamitous and fratricidal strife this Nation has ever seen.” But while theirs was ultimately a losing war, the South, in Russell’s estimation, had nothing to be ashamed of. “Any man of southern descent [,]” he avowed, “has a right to be proud of the record made by those men who wore the gray, and history does not record a more indomitable or longer drawn out fight against overwhelming odds than was made by the Confederacy.” To Russell, it seemed – and most assuredly to many of his fellow Southerners – the Civil War in general and the memory of the Confederacy in particular was a source of both pride and sorrow. Their kin had lost, to be sure, and the South had paid dearly as a result. But they had also fought valiantly for something that they believed in with all their hearts. Unspoken, of course, was the exact nature of that “something” – i.e. the enslavement of human beings – as well as the fact that the enemy they had fought were their fellow Americans. By claiming that C. Vann Woodward’s grandfather had, during this same war, tried to “kill as many northerners as he could [,]” Senator Douglas was therefore simply saying what was previously unsaid. Russell had decried the Southern blood that had been shed. Douglas sought to celebrate the Northern blood that had been shed. It was all patently ridiculous – and more than a little ghastly – but it was also very much in keeping with the psycho-emotional lexicon of contemporary American political life.

Far more distressing, however, to contemporary Southern sensibilities than Douglas’s purposely flippant inversion of most mainstream narratives of the Civil War was his personal understanding – heavily drawn from the works of the aforementioned Woodward – of the Jim Crow regime and his intentions towards the same. The poll tax, he said, whose elimination the Senate was in the midst of debating, was nothing more or less than a tool, “used by the economic and political aristocracy of the South to keep the rest of the South in subjugation.” Black or white were unimportant to this aristocracy, the propaganda they regularly distributed notwithstanding. All that they cared about was holding onto whatever power was necessary to preserve their material wealth. This, Douglas avowed, was what he and his fellow liberals were intent on destroying. Not the Southern way of life, but rather the continued economic and political dominance of the traditional Southern monied class. “We are trying,” he explained accordingly,

To free all of our friends, both South and North, from the forces which imprison so many. We know that many of what are upheld as basic institutions of the South are not really supported by the majority of the southern people but are, instead, imposed by a relatively small uppercrust who are dominant and who control overwhelmingly the agencies of information and propaganda. We want to set free the economically disfranchised majority of the South, both white and black alike. We want to open up the doors of more adequate education for the disinherited, both white and black alike. We want to open up the gates of opportunity so that the abilities of white and black alike may function more effectively. To do all these things, we of the civil rights group in the North are willing to pay more taxes. For we know that in this Nation, we are brothers, one of another, and should help to bear the burden of the States which have a low income per capita.

            There was a great deal in this speech likely to cause upset among the chamber’s Southerners. For one, there was the implication that someone like Douglas – a liberal from Illinois – had a better idea of material conditions in the South and the needs of its inhabitants than did the elected representatives of the same. For another, there was Douglas’s explicit assertion that segregation and Jim Crow were designed to prop up a particular class of Southerners – “a relatively small uppercrust” – rather than serve the needs or desires of the Southern people as a whole. And finally – and perhaps most gallingly – there was the idea that the South was simply too poor as a region to adequately fund the kinds of transformative social programs its people so desperately needed while the North had money enough to spare in order to pick up the resulting slack. Douglas was not trying to offend his Southern colleagues, of course. Or at the very least, that’s not all he was trying to do. But his comments rather cut to the heart of the contemporary Southern sense of pride. As the likes of Richard Russell, and J. Lister Hill, and James Eastland had made clear nearly every time they took the floor during the course of the debate at hand, the people of the contemporary American South treasured their family histories, their shared heritage, their sense of cultural solidarity, and their independence. They did not like being told that their way of life was fundamentally flawed. They did not like asking for or accepting charity. And they did not like being told what to do. And what was it that Paul Douglas was trying to tell them? That their culture – their way of life – was in reality a mask for the economic and political domination of a particular social class. That they were poor. That they did not know themselves. One wonders how it was that a brawl didn’t break out. Perhaps it was because things were already moving rather swiftly. The chamber had just voted to table Russell’s aforementioned point of order. And now, shortly after Douglas finished delivering the oration cited above, Majority Leader Mansfield once again moved that the motion under discussion be tabled and called for a vote. Upon the ordering of the yeas and nays, the amendment to Senator Holland’s proposal authored by Senator Javits was accordingly tabled by a margin of 59-34. 

The Purpose and Powers of the Senate, Part LXXXV: “Our Rather Irrational Action”

            When, on March 27^th, 1962, the Senate finally arrived at a formal consideration of Spessard Holland’s anti-poll-tax amendment after enduring two weeks of pseudo-filibuster by a gang of Holland’s fellow Southern Democrats, the senior senator from Florida had more than a few things to get off his chest. For two weeks he had patiently borne the incessant prattle of men who would normally have counted him as an ally, listening calmly and cooly as they insisted without proof that his efforts were all in vain, that his methods were out of order, and that the problem he was trying to solve wasn’t really a problem at all. On occasion, he would interject – mostly to provide the same increasingly wearied clarification of fact – but for the most part, he allowed his opponents to talk to their heart’s content. By March 27^th, however, Holland was through with listening. He had permitted his fellow Southerners to pour out their resentment at his efforts without interruption and stood by as his various allies rose to the defense of what was arguably his life’s work. But now that the Senate had formally agreed to hear his proposal, the time had at long last come for the gentleman from Florida to make his case. Whether he had waited simply out of a sense of propriety – preferring to discuss his proposed amendment after the appropriate motion had been adopted – or because he wished to take stock of all of his opponents’ various counterpoints before beginning to dismantle them, the effect was ultimately the same. This is all to say that, on the 27^th, Spessard Holland put on a clinic.

            To begin with, Holland addressed himself to his opponents’ hand wringing over his supposed disregard for Senate procedure. As custom dictated that proposed amendments had to be submitted to, and approved by, the Senate Committee on the Judiciary before being brought to the floor for a vote, a number of the senators who took issue with Holland’s proposal avowed that his attempt to circumvent this process was fundamentally improper and represented a threat to the long-term health of the upper chamber of Congress. In response to this criticism, the senator from Florida keenly asserted that the reverse was actually the case. That is to say, he wasn’t actively harming the Senate by threatening the authority of the Judiciary Committee. Rather, he was saving the Senate by circumventing the efforts of the obstructionists in control of the same. To this end, he observed that,

Some comment has been made to the effect that we are destroying the jurisdiction of one of our ablest committees, the Committee on the Judiciary, in taking up this measure as we are. I want it made very clear that not only are we not destroying that jurisdiction, but that for 14 long years I have been invoking that jurisdiction, and that there have been five thorough, detailed hearings upon this proposal, the records of which are printed and are available now to any Senator who may wish to read them, and on four occasions there have been recommendations from the subcommittees which handled these hearings to the full committee that the measure be reported to the Senate. However, the measure has never been reported to the Senate.

Holland seemed to want to make clear that he was not a radical by nature. His instinct had always been to go through the proper channels and observe the established procedures. And so he had done while pursuing a federal ban on the poll tax. In this case, however, the established procedure had become a trap. In spite of submitting and resubmitting his proposal to the Judiciary Committee over the course of fourteen years – and in spite of the relevant subcommittee holding numerous hearings and publishing a number of favourable reports – the proposed amendment in question had yet to be sent to the Senate floor. Clearly, something or someone was actively stopping the Judiciary Committee from properly performing its essential function. Bearing this in mind, it was only sensible for Holland and his cosponsors – within the bounds of propriety, of course – to take matters into their own hands.

            Certainly, Holland wasn’t of the opinion that the Judiciary Committee should be ignored as a matter of course. Nor did he feel that his desire, in this instance, to circumvent the same represented any kind of imposition upon the authority of one of the most venerable organs of the United States Senate. It was just that, as far as Holland and his cosponsors were concerned,     

The conditions in which we found ourselves were such that the joinder of 68 Senators, more than enough to sustain this or any other constitutional amendment, had not brought forth a report or even a report without recommendation which would bring the measure to the floor of the Senate. So when we come to the point where the inaction of a great committee has resulted in such a situation as this for 14 years; and when we now have an ample number of Senators as cosponsors of this measure to assure its submission to the States, so far as the Senate is concerned, it is a protection of the rights of Senators and a protection of the rights of the Senate itself to bring up the matter in any way that is available, from a strict parliamentary standpoint, and that is what we have done here.

The Judiciary Committee was important. Its authority was worth respecting. But it was not more important or more worthy of respect than the Senate itself. When sixty-eight senators signaled their support for a given measure, but a single Senate committee prevented them voting on the same, clearly something was amiss. And it was not just a majority that favoured the Holland amendment, but a two-thirds majority. That was enough – at the time – to break a filibuster, confirm a cabinet nominee, ratify a treaty, or send a constitutional amendment to the states. Did it make any sense at all that a single committee – or perhaps just the chair of a single committee – should have been able to deny such an overwhelming majority from making manifest its will? Spessard Holland certainly did not think so and acted appropriately.

            As to the argument – put forward frequently by a number of Southern Democrats during the preceding two weeks of debate – that Holland and his allies were carrying out the will of pro-civil rights interest groups rather than working on behalf of the welfare of the American people, Holland likewise had quite a bit to say. “There are persons [,]” he said,

Who think we are interested only in white voters, and there are persons who think we are interested only in Negro voters. So far as I am concerned, I think a citizen is entitled to vote for his President, his Vice President, his Senators, and his Representatives, regardless of what may be the law of the State with reference to local elections. I think the results accomplished in our State, where in 1960 1,540,000-plus voted, indicate rather conclusively the beneficent nature of what Florida has done.

Certain of Holland’s fellow Democrats, to be sure, would violently disagree with this particular view of things. Indeed, they had done so numerous times already. As far as these Southern senators were concerned, it was no business of anyone living in any state outside of their own what went on there in terms of the law and its enforcement. Every state was sovereign, they said, and answerable only to its citizens. But while Holland, in almost any other instance, would have heartily agreed, in this case he could not help but beg to differ.

            Consider, the Floridian asked of his fellow senators, the results of the recent Election of 1960 in the State of Mississippi. “The winning ticket of electors [,]” he said, referring to that of the Democratic Party,

Polled 116,000 votes, just under 10 percent of the total. As I have just remarked, the total vote cast was 25 percent. How anyone can feel that that was a representative expression of the people of that good State, and how anyone can feel that other States and other people everywhere in the Nation do not have a stake and a proper interest in that sort of situation, I do not see. Personally, I have a very deep interest in seeing that representative expressions are made in elections for national officers, whether it be in my own city, my county, my State, or any other State, by as full participation of the citizens as can be had, because I believe in the voice of the people. I decry any effort to confine the voice that is heard at elections to a much smaller segment of the citizens than that which truthfully represents the whole people.

In presenting this argument, Holland effectively reiterated the essential premise of American federalism under the auspices of the Constitution. That is to say, he asserted the existence of dual layers of sovereignty existing on roughly co-equal terms. Within this model, the states are each sovereign and self-governing entities and thus fully entitled to all of the accustomed powers and responsibilities thereof. And each of these sovereign states derives said powers and responsibilities from the constituent citizens residing therein. But these same constituents, in addition to being citizens of a given state, are also citizens of the United States of America. And that entity, which is also sovereign and self-governing, has powers and responsibilities separate from those of the states and is entitled to exercise the same outside of state interference.

In consequence, if a majority of the citizens of the United States – through the medium of their elected representatives – express their collective intention to ensure that federal electoral laws across the country are structured and applied in a fair, equitable, and consistent manner, it makes no difference if a handful of states raise objections. In the first place, the outcomes of federal elections affect the residents of more than just a handful of states, thereby arguably placing the regulation of federal election law more in the federal sphere than in that of the states. And also, unless the relevant states amount to a majority of the overall population, denying the majority’s right to make manifest its will would place a potentially dangerous amount of power in the hands of the minority. Again, this could hardly be said to constitute a novel line of reasoning. Federalism and majority rule are at the heart of the American understanding of republican government. But given the circumstances, it’s not so hard to understand why Senator Holland felt the need to restate their importance as he did. His opponents were acting in a way that essentially defied how the United States was designed to function. Individual states are not supposed to be able to countermand the will of an overwhelming national majority to see accomplished an entirely constitutional objective. And for that matter, said national majority is not supposed to turn a blind eye when it perceives an injustice taking place, even if said injustice is only occurring in a few states. Whether Alabaman or Mississippian, New Yorker or Californian, Americans of all stripes have a vested interest in looking out for one another and in ensuring that the same rights and privileges are enjoyed by all.

Operating from within this very basic understanding of American federalism, Holland’s tone was very much one of neighbourly concern. “How can we feel that that is a representative expression?” he lamented of the cited election results.  

Should not other States be deeply concerned about expressions from my State, or from the State so ably represented by the present Presiding Officer, the Senator from Illinois [Mr. Douglas], or from every other State, as representative of the thought of the people of those States? How else may we be satisfied that righteous verdicts are being reached?

Certainly, in some very important ways, the states were – and are – legally distinct and sovereign entities upon which neither the federal government nor the governments of their fellow states can rightly exert their will. But in other ways – equally real and important – there exists a single country called “The United States of America” whose citizens are both bound and empowered to be responsible for one another. And so while it may have been fair in some cases to say – as men like J. Lister Hill and James Eastland were fond of saying – that it was legally beyond the remit of the people and government of the state of Florida, say, or New York, or Massachusetts to attempt to question or alter the legal status of the citizens of any other state, it was also perfectly acceptable – or indeed eminently desirable – for the inhabitants of one part of the American republic to express concern for, and attempt to render aid to, the inhabitants of another part.

            This, Holland avowed, was all that he was trying to do. Offer aid, that is, to some of his fellow citizens. And while certain of his colleagues in the Senate might have felt compelled to make a personal objection, none of them could rightly claim that the senior senator from Florida was acting either unconstitutionally or with anything less than the best interests of the Senate at heart. “I have done my level best [,]” he explained,

In every Congress to bring it out of committee and before the Senate in the regular way; and I have no apology whatever to make for bringing it up at this time, in this way, with the gracious concurrence of both the majority leader and the minority leader. When the time comes that the will of the Senate can be thwarted, instead of furthered, by the inaction in a committee for 13 years, it occurs to me that the Senate then has a right to act, particularly when it may act only by two-thirds vote of its membership, indicating the breadth of the support the measure enjoys.

In furtherance of his cause, Holland then described a series of letters and wires he had received from people living in Mississippi and Alabama who had been prevented from voting because of the poll tax laws then in force in their states. These people, he avowed, were not necessarily prevented from voting because they could not afford to pay said tax, but because the systems of collection created issues for them which they found they could not ultimately overcome. And if the senators from those states were adamant in their refusal to offer any kind of assistance, then Holland would take it upon himself to do so on their behalf.

            As if to drive home the patent absurdity of the situation that Holland had but moments before lamented, the Chairman of the Senate Subcommittee on the Constitution, one Estes Kefauver (1903-1963), then took the floor to commend Senator Holland on his efforts thus far. “I believe the committee system has served its legitimate purpose several times on this particular subject [,]” he began.

No useful purpose would be served by deferring action on this amendment. The hearings held by the subcommittee in the present and past Congresses have been widely distributed and many Members of the Congress and the public have made use of them. The issue is a clear and straightforward one. It has been thoroughly heard and discussed and debated more than enough over the past 12 years. I, therefore, strongly urge my colleagues to join me in voting in favor of the amendment proposed by the distinguished Senator from Florida.

For context, let it be recalled that the aforementioned Subcommittee on the Constitution was specifically a subcommittee of the Committee on the Judiciary. Which is to say that Kefauver – a Tennessee Democrat – was also a member of the Judiciary Committee, the chair of which was James Eastland. Bearing this fact in mind, Kefauver’s encouragement of Holland’s efforts would seem to take on an added significance. Not only was he arguing – as the leader of the body responsible for evaluating such things – that Holland’s proposed constitutional amendment was both sound and necessary, but he was doing so in defiance of the chair of the larger committee on which he sat. A member of the Judiciary Committee, he was in effect telling Holland to go ahead with his plan to circumvent the Judiciary Committee. This was quite far from normal procedure. But then again, so was keeping a proposed constitutional amendment from reaching the Senate floor for thirteen years in spite of numerous favourable reports from the relevant subcommittee.

            Eager, it seemed, to add strangeness to strangeness, Richard Russell chose this point in the debate to introduce the point of order he and his colleagues had threatened to bring to the Senate’s attention over a week prior on March 15^th. “I take the position [,]” he said,

That the Constitution itself prescribes the method by which it may be amended, and that the pending proposal does not appear in the Constitution as a means whereby a proposed constitutional amendment may be submitted to the several States. I further submit that in the 173 years since the Constitution of the United States was first ratified and approved, no attempt whatever has ever been made to so distort the constitutional process. This is the first time in 173 years that an effort has been made to use a piece of proposed general legislation as a vehicle for amending the Constitution of the United States and submitting that amendment to the several States.

In point of fact, Russell was not wrong. It was true that the text of the Constitution did not explicitly justify Holland’s use of a joint resolution as a vehicle for a proposed amendment. Nor was there any precedent – “In the 173 years since the Constitution of the United States was first ratified and approved” – for the specific procedural “switcheroo” that Senator Holland was attempting. But whereas Holland did not take it as a given that these facts equated to a functional disqualification of his efforts, Russell and his cohorts very much did. “There is nothing in the rules of the Senate,” the Georgian continued, “there is nothing in any statute to be found anywhere in the statute books, and there is not a line in the Constitution of the United States that would justify the procedure which is undertaken here, today. I submit, Mr. President, that it is wholly unconstitutional.”

            The only problem with this position, of course, is that it was itself unjustified by any standing precedents, rules, or procedures. The fact that a particular legislative procedure is not explicitly mentioned in the Constitution does not necessarily make it unconstitutional. The fact that there is no precedent for a particular parliamentary manoeuvre does not necessarily make it invalid or functionally null. And the fact that the rules of the Senate do not give sanction to a particular congressional process does not necessarily make it against the rules of the Senate. Holland’s chosen approach was novel – he would not have argued otherwise – but that did not automatically mean that it was improper or impermissible. It would have been different, of course, if Russell could point to an explicit contradiction between what the senior senator from Florida was attempting and the specific terms of the Constitution. But he quite simply could not. Indeed – and though he had previously intimated otherwise – Russell couldn’t even argue that Holland was violating the rules of the Senate. He admitted as much when asked to clarify precisely which of the Senate explicit regulations Holland was supposed to have violated. “I did not say any rule of the Senate is violated by it [,]” Russell responded.

I said the Constitution is violated by it. The Senate itself has never dealt with this matter. Even in its wildest dreams, the Senate could never imagine that any resort would be made to such an unorthodox procedure as this one, in order to get such a matter as this before the Senate. Therefore, the Senate did not adopt a rule in that connection.

            Notwithstanding his and his cohorts’ prior claim to have had the defeat of Holland’s proposed amendment well in hand, it was at this point that Russell’s confidence began to waver. Heretofore unswervingly confident, the Georgian began to grow increasingly strident and embittered. Having been forced to admit that Holland was in fact not in danger of breaking any Senate rules, Russell hastened to add that this should not have been the end of the matter.  “I think that in order to justify our positions,” he noted sourly,

And our rather irrational action, we might follow rule XL—I believe we now have 40 Senate rules—by a rule XLI, stating about as follows: "Provided, That none of these rules shall be considered to apply in any case in which an organization of professional do-gooders claiming a membership of a million voters shall declare that any resolution, motion, legislation, or other proposal involves a question of minority rights. In all such cases, neither any rule, precedent, law, nor constitutional provision shall be binding or shall be cited in an effort to restrain the Senate from an immediate vote or the Presiding Officer from declaring all points of order out of order.

Almost two weeks prior, the Southern opponents of Holland’s amendment had been crowing that because the procedure he was endeavouring to follow required the unanimous consent of the Senate – and because they were in no way inclined to give their consent – the thing was as good as dead. And now, here was Richard Russell essentially admitting defeat while complaining that as long as the Senate was going to persist in making things up as it went, it might as well give itself written permission to do so.

            As ever a model of patience and composure, Spessard Holland ignored his fellow Southerner’s rather petulant outburst and instead addressed himself entirely to the logical basis of the latter’s argument. “The rule laid down in article V of the Constitution does not go so far as to provide what vehicle shall be used by Congress [,]” he stated accordingly.

It simply says Congress, by two-thirds vote in both Houses, may accept the amendment. My information and belief is that there is no requirement at all as to the vehicle or resolution number, so long as the body of the resolution is there. It describes definitely that it must be approved by two-thirds of the Members of each House before it can be submitted to the several States. There is no doubt at all in my mind that that is the situation.

Naturally, Russell was disinclined to budge. He and his fellow obstructionists had not held up the business of the Senate for almost two weeks just to completely cave in when the going got tough. “This proposal to amend a regular legislative proposal,” he replied,

Which requires a majority vote and which would go to the President for his approval or disapproval, by a constitutional amendment, which requires a two-thirds vote and which would not go to the President for his approval or disapproval, is wholly unconstitutional and that it should be so declared, and that this matter should be brought up in a way in keeping with the Constitution of the United States.

            So, perhaps it would not be fair to say that Russell had already admitted defeat. He had granted, upon being pressed, that Holland’s initiative did not violate any of the Senate’s rules as written, and seemed to tacitly acknowledge that, regardless of any precedents or regulations to the contrary, the Senate was going to do whatever the majority commanded. But he wasn’t prepared to concede that the means by which Spessard Holland was attempting to amend the Constitution were themselves constitutional. This, in the end, is what his point of order sought to establish—whether it was constitutional to submit an amendment for the approval of the Senate by way of a joint resolution of the same. Fortunately for all concerned – with the notable exception of Russell and his fellow obstructionists – there was a procedure in place for adjudicating the constitutionality of motions before the Senate. Accordingly, Vice-President Johnson – in his capacity as presiding officer – declared that the precedents of the Senate held that such a question could only be settled by resorting to a roll call vote. The yeas and nays were thus ordered, and Russell’s point of order was subsequently tabled – suspended, that is to say – by a margin of 58-34. The finding, in essence, was that Russell’s belief in the unconstitutionality of Holland’s plan was not reason enough to keep said plan from being enacted.

The Purpose and Powers of the Senate, Part LXXXIV: “Bulldozers”

            By now, it should be exceptionally clear what kind of defence the various segregationist senators were attempting to mount as the discussion concerning Spessard Holland’s proposed anti-poll-tax amendment neared its destined conclusion in the spring of 1962. There was, as aforementioned, no chance that the opponents of the measure could stage a successful filibuster. Holland had already accrued enough co-sponsors to ensure that the proposed amendment would enjoy the requisite two-thirds support once submitted to the floor for a vote. And while Mississippi Senator James Eastland and his cohorts had managed to keep previous versions of Holland’s proposal from being reported out by the Judiciary Committee – and in this instance had likewise seemingly kept the measure bottled up – the tactical assistance of Senate Majority Leader Mike Mansfield ensured that Holland’s amendment would indeed get a floor vote whether approved by the Judiciary Committee or not. The segregationists, in consequence, were fighting a losing battle. They could not have but known this – they could count as well as anyone – but soldiered on all the same. Perhaps they held out some feeble hope that sufficient delay would allow them to convert just enough of Holland’s co-sponsors to make a difference. Perhaps they counted on their fellow Southern Democrat not going so far as to invoke cloture and effectively slam the door in their faces. Whatever their strategy, their approach was a simple one. All they had to do – all that they could do – was keep talking.

And so they did. Not just for hours on end, but for days. The Senate session of March 16^th concluded – after memorably witnessing James Eastland compare the proposed anti-poll-tax amendment with Adolf Hitler’s attempt to “Crush the liberties of the German people” by first federalizing “the German Government and [destroying] the powers of the States” – with Mississippi Senator John C. Stennis (1901-1995) asserting that voting was a privilege granted by the states rather than a right guaranteed by the Constitution. Senator Holland responded by asking for a recess until March 19^th. By the end of that session, Stennis had further called the pending joint resolution “a legal monstrosity” and avowed that voting “Is a privilege, that one must do something to earn” while Holland had opined that the Framers perhaps knew less about “The problems of today than do the men who sit now in the Senate and the House of Representatives.” Other Southern Democrats had joined the chorus of opposition as well. South Carolina Senator Strom Thurmond (1902-2003) gave a disquisition on the dangers of excessive conformity. Virginia Senator Harry F. Byrd (1887-1966) spoke at length about the socio-economic hardiness of his home state notwithstanding the existence of a poll tax. But in the end, nothing was accomplished. Holland would not back down, and neither would his increasingly long-winded opponents. And so, the speechifying went on through the session of the 20^th. And the 21st. And the 22^nd, 23^rd, 24^th, and 26^th. Was it a filibuster? More or less. It was a filibuster in everything but name, let us say. A soft filibuster, permitted to go on because no one was willing to go so far as to invoke cloture even though the parties whose initiative was being blocked most definitely had the votes to do so.

Of the events leading up to the final approval of Holland’s aforementioned amendment on March 27^th, it will suffice to offer a few excerpts of some of the more memorable exchanges therein. On the same day – the 21^st – that Virginia Senator Absolom Willis Robertson (1887-1971) declared that it was incumbent upon the American people to conform to the, “fundamental principles of ethics, morality, and principles of government that were handed down to us by our forefathers and which have been tested by time [,]” Georgia Senator Richard Russell rather memorably avowed that the “cult of conformity” which he perceived to be behind the efforts of the burgeoning civil rights movement “is a greater danger than the dread missiles the Soviets are supposed to possess.” One wonders if the two of them even noticed that their respective arguments were ostensibly in conflict. And then, of course, there was Texas Senator John Tower’s warning of what the Holland amendment seemed to him to portend. “We may think that we could never have a totalitarian system in this country [,]” he said. “But I point out that Mr. Hitler came to power in a free election. It could happen here.” On the following day – the 22^nd – in the midst of extended orations on the parts of Southern senators Herman Talmadge (1913-2002), Allen J. Ellender (1890-1972), John Sparkman (1899-1985), and J. William Fulbright (1905-1995), New Yorkers Kenneth Keating and Jacob Javits both pointedly remarked upon the similarity to what the upper chamber was experiencing of the conventional definition of a filibuster. “A leading newspaper in New York has stated that a filibuster is building up on the floor of the Senate [,]” the latter accordingly observed, in which case,

The country ought to understand that a profound issue is involved, and that if cloture does ensue, there was a profound reason why cloture did ensue, and why such a move should be sustained, and why this may be the time to "shoot the cat." If this is the time chosen by those who oppose civil rights legislation to institute extended debate or a filibuster, then this is the time to deal with it and this is the time to end it, if we can.

But Senator Holland, as mentioned previously, had no interest in invoking cloture. It was his preference, as the author of the proposed amendment, to simply let its critics talk until they no longer had anything to say.

            And so it was, into the 23^rd, that the show went on. During that day’s session, Arkansas Senator John L. McClellan (1896-1977) repeated the common refrain of the chamber’s segregationist wing that even just discussing the issue of the poll tax was, “beneath the dignity of the Senate” while North Carolina Senator Sam Ervin (1896-1985) went so far as to declare that, “The statutes which impose the poll tax as a prerequisite for voting do not disfranchise anyone. The people who refuse to pay their poll tax disfranchise themselves.” In response to the latter claim – and doubtless also to the various other monologues which he had thus far been forced to sit through – Texas Senator Ralph Yarborough then veritably exploded. A progressive Democrat of the old school, Yarborough had far more in common ideologically with his Northern counterparts than he did with his fellow Southerners, and it was arguably only a matter of time before he had no choice but to vent his spleen. The resulting oration was nothing short of poetic. “There was a time when voting was considered a privilege [,]” the Texan began,

It was considered a privilege to vote," rather than a "right to vote." But that ancient time is past […] We are now in "the soaring sixties." As man reaches for the stars in space, so must he reach for the stars on earth: for stars of fairness and justice and for the dignity of the individual. The time has come to drop the word "privilege," meaning some governmental granted boon, and to substitute the word "right," insofar as the franchise is concerned […] Now is the time to expand the horizons of American liberty. Now is the time to remove from the necks, backs, and hands of our fellow citizens the shackles and yokes of governmental disfranchisement because of economic impoverishment. Let us strike off the bonds and free their hands, so that they can help write the people's verdict at the ballot box in the national elections.

To these righteously indignant words, Yarborough appended two eminently quotable phrases. “American citizenship [,]” he said, “should not come equipped with an arbitrary price tag, for it is priceless.” To this bon mot he further added that, “The way to the American ballot box should be a freeway, not a toll road.” Clearly, far more than Holland, Yarborough was what the Segregationist South most feared. Not only was he a progressive Democrat with conviction and talent to spare, but he was a Southerner who under no circumstances could be labelled an unknowing carpetbagger. 

            March 24^th, amidst all the rest, was comparatively uneventful. The Southern segregationists endeavored to continue holding court, though by this time they had been placed under a set of speech restrictions by the Majority Leader. On the topic of the amendment proposed by Spessard Holland, each senator was limited to only two complete speeches. And during the delivery of said speeches, each senator could only yield the floor for questions without bringing their oration to a close. The results were a moderately more focused set of bloviations on the part of the Holland amendment’s opponents, though digressions were still common in terms of specific subject matter. For example, in an attempt to dismiss the supposed urgency of any measure aimed at abolishing the poll tax, J. Lister Hill and James Eastland ended up engaging in a little byplay whereby they each lamented both the high levels of crime that then plagued certain neighborhoods of the nation’s capital and the tragedy that they believed would result from the federal government becoming involved in any form of national policing. And during that self-same byplay, they each rather memorably commented upon the quality of the man who was then the top law enforcement official in the country. “Is there any man in the United States who can speak with more intimate knowledge and with greater authority and one in whom people have greater confidence, than Mr. J. Edgar Hoover?” said Hill. “There is no one in this country who can speak with a greater knowledge [,]” Eastland agreed. “He is regarded as absolutely conscientious and sincere, a man in whom the people have implicit confidence.” In light of what are now known to be the essential facts of Hoover’s tenure as the Director of the FBI – the illegal wiretapping, burglaries, blackmail, and harassment campaigns – these statements would appear to have aged particularly poorly. They were very much in keeping with the times, of course. Circa 1962, Hoover remained – publicly, at least – the heroic guardian of American domestic tranquility. But they do rather stand out in the eyes of the modern observer as hopelessly disconnected from reality.  

            One might say the same of another comment made by James Eastland, this time in response to the persistent inquiries of California Senator Thomas Kuchel (1910-1994). Kuchel, a Republican, wanted to know if Eastland was aware that the platform of the Democratic Party going into the Election of 1960 contained a plank which stated that it was the party’s explicit policy to, “Support whatever action is necessary to eliminate literacy tests and the payment of poll taxes as requirements for voting.” When Eastland avowed that he had not read his party’s platform and so was forced to take Kuchel at his word, Kuchel then asked if Eastland was inclined to repudiate said platform in light of his own stated position on the poll tax. To this, the Mississippian gave an unknowingly profound reply. “I tell the distinguished Senator from California [,]” he said,

That I am a Senator of the United States, elected by the people of my State to the U.S. Senate; that my first allegiance is to my country, not to any political party; that no group of politicians representing special interests, and sitting in a smoke-filled room, can control my vote as a Senator of the United States; and God knows that if this country is ever destroyed, it will be destroyed when political conventions control the votes of Members of Congress. God forbid that such a thing would ever come about.

While the “special interests” to which Eastland was referring doubtless included the likes of the NAACP, the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, and the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, one would be hard-pressed to read his words in 2023 and not immediately think of the myriad of organizations that presently make it their business to court the favour and support of members of Congress. Coal companies, oil companies, insurance companies, tobacco companies; modern Washington is awash in representatives of all of these concerns, not to mention the various social and political advocacy groups whose stated goals require them to work closely with public officials. Indeed, it would seem to be something of a given that all lawmakers necessarily have relationships with lobbyists and special interests. The lobbyists have the money, after all, and running for office is notoriously expensive. At the same time, while it is arguably true that the leadership of the Democratic and Republican parties now have less control over their membership than was previously the case, in Eastland’s time there remained strong connections between party leaders, regional notables, and rank and file public servants like himself. Did the Democratic National Convention control his vote in Congress? Not as such, no. But it would have been difficult to deny – in spite of how effortlessly Eastland did so – that there then existed a good deal of push and pull between the general membership of the Democratic Party and its national leadership, particularly as far as the topic of civil rights was concerned. Eastland may not have felt bound by his party’s official stance on certain issues, but this surely did not stop him from attempting to shape said stance, or from using his influence within the Southern wing of the party to secure concessions from Northern aspirants after the party’s highest nomination for office. “My first allegiance is to my country,” he said, “not to any political party [.]” Sour grapes, to be sure. Eastland was as likely to be loyal to the Democratic Party as he felt that the Democratic Party was inclined to be loyal to him. As of 1962, the party was officially in favor of civil rights reform. And so Eastland, correspondingly, was all patriotism and no partisanship.

The Senate did not meet again until March 26^th, the 25^th being a Sunday. By that point, the chamber had been debating the consideration – not the measure itself, mind you, but simply the prospect thereof – of Spessard Holland’s proposed anti-poll-tax amendment for the better part of two weeks. The chamber’s erstwhile cohort of Southern segregationists were doubtless elated by this fact, their combined efforts having thus staved off passage of a measure they roundly opposed in spite of the odds being firmly stacked against them. The measure’s sponsors, however, were somewhat less than enthused. Senator Holland, of course, maintained his usual equanimity. But Majority Leader Mike Mansfield was beginning to lose his patience. The repeated complaints of the aforementioned Southerners did not help in the slightest. When, for example, Mississippi Senator John C. Stennis had the audacity to declare that Holland and his supporters were attempting to “ram through a constitutional amendment by sheer force of numbers [,]” Mansfield let him have it. “I point out to Senators that we have been on this matter of taking up a joint resolution for over 2 weeks,” he declared,

And that, to the best of my knowledge […] nowhere will we find two greater bulldozers, perhaps I should say bulldoggers, on this particular proposition than the Senator from Mississippi [Mr. STENNIS] and the Senator from Alabama [Mr. HILL]. They have made life not miserable, but certainly uncomfortable. They have been tenacious, persevering, and on the floor of the Senate every minute that we have been in session over the past 2 weeks. I express the hope that we can get to the matter of taking up Senate Joint Resolution 29, having to do with Alexander Hamilton’s home, very shortly, because I wish to say that these two Senators are certainly holding my feet to the fire and I think also the feet of the Senate as a whole.

Given some of what Stennis and his colleagues had been saying during the aforementioned two-week interval, this was really a perfectly understandable reaction on the part of the Majority Leader. In light of the pressures then being faced by the United States of America, they’d lamented time and time again, it was downright irresponsible for the Senate to waste time discussing something as trivial as an electoral qualification that was only recognized in five of fifty states. But what had these same Southerners done but waste the Senate’s time?

            For two weeks – through speech after speech – a group of Southern Democrats turned what should have been a pro forma discussion about a constitutional amendment which already had more than enough support to secure passage into a pseudo-filibuster during which a legion of court cases, newspaper articles, and other such documents were laboriously read into the Record. These Southerners traded floor time back and forth by asking pointless questions of one another, asking and answering to their own satisfaction while the rest of the Senate was forced to sit, and watch, and listen. Did these dedicated obstructionists have any real chance of stopping Holland’s proposed amendment from eventually being approved by the requisite two-thirds majority? They did not, in fact. But still, they talked, and talked, and talked, as if their words would make any difference at all. And these same men, after two weeks of exhaling more hot air than a jet engine, had the audacity to accuse their opponents of wasting time? It was no wonder that, by the 26^th, Senator Mansfield had grown a bit testy. “I am sure the Senator understands my position,” he declared accordingly,

As I do his, and I only hope he will get off my back long enough to allow the Senate, after 2 weeks, I repeat, to get down to the pending proposal. The Senator from Mississippi has faced up to his responsibility far more effectively than I had anticipated. It is now the time, long past, in my opinion, for the Senate to face up to its responsibility.

In spite of the Majority Leader’s manifest determination to finally move things along, however, the Southern obstructionists in the Senate still had a final card to play. It was not a winning card, of course – as aforementioned, they’d lost before they even begun their little campaign – but one could nearly admire the sheer boldness of the attempt. It was the aforementioned Senator Stennis who made the first move. “From the investigation which the Senator from Mississippi has made,” he said,

And merely taking the information he has obtained on this question from Senators whose names appear on the resolution, he is fully satisfied that they did not understand the import or the origin of the measure when their names were placed on the proposed amendment.

So it seemed that, far from obstructing the business of the Senate, Stennis and his colleagues were actually attempting to save their fellow legislators from unknowingly committing a grievous error. Yes, some sixty-odd senators had agreed to cosponsor the proposed anti-poll-tax amendment, but many of them clearly did not know what they were agreeing to. Was it not the height of condescension for Stennis to suggest that a group of United States senators might have mistakenly cosponsored a proposed constitutional amendment? Was he not more or less declaring that these people were too hapless to be taken at their word? Of course not. He was merely offering them his assistance, as any friend and colleague would. Knowing each of them as he did, he was sure that they would not have put their name to such a measure as Holland’s unless they had been somehow misled into doing so. All that he was doing was helping them to see the light of truth.

            Stennis continued in this vein for some time, aided in no small part by Louisiana Senator Allen J. Ellender (1890-1972). Of the supporters of the proposed anti-poll-tax amendment, for example, the Mississippian went on to say that,

They have not shown that there is active support for it by the people throughout the Nation. Even though there has been large support for it here on the floor, there has not been shown an active interest and support of it by the people by and large. The informed people, or those who are merely casually informed, just have not been aroused to give the real support that ordinarily goes with a matter of grave importance as that of a constitutional amendment.

This would seem to have been a rather odd thing to say, given the circumstances. As a constitutional amendment, Holland’s proposal would require the approval of three-fourths of the state legislatures before it could be considered to have been ratified. And if, as Stennis avowed, the proposal simply didn’t enjoy “the real support that ordinarily goes with a matter of grave importance as that of a constitutional amendment [,]” then there was no chance that this would occur. So why, then, were Stennis and his Southern colleagues working so hard to defeat the proposed amendment on the floor of the Senate? If it truly lacked the “real support” that a constitutional amendment required to gain ratification, why not let the Senate approve the measure and leave it to its inevitable defeat in the states? The answer, to put it bluntly, is that Stennis was not being entirely truthful. In fact, he did not know what kind of support the proposed anti-poll-tax amendment enjoyed among the American people. That, or he did know, and desired to mislead certain of his fellow senators. Doubtless he hoped that enough of the measure’s sixty-odd cosponsors could be convinced that the public was not behind their efforts so as to render it a dead letter in the event that it reached the floor for a vote. A crude method, to be sure – what senator, in their right mind, would publicly back a proposed constitutional amendment without first taking the temperature of their constituents? – but hardly inexplicable.

            Ellender sought to second Stennis’s assertion by making a rather curious claim of his own. “There is no doubt about that,” he first avowed, in specific reference to the Mississippian’s statement cited above. “Notwithstanding that fact,” he then continued, “there are people in politics who wish to make a little hay while the sun shines, so that they can get the folks back home stirred up, so that they will vote for them.” Again, there was nothing particularly illogical in what Ellender was trying to accomplish. The only real hope that he and his Southern colleagues had to defeat the proposed anti-poll tax amendment was to detach as many co-sponsors as possible from the measure before it came to the floor for a vote. And if it took making certain of his fellow senators feel self-conscious by intimating that they were acting out of a desire to “whip up” public sentiment for the purpose of shoring up their own popularity rather than responding to popular pressure, Ellender was certainly not going to stay his hand. It was just that, coming from a white Southerner, it was a strange thing indeed to be accused of indulging in demagoguery. Since the end of the Civil War in 1865, the Southern wing of the Democratic Party had done little else but engage in a campaign of vile and persistent race-baiting, all for the purpose of first regaining and then reaffirming their accustomed monopoly on political power. Granted, at times Southern Democrats were as much representing popular opinion as they were actively seeking to shape it. But as the rise and fall of “fusion politics” in the late 19^th-century South would seem to make clear – during which Southern Democrats successfully executed a series of propaganda campaigns aimed at driving apart the coalition of poor Black and poor white voters who had succeeded, in some states, in upending the partisan status quo – they were perfectly willing and able to defy public sentiment when it suited them.

            Finally, in response to this rather hypocritical accusation on the part of Ellender, Stennis then chimed in with one last bit of dubious wisdom. “Is not that the basic reason why the Constitution,” he remarked to his colleague from Louisiana, “certainly in spirit as well as in fact, is a compact and, except under the most extreme conditions, politically sacred ground, so to speak, and should not be disturbed?” It was a rhetorical question, to be sure; a statement ending in a question mark. It was also patently and exceedingly untrue. While the Constitution absolutely represents the primary legal authority within the entire American system of government, to call it “politically sacred ground” would seem to be a tad hyperbolic. Not only had the Framers seen fit to include an amending formula along with the original text of the same, but said formula had thereafter been invoked fully twenty-three times as of 1963. The last two instances had even taken place within Stennis’s own term of service in the Senate. Granted, amending the Constitution was not an easy thing to do, as had been made abundantly clear to Spessard Holland over the course of his own career in Congress. But nor was it something that lawmakers shuddered to even contemplate. It was simply another tool in the legislator’s toolbox, and one which they employed as the situation seemed to demand. Bearing this in mind, Stennis’s further claim that the Constitution was not to be disturbed “except under the most extreme conditions” would likewise appear to be something of an exaggeration. The Reconstruction Amendments, as aforementioned, were certainly the product of dire circumstances, but one could hardly say the same of the 16^th, 18^th, or 20^th Amendments. “Extreme conditions” did not prompt Congress and the states to ban the sale of alcohol or lay term limits upon the office of President. Rather, the relevant amendments resulted from public pressure campaigns and basic political calculus. For Stennis to avow that only a crisis could give rise to an amendment was accordingly more than a little disingenuous. He had seen for himself that this was not the case.

            It was at this stage, thankfully, that a vote was finally called. Stennis, and Ellender, and their Southern colleagues had taken advantage of Holland’s good-natured determination not to invoke cloture for the last time during this debate. To be sure, there would go on to be further votes in the future. At this point, the Senate was only deciding whether or not to consider S.J. Res. 29, to say nothing of Holland’s motion to substitute his proposed amendment for the text thereof. But it was a step in the right direction. After two weeks of legislative paralysis, the Senate was finally working again. The final tally, once the yeas and nays had been called, was 62 to 15. But while Holland then immediately moved to make the aforementioned substitution, the day’s session came to a close before the matter could be resolved. March the 26^th, it seemed, was not to be the day upon which Spessard Holland’s career in the Senate reached its legislative culmination. No, that would have to wait until the fated day of March the 27^th. 

The Purpose and Powers of the Senate, Part LXXXIII: “The Rules and Precedents, the Mores and the Folkways”

            As the Senate debate of March 16^th, 1962 continued, so too did the opponents of Spessard Holland’s proposed anti-poll-tax amendment persist in their attempt to put forward some manner of reasonably convincing argument as to why such a measure was either invalid or undesirable. No matter how long and how widely these primarily Southern Senators pontificated, however, they never seemed to approach anything like a convincing argument. As previously discussed, Mississippi Senator James Eastland’s endeavor to characterize his opponent’s desire to ban poll taxes at the federal level as a “transitory purpose” was more than a little misguided. Since the ratification and subsequent repeal of the 18^th Amendment, no one serving in Congress could reasonably hold that amendments were the exclusive preserve of only the most weighty and consequential legal and moral principles. His assertion that Alabama Senator J. Lister Hill’s threatened point of order was a sound one carried slightly more weight – inasmuch as it was true that using a piece of normal legislation as a kind of container for a constitutional amendment was more than a little irregular and might even had represented a violation of Senate rules – though his expansion upon this point was characteristically vague and obtuse. “Since human societies were first organized,” he declared,

It became evident that they could not exist as communities without observing the rules and precedents, the mores and the folkways that made living together possible. It is now proposed, in order to lay this intended constitutional amendment before the Senate, to violate not only rules, precedents, and procedures of the Senate and House of Representatives, but to shunt aside those sections of the U.S. Constitution which provide specifically for the manner and means by which congressional bills are to be processed and the manner and means by which congressional resolutions are to be processed. The point of order, when made, should be upheld.

Without turning this into a discussion about something else entirely, it would nevertheless seem necessary to remark for a moment upon certain elements of Eastland’s choice of expression.

Human societies, he said, from their earliest origins, “could not exist as communities without observing the rules and precedents, the mores and the folkways that made living together possible.” Coming from an avowed white supremacist, this would seem to be a rather loaded concept. In order for humans to be able to live together in a functioning society, said society must abide by certain “rules and precedents [,] mores and […] folkways [.]” What rules? What folkways? And were their limits upon what was acceptable? What if one part of a given society considered the precedents and mores of another to be morally reprehensible? What if the majority of this same society felt this way about the behaviors of a minority? Was it possible for the majority to effectively ban the practices that it found to be inexcusable, or were they supposed to quietly tolerate them in the name of “living together?” Given the nature of Eastland’s personal ideology, it would be hard to imagine that there was anything on his mind other than race. After all, was not segregation a more, a folkway, a precedent of Southern society? Was it not an integral practice to the Southern way of life? The gentleman from Mississippi, no doubt, would have answered in the affirmative. And so, while he was ostensibly addressing himself to the point of order offered by his Senate colleague, his choice of words also seemed to constitute something of a shot across the bow at the very concept of the proposed amendment being discussed. Because if segregation was an essential “folkway” of Southern society, then any externally directed efforts to eliminate it – inasmuch as it would make it harder for segregationist Southerners to “live together” with reformist Northerners – must necessarily have represented a threat to American social cohesion.

As to the rest of Eastland’s cited assertion, his intentions were similarly as clear as his choice of words was vague. He accused Senator Holland and his various supporters, in the manner by which they sought to secure passage of an anti-poll-tax amendment, of violating, “Not only [the] rules, precedents, and procedures of the Senate and House of Representatives,” but also of attempting, “to shunt aside those sections of the U.S. Constitution which provide specifically for the manner and means by which congressional bills are to be processed and the manner and means by which congressional resolutions are to be processed.” What he meant by this, no doubt, was that he believed the method by which Holland and Senate Majority Leader Mike Mansfield (1903-2001) were attempting to introduce the former’s proposed anti-poll-tax amendment was to some extent in violation of Senate rules governing amendments to legislation. Inserting a constitutional amendment into a legislative container by amending an existing bill or resolution, he said, required the unanimous consent of the body in question, which neither he nor his fellow Southerners were willing to provide. It was an objection very much rooted in parliamentary procedure, to be sure, and in that sense stood out from the rest of Eastland’s assertions. And it was a sound argument, if true. The Senate – like any legislature – has standing rules by which means its business is transacted and the purpose of which is to ensure that order, transparency, and fairness are maintained at all times. To be in violation of these rules is to be “out of order” and thus to have one’s actions ruled invalid and of no effect. If Holland’s attempt, along with Majority Leader Mansfield, to effectively circumvent the Senate Judiciary Committee by slotting the former’s proposed anti-poll-tax amendment into the eviscerated husk of an unrelated piece of legislation was indeed out of order, this accordingly presented something of a problem.

Unsurprisingly, Senator Eastland did not specify precisely which rule it was that Holland and Mansfield had supposedly violated. Rather, he referred only vaguely to “rules, precedents, and procedures of the Senate and House of Representatives [.]” Nor did he deign to illuminate which “sections of the U.S. Constitution which provide specifically for the manner and means by which congressional bills are to be processed and the manner and means by which congressional resolutions are to be processed” the two were attempting to “shunt aside.” This would seem to have been entirely characteristic of the gentleman from Mississippi, his objections to the aforementioned anti-poll-tax amendment having thus far taken the form of something more like an alarmist screed than a carefully reasoned dissertation. Unfortunately, this style of argument – while rhetorically not without value – also makes verification a bit of a process. The Constitution, at least, is clear enough as to the responsibilities and powers of Congress vis-à-vis the legislative process and the amending process. Article I, Section 7, for example, states very simply that,

Every Order, Resolution, or Vote to which the Concurrence of the Senate and House of Representatives may be necessary (except on a question of Adjournment) shall be presented to the President of the United States; and before the Same shall take Effect, shall be approved by him, or being disapproved by him, shall be repassed by two thirds of the Senate and House of Representatives, according to the Rules and Limitations prescribed in the Case of a Bill.

As to the amending formula, Article V makes matters similarly clear. “The Congress,” it declares, “whenever two thirds of both Houses shall deem it necessary, shall propose Amendments to this Constitution […] which […] shall be valid to all Intents and Purposes, as Part of this Constitution, when ratified by the Legislatures of three fourths of the several States, or by Conventions in three fourths thereof [.]” The Constitution has little more to say in either case. The legislative process is not explicated any further, save to say that, “Each House may determine the Rules of its Proceedings, punish its Members for disorderly Behaviour, and, with the Concurrence of two thirds, expel a Member.” Nowhere is it stated whether or not an amendment might be substituted for a bill. “Every Order, Resolution, or Vote to which the Concurrence of the Senate and House of Representatives may be necessary […] shall be presented to the President of the United States [,]” it says, while proposed amendments simply require the support of “two thirds of both Houses [.]”

            Bearing these simple regulations in mind, Senators Eastland and Hill would seem to have been right about at least one thing. In order for a bill to become law, either a presidential signature or a veto override vote was required. And in order for a proposed amendment to be ratified, the approval of “the Legislatures of three fourths of the several States” was what was needed. Attempting to transform a bill into an amendment partway through the legislative process was accordingly a bit irregular. Did the bill cease to be a bill once it was successfully modified? Would it still require the president’s signature or could it proceed immediately to the states for consideration? The Constitution itself could not answer these questions, in no small part because the Framers never envisioned what it was that Holland and Mansfield were attempting. Proposed amendments, before they can be voted upon by the Senate at large, must first be submitted to the scrutiny of the Senate Committee on the Judiciary. Specifically, they must be reported out to the floor by the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on the Constitution. If the Subcommittee rejects a proposed amendment – or if it simply does nothing and keeps the proposed amendment “bottled up” – then no further action can be taken and the proposal is effectively dead. Since Eastland himself was the Chairman of the Judiciary Committee as of 1962 – and would continue to be until his retirement in 1978 – it was perfectly reasonable for the likes of Holland and Mansfield to conclude that the former’s anti-poll-tax amendment would suffer exactly this fate. That is to say, without Eastland’s cooperation, Holland’s proposed amendment would never make it to the floor for a vote. That is, unless the proposed anti-poll-tax amendment’s supporters had in mind some manner of parliamentary trickery.        

    They did, of course, in the form of the aforementioned substitution. The way it was supposed to work, in essence, was that Senate joint Resolution 29 – “providing for the establishing of the former dwelling house of Alexander Hamilton as a national monument” – having previously been introduced, read, submitted to committee, and reported out to the floor, would then be modified in its entirety into Holland’s proposed amendment. Since the bill itself would emerge from the process theoretically intact – severely amended but technically still the same piece of legislation – there would be no need to re-submit it to committee. In point of fact, it had already gone to committee and been reported out to the floor. All that Holland and Mansfield were proposing to do was modify it before it was finally submitted to the floor for a vote. Eastland would not need to be involved in the process any more than was mandated by his role as a voting senator and Holland’s sixty-odd cosponsors would thus be permitted to carry the day. Again, there was arguably a question yet to be answered as to whether the resulting joint resolution really was the same measure that had been reported out of committee, but Eastland certainly wasn’t in a position to make any declarations on the matter. If anyone could claim the authority necessary to resolve the issue, it was likely the Senate Parliamentarian, a man named Charles L. Watkins (1879-1966). It was Watkins’ job to resolve conflicts stemming from the Senate’s complex rules of procedure, after all. It would accordingly have made all the sense in the world for either Hill or Eastland to declare their intention to appeal to his wisdom. In actual fact, of course, the Southerners declined to do so. Rather, Eastland simply declared that unanimous consent was what was required. That is, the substitution being attempted would require the unanimous consent of the Senate in order to be accomplished. And since he was not inclined to give his consent, that should have effectively been that.

This, as one might expect, is where things get a little tricky. Eastland – again, entirely characteristically – neglected to mention which of the Senate’s standing rules he believed applied to the situation at hand. And since there are, at present, forty-four standing rules – each of which possesses their own set of clauses and subsections – it is not immediately obvious which directive he was attempting to invoke. A cursory examination of these selfsame rules, however, reveals the existence of two clauses within Rule XIV which would seem to apply to the situation in question. Senate Standing Rule XIV, Clause 3, states, in part, that, “No bill or joint resolution shall be committed or amended until it shall have been twice read, after which it may be referred to a committee [.]” And Senate Standing Rule XIV, Clause 7, states that,

When a bill or joint resolution shall have been ordered to be read a third time, it shall not be in order to propose amendments, unless by unanimous consent, but it shall be in order at any time before the passage of any bill or resolution to move its commitment; and when the bill or resolution shall again be reported from the committee it shall be placed on the Calendar.

Taken together, what these rules would seem to mean is that a bill or joint resolution under consideration by the Senate cannot be amended at all before its second reading and can only be amended after its third reading by the unanimous consent of the same. Specifically, Rule XIV notes that after a bill or resolution is read the second time, it is commonly “referred to a committee.” And after it is reported out of committee, it may then be “committed or amended [.]” The relevant question in the case of S.J. Res. 29 would accordingly seem to be as follows. At the time that Holland and Mansfield proposed their amendment, had the measure been read twice only or had it already been read a third time?

            Based on the account recorded in the Congressional Record for March 15^th, 1962, the former would seem to be the case. As formally introduced onto the floor of the Senate by Vice President Lyndon Baines Johnson (1908-1973) in his capacity as the upper chamber’s presiding officer, the resolution in question, “Providing for the establishing of the former dwelling house of Alexander Hamilton as a national memorial, introduced by Mr. JAVITs (for himself and Mr. KEATING), was received, read twice by its title, and referred to the Committee on Interior and Insular Affairs.” Senator Javits then responded by noting that, “This joint resolution is precisely in the form in which the Senate committee reported the measure which is to be the subject of whatever action the Senate shall take with respect to the poll tax.” There would appear to be no other conclusion to draw from this exchange but that the resolution was in exactly the state in which the Senate Standing Rules deemed it ought to be for amendments to be properly considered. It had been read twice, submitted to a committee, reported out of committee, placed on the calander, and at that moment – according to Javits – “is precisely in the form in which the Senate committee reported the measure [.]” Once amendments had been considered and either approved or rejected, it would then presumably proceed to a third and final reading – at which point it would no longer be permissible to introduce further modifications without the unanimous consent of the Senate – and the yeas and nays would then be called.

            Bearing all of this in mind, Hill and Eastland’s threatened point of order would seem to have been functionally moot. The resolution that Holland and Mansfield intended to modify into an anti-poll-tax amendment proposal had only just been reported out of committee on March 15^th. And on March 16^th, this intention having been made clear to them, Hill and Eastland protested that their consent was required in order for such a modification to occur. Between its introduction on March 15^th and the first mention of the threatened point of order on March 16^th, the relevant resolution was discussed at length. But at that time, it did not proceed from its second reading to its third. Its time on the calander had arrived, it was introduced onto the floor by Javits, and discussion commenced. That was all. Does this mean that Hill and Eastland were lying to their fellow senators when they raised the aforementioned point of order? Not necessarily. As aforementioned, the rules of the Senate can often be quite complex, and very few senators at any given time can claim to be exhaustively knowledgeable as to their intricacies and interactions. This is why the position of Senate Parliamentarian exists. It would have been rather an odd turn of events for two such long-serving senators as J. Lister Hill and James Eastland to have been ignorant of exactly which stage of the legislative process freely permitted amendments, but it was certainly not an impossibility. Hill and Eastland, to put it simply, may have merely been mistaken. Then again, in light of Eastland’s apparent propensity for high-flying rhetoric when he was backed into a corner, he may also have been frantically grasping at straws. He knew that the numbers were not in his favor and that any attempt at a filibuster would fail. And he knew that there was a rule that prevented amendments from being offered without unanimous consent after a certain point in the legislative process. So he fudged the details of the applicable rule just slightly. Perhaps he intended to frighten his opponent into submission. Perhaps he only hoped to buy a little more time while the veracity of his claim was verified. In either case, it was certainly possible that Eastland knowingly misspoke. The point, of course, is that he did misspeak, and that his claim was without basis in fact.           

The remainder of Eastland’s address constituted yet another barrage of exaggerated rhetoric and vague, self-serving declarations of dubious veracity. He said that, “All right-thinking Members of the Senate must realize that State action, determination by the States themselves, is the preferable route to take.” Clearly this was not the case, or else all the right-thinking senators were decidedly in the minority. He questioned, “the wisdom and judgment of the proponents in addressing themselves to this poll tax issue when there are only five States today that require the payment of a poll tax as a prerequisite for voting” and further opined that Congress, “could devote itself to more constructive legislation […] than directing its efforts, time, and energies toward a question having to do with only 5 States out of our Union of 50 States.” This was notwithstanding the fact that as a result of the continued existence of poll tax laws, millions of citizens in those five states could not exercise one of their foundational rights as Americans. He then concluded this portion of his address by stating, in reference to previous sessions of Congress in which the poll tax had been under discussion, that,

I consistently took the position during those debates that this issue could not be resolved simply by legislation; that if it were to be accomplished, the only constitutional way is by a constitutional amendment. However, I do challenge the wisdom of this approach, in view of the fact that the States themselves under the initiative of their own State legislatures, have repealed the poll tax requirement, and if the remaining five States are left to themselves, their respective State legislatures will take care of the situation.

From the perspective of those senators present who favored civil rights reform and saw little if any merit in the obfuscatory efforts of diehard segregationist like Hill and Eastland, this last statement was doubtless highly revealing of the essential nature of the challenge they collectively faced.

            On the one hand, Eastland had more or less revealed to all and sundry the extent to which his complaints about procedure, and precedent, and consistency were almost wholly insincere. When Spessard Holland, or one of his various allies, had previously attempted to introduce a piece of legislation onto the floor of the Senate that would have banned the collection of poll taxes at the federal level, Eastland opposed it on the grounds that, “this issue could not be resolved simply by legislation; that if it were to be accomplished, the only constitutional way is by a constitutional amendment.” And this was fair enough. Article I, Section IV of the Constitution does state that, “The Times, Places and Manner of holding Elections for Senators and Representatives, shall be prescribed in each State by the Legislature thereof; but the Congress may at any time by Law make or alter such Regulations, except as to the Places of chusing Senators.” While Congress, therefore, is permitted under the Constitution to legislate the “Times, Places and Manner of holding Elections for Senators and Representatives,” the fact that the state assemblies were also given this power would seem to indicate an intention on the part of the Framers that federal elections exist as an area of shared responsibility between state and federal authorities. It would accordingly seem to be a reasonable enough argument that though it is permissible for Congress to singlehandedly alter federal voter qualifications, it is always preferable not to overrule the states by way of federal legislation alone. A constitutional amendment was therefore the ideal method by which to modify existing election procedures, particularly as it blended state and federal power.

            Naturally, in response to this, Holland and those who supported his efforts began introducing constitutional amendment proposals in the Senate for the purpose of eliminating the poll tax. If the Chairman of the Judiciary Committee declared of the crusade to ban said tax that “the only constitutional way is by a constitutional amendment [,]” then this was precisely what the reformers were going to do. Eastland’s response? Obfuscation, of course. The aforementioned Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on the Constitution fell under his authority. Accordingly, if he decided that a proposed amendment shouldn’t make it to the floor, one could rest assured that the proposed amendment in question would die a quiet and ignominious death. Doubtless he would declare, when asked, that the Senate had far more important matters to consider than whether or not a handful of people in a handful of states could vote in federal elections. Whether he believed it or not, of course, the effect would be the same. That is, while Eastland was one of those who helped steer the advocates for a federal ban on the poll tax towards the idea of pursuing a constitutional amendment, he was also responsible – in his position as a Senate committee chair – for ensuring that any such amendment never made it to the floor.

            Eventually – over the course of many years and as the result of a great deal of effort – Holland and his allies did manage to overcome even this seemingly insurmountable obstacle. By 1962, Holland’s proposed amendment had over sixty co-sponsors, thereby ensuring its passage in the event that it was ever put to a vote. And thanks to some canny parliamentary maneuvering on the part of Majority Leader Mike Mansfield, it would get put to a vote by way of a little legislative bait-and-switch. Granting that the latter procedure was perhaps a little irregular, there was nothing in either the Senate rules or the text of the Constitution that might have prevented it from going ahead. And what, to this, was Eastland’s response? After having heeded his advice, pursued a constitutional amendment, and pulled an end-around on the Judiciary Committee, what did Eastland have to say to Holland and his supporters? “I […] challenge the wisdom of this approach [,]” he declared. Despite having advocated for it previously, having set the terms of the resulting game, and having been soundly defeated, he was still of the opinion that the whole idea of a federal poll tax ban was a mistake in itself. Why, one might accordingly be given to ask, did he previously argue that “the only constitutional way is by a constitutional amendment” if, in fact, he thought such an approach to be fundamentally unwise? As is so often the case, the simplest answer is almost certainly the correct one. Eastland did not care about procedure. Eastland did not care about rules. Eastland did not care about precedents. Eastland cared about maintaining the powerbase of white supremacy in the contemporary American South. And if, in order to do that, he had to bend his stated principles and use his authority to shift the goalposts of reform, he would not hesitate to do so.         

“The States themselves [,]” said the Mississippian, “under the initiative of their own State legislatures, have repealed the poll tax requirement, and if the remaining five States are left to themselves, their respective State legislatures will take care of the situation.” One would struggle to come up with a more cunning dodge than this. There was no need to intervene; the states would take care of it themselves. Recent history was certainly on Senator Eastland’s side. As discussed at length in the present series, Tennessee, South Carolina, Georgia, and Florida had all voluntarily repealed their own poll tax laws in the quarter century preceding Holland’s latest attempt to introduce a national ban. It was accordingly far from unreasonable to conclude that the five poll-tax states that remained were only a handful of years from becoming non-poll-tax states themselves. And in the end, wasn’t the outcome that didn’t involve federal intervention in state affairs the preferrable outcome anyway? Clearly, the South wasn’t madly in love with the poll tax. If Georgia and Florida could see their way clear to giving it up, was there really reason to assume that Virginia and Mississippi wouldn’t ever get around to doing the same? No, the issue wasn’t the policy so much as how Senator Holland was going about pursuing the abolition of the same. The Southern states in question, after all, were uniformly governed by Democrats, the prevailing philosophy of whom traditionally prized state action over federal action. It wasn’t necessarily that the political leadership in the five remaining states were wholly unconvinced that the poll tax itself no longer served a useful purpose. It was just that they were ideologically disinclined to acquiesce when the federal government told them that they had no choice but to abolish it. So why not – with these facts in mind – simply leave the states to their own devices?

Indeed, Eastland continued after a slight prompting from J. Lister Hill, it was his opinion that the efforts of people like Senator Holland to abolish the poll tax at the federal level over the course of the 1940s and 1950s was precisely the reason that the five states in question still stubbornly clung to the same. “People resent being dictated to by the Federal Government,” he explained,

And they resent being kicked around. That is what this attempt is. It is an attempt to kick around the people in the various States and impose on those States. It is an attempt by other States and pressure groups primarily within those States to impose their will on the people of other States. Of course the people in the States aimed at resent it. In my judgment that is the reason why they have stood fast and retained the payment of poll taxes as a qualification for electors.

This description of the contemporary white Southern mindset vis-à-vis the federal government and federal authority may have been a reasonably accurate one, but it certainly wasn’t very flattering. Granted, it made a certain amount of sense for Eastland to portray his fellow white Southerners as victims of an overbearing federal government intent on “kicking them around” and imposing its will upon them. A victim, after all, tends to be deserving of sympathy. But it nevertheless seems a strange kind of strategy to council patience and understanding by asserting that the party being targeted is simply petty by nature. And this was, at bottom, what Eastland was saying. It wasn’t that the people in the five remaining states loved the poll tax. Left to themselves, they’d surely abolish the practice eventually. It was that they resented being told that they had to and were inclined to dig in their heels rather than give way to authority.

            None of this is to say that Eastland didn’t have a point, of course. As the example of the United States Commission on Civil Rights and the various travails it experienced during the first years of its existence makes abundantly clear, white Southern Democrats in the 1950s and 1960s often violently resisted attempts by federal authorities even just to gather information about basic legal practices in the contemporary South. Circuit Judge George C. Wallace (1919-1998) had voter registration records impounded and threatened to imprison any federal agents who tried to get ahold of them when the Commission conducted its first investigation in Montgomery, Alabama in 1957. Eastland’s claim that white Southerners in the five poll-tax states were largely motivated by a kind of reflexive rejection of federal power in any form would therefore appear far from unsound. That being said, one cannot help but get a rather poor impression of the mentality of the contemporary Southerner. Granted, proponents of civil rights reform had arguably already seen the worst that the South had to offer the nation at large over the course of the 1950s between the handing down of the Brown v. Board decision in 1954 and the various protests and political counterattacks launched in the years that followed by the Southern political class in places like Arkansas, Alabama, and Mississippi. But for the senior senator from Mississippi to simply come out and say that his fellow Southerners living in the five states in question actually didn’t hold to the poll tax because they believed it served a vital purpose? That they were only being stubborn because they didn’t like being pushed into things? That they were denying millions of American citizens the right to vote out of some obstinate need to take things at their own pace? To borrow a modern turn of phrase, that would seem a bit like saying the quiet part loud.

            Eastland, to be sure, did not believe in the slightest that he was admitting to anything undesirable on the part of the contemporary American South. From his perspective, his countrymen were standing on principle. Not the principle of white supremacy, of course. Almost no one who supported civil rights reform was going to be convinced to back down by appeals to outmoded theories about race. But there was nothing reprehensible in theory about advocating for the principle of subsidiarity. That is, there was nothing necessarily wrong or abhorrent about the citizens and political leaders of a given state wanting to decide for themselves how best to address the various policy areas that most directly affected their daily lives. The fact, in line with this principle, that Southerners often made decisions that led to the relegation of their Black neighbors to second-class status was, as far as Eastland was concerned, entirely beside the point. Southerners, in his mind, were maintaining a foundational principle of American republicanism by jealously guarding their autonomy and by at all times regarding central authority with the utmost suspicion. Was it likely that the residents of the five remaining states also found the poll tax to no longer serve a useful purpose? Most certainly. As Eastland had said, left to settle the matter themselves, all five of the states in question would probably already have dispensed with their respective poll tax statutes. But it would have been un-American – to their thinking – to simply give in to a federal mandate whose purpose was to accomplish the same. Their continued attachment to the poll tax was therefore not to be construed as stemming from any particular love for exceptionally stringent voter registration laws. Rather, it was best understood as representative of their attachment to the essential principle of states’ rights.

            This, at bottom, was the single defining argument upon which Eastland and his Southern cohorts were inclined to stand. They hemmed, and hawed, and said a great deal more about history, and precedent, and points of order, and so forth. Eastland even tried to argue that because the 17^th Amendment was ratified more recently than the 15^th Amendment, such aspects of the former as served his argument more accurately represented the will of the American people than anything contained in the latter. But at the end of the day – in an atmosphere in which appeals to white racial superiority were increasingly taboo within the halls of Congress – states’ rights was the rock upon which 20^th century Southern Democrats seeking to defend segregation attempted to build their church. Even when the reformers enjoyed majority support in Congress – even when the Constitution explicitly granted the federal government the authority to enforce its mandates – Southern segregationists hammered on the same point again, and again, and again. The federal government, they said, was acting in violation of the rights of the states, denying the essential sovereignty of the states, and fundamentally trying to reduce the states to meaningless geographic distinctions. As had been the case a century prior, a canny Northern legislator might at this juncture have asked of his Southern counterpart precisely which rights were being violated and precisely what the South was being kept from doing. But the answers would not have changed any more than the questions. Whether it was the 1860s or the 1960s, Southern Democrats were the unequalled masters of speaking at great length while saying nothing. What did they want to do with their rights? That was fundamentally immaterial. All that mattered was that they were granted that to which they believed they were entitled. Beyond that, the rest of the country could mind its own business.