The Purpose and Powers of the Senate, Part LXIX: “The Decent People of This Country”

    So straightforward was Senator Spessard Holland’s approach to seeking an amendment banning the poll tax – his argument might as well have been, “I want to change something I find disheartening and the Constitution gives me the power to do it” – that his opponents during the Senate session of March 15^th, 1962 were fairly quickly driven to cast about for some means of merely slowing him down. Senator James Eastland, to that end, began flatly demanding proof. “The Senator has said that the people have been deprived of the privilege of voting [,]” he observed.

I defy him to name one human being who has been denied the right to vote because of the poll tax. I defy him to find one […] there is no proof that any more people will vote if the poll tax is removed. Does the poll tax disqualify them from voting?

Senator Holland answered quickly enough. “I have had some experience in this question [,]” he said.

In my State, as soon as the Poll tax was removed, at first the white people, and later the colored people, after the court threw out the white primaries, voted in greater numbers. I call attention to the list of States shown at page 475 of the printed hearings, which shows the following facts: In Mississippi the number participating—

Most indecorously for a United States Senator, James Eastland actually cut Spessard Holland off. “Will the Senator state the authorities?” he demanded. “He said the printed hearings. Who said that?” Holland responded calmly in spite of this flagrant violation of the rules of debate, stating that “The information is furnished by the American Heritage Foundation, the same figures were also found in the report of the Civil Rights Commission.” This response, unfortunately, was like waving a red flag at a bull.

    The Civil Rights Commission, for the record, is a bipartisan investigative and advisory body created by the Civil Rights Act of 1957 largely in response to a recommendation by the earlier Committee on Civil Rights formed by President Eisenhower in the aftermath of the Brown v. Board decision. But while its purpose, in the words of then-Senate Majority Leader Lyndon Johnson, is to “gather facts instead of charges [..] sift out the truth from the fancies [and] return with recommendations which will be of assistance to reasonable men [,]” the responses to its various inquiries have not always been particularly “reasonable.” By way of a representative example – particularly of the era that preceded the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 – consider the first major project undertaken by the Commission. Tasked with investigating the state of elections and voter registration in the city of Montgomery, Alabama, the Commission was first forced to conduct its business out of borrowed facilities on the grounds of Maxwell Air Force Base because all of the city’s hotels were segregated and so would not allow local members of the Black community to enter in order to testify. Then, when agents of the Commission sought access to the relevant voter registration records, Circuit Judge George C. Wallace (1919-1998) – later to become governor on an explicitly white supremacist platform – had them impounded. “They are not going to get the records,” he stated flatly. “And if any agent of the Civil Rights Commission comes down to get them, they will be locked up […] I repeat, I will jail any Civil Rights Commission agent who attempts to get the records.” Subsequent attempts by the Commission at seeking cooperation from Southern Democrats did not go much better.

    For Senator Holland to even speak the name of the Civil Rights Commission in a less than disparaging manner – as he did on March 15^th, 1962 – might accordingly be described as nails on a chalkboard to men like J. Lister Hill and James Eastland. The Commission, as far as they and their like were concerned, was nothing more or less than the spearhead of an intrusive federal government intent on undermining the sovereignty of the states, and their response was appropriately dismissive. “The Senator is going very far when he takes the report of the Civil Rights Commission [,]” said Eastland. “If there ever was something loaded against decent people of this country, it is the Civil Rights Commission.” Holland’s first attempt at a response was then pre-empted by Senator Hill. “I did not think the Senator would deny us our rights based on such a report [,]” said the latter. “The Senator from Florida has now become a working ally of the Civil Rights Commission.” Somewhat uncharacteristically under the circumstances, Holland appeared to make a point of reassuring his fellow Southerners. “The Senator from Florida [,]” he said, “has taken the same position with respect to the creation of the Civil Rights Commission as the Senators from Alabama and Mississippi.” Before the dust had time to settle, however, the Floridian went back on the offensive.

    “I know the Senators do not want these facts in the RECORD [,]” said Holland, referring to the Congressional Record from which this entire exchange has been quoted. The Southerners’ reply to this accusation was characteristically belligerent. “We are going to let the Senator put them in the RECORD,” said Eastland, “but we want the foundation for them.” “We want the RECORD to be a true RECORD [,]” Hill agreed. At this point, Eastland seemed to recall what it was that Holland had just said. “The distinguished Senator has opposed the creation of that Commission [,]” he said. “He has been against it. I would say the facts alleged by this Commission are absolutely unreliable, and I do not believe my friend would say they are reliable.” If this was meant as a “gotcha,” Holland was well prepared. “I stated these figures came originally from the American Heritage Foundation,” he reiterated,

But they were the same facts as set forth by the Civil Rights Commission. If the Senators will take time to read page 475 of the hearings, they will see the sources are stated to be the American Heritage Foundation, the State election officials, and the U.S. Census Bureau. I do not know where the committee could have gone for more authoritative information than those three sources.

Hill and Eastland remained as unimpressed as ever. “But the Senator stated people were disqualified from voting [,]” said the latter by way of a setup. “There is nothing in there to show that people have been disqualified from voting because of the poll tax [,]” said the former by way of a punchline. The Floridian disagreed. “The Senator from Florida thinks the people of Alabama and Mississippi are just as patriotic as are any other people [,]” he began.

He thinks they would vote if there were not something in their way. When he sees these two great States, whose people are friendly to ours and ours are friendly to them, stand at the very bottom of the list of voter participation, the Senator from Florida regrets it and wishes to correct that condition. That is what he is trying to do.

    Evidently, Senator Holland was not prepared to be swayed from his purpose. His fellow Southerners were on the verge of saying some very uncharitable things, having already called him an ally of the Civil Rights Commission, which they actively despised. But while someone else might have faltered, become self-conscious, or given vent to frustration, Holland resolutely plugged away at the same, simple, morally unambiguous assertion. He believed that the citizens of the five relevant states needed help, and he was furthermore convinced that it was his duty to help them. So disarming was this approach – and so stubborn was Holland in carrying it forward – that his opponents seemingly had no choice but to resort to increasingly aggressive, unsociable responses. “We do not need any help from the Senator from Florida [,]” said Hill accordingly. “Now that he is a working ally of the Civil Rights Commission, I would say the people of Alabama would certainly wish no help from the Senator from Florida.” No longer was the senator from Alabama capable of mustering even a superficially reasonable retort, it appeared. Now, it was simply his conviction that the Cotton State didn’t need help from anyone who would voluntarily associate themselves with a particular federal investigative body.

    Yet again, Senator Holland responded with calm deliberation, an approach of which his colleagues were increasingly willing to take advantage.  “I think the Senator [,]” he said,

Has not heard the Senator from Florida state that the three sources for this information, as compiled and reported by the committee which is headed by my distinguished friend, the Senator from Mississippi, are the American Heritage Foundation, the State election officials, and the U.S. Census Bureau—

For the second time in seemingly as many minutes, Holland was cut off before he could finish. “Wait a minute [,]” Eastland demanded. “Let us be fair […] The Senator from Florida is trying to impute that the Senator from Mississippi had something to do with these figures. It was testimony before the subcommittee. Why does not the Senator give the facts about it?” Holland’s response was characteristically straightforward. “The Senator from Florida is trying to [,]” he said simply. But this did not please the likes of Mississippi’s James Eastland. “No [,]” he said. “The Senator is trying to impute that the chairman of the committee had something to do with the authenticity of those figures.”

    The Floridian’s answer to this further accusation was about as heated as Spessard Holland seemed willing to permit himself to get.  “I know perfectly well the Senator from Mississippi had nothing to do with those figures [,]” he said.

I know that for 14 years I have been trying to get this amendment out of the committee which has been headed, at least for the last 6 or 8 years, by the Senator from Mississippi. I know we have been able to get it out of the subcommittee. I think I know why we have not been able to get it out of the full committee. I certainly will not ascribe to my friend from Mississippi any interest in the production of this list or the production of these figures. I want the RECORD to show that.

Here, without saying as much, Holland finally admitted to a degree of irritation. Not only did he pointedly mention the fourteen years it had taken him to get an amendment banning the poll tax onto the floor of the Senate, but he also made reference – albeit obliquely – to his fellow Southerner James Eastland as a partial cause of this drawn-out process. The result was something of a counteraccusation. Whereas Eastland had just expressed annoyance at having been associated with the production of the figures Holland was attempting to quote, Holland was in turn expressing annoyance at Eastland’s role – “at least for the last 6 or 8 years” – in keeping him from submitting his proposed amendment to the Senate at large. “I certainly will not ascribe to my friend from Mississippi any interest in the production of this list or the production of these figures [,]” he concluded by saying. One cannot help, under the circumstances, but read a degree of sarcasm into this promise.

    The degree to which Senator Eastland took umbrage at even the thought of being responsible for the aforementioned figures is noteworthy in itself, of course. These figures had been produced by bodies with which the Mississippian should have had no issue – the American Heritage Foundation, State election officials, and the U.S. Census Bureau – but the fact that they’d been later cited by the Commission on Civil Rights evidently made them more or less radioactive. Such was the nature of the relationship between most Southern Democrats and the contemporary movement for civil rights. These men – Hill, Eastland, Russell, and the like – had been elected by the (white) people of the various Southern states ofttimes for the express purpose of opposing what they perceived to be the intrusive policies of a post-New Deal federal government intent on protecting the essential rights of the poorest and least privileged Americans. And the (white) inhabitants of these states – as made explicit by Senator Hill – did not want any help from those whom they perceived to be outsiders unfamiliar with, or disrespectful of, local conditions, history, and traditions. Being of these people and speaking for these people, it was accordingly only natural for the likes of Hill and Eastland to maintain a keen awareness of anything that might carry the whiff of “federal overreach.” After all, not only did their jobs as public servants functionally depend upon their eagerness in attacking any such reformist or centralizing measures, but it was also essential that they take pains to distance themselves from being even vaguely associated with anything that seemed even remotely to threaten the essential sovereignty of the various states.

    Hill’s response to Holland’s veiled barb would seem to be very much a case in point. “Since the Senator from Florida has proposed his amendment,” he began,

So far as the recollection of the Senator from Alabama serves him, the Senator from Alabama has never had one single word, not one single line, not one single communication, by word of mouth or otherwise, about the proposal of the Senator from Florida. Knowing the people of Alabama and their desire to maintain their rights without outside interference, I know there is not one of them who today would wish the Senator from Florida to deny him his rights, which rights the people have had since the day the Constitution was founded.

Senator Hill, it would seem, was as keen to assure his Senate colleagues – and any members of the press who might have been present – that he had never even heard about Holland’s intention to introduce yet another anti-poll tax amendment as he was to assure Holland that his constituents in Alabama wanted nothing to do with the same. “I know there is not one of them [,]” he said, “who today would wish the Senator from Florida to deny him his rights [.]” Hill was fighting the good fight, or at the least wanted to be perceived as such. Spessard Holland was threatening to deny the people of Alabama their rights, and naturally, their elected senator would not stand for any such thing.

    Not one to let such an opportunity to demonstrate political loyalty go unseized, Senator Eastland then attempted to keep this line of conversation going. “If the distinguished citizens of the State of Alabama thought there was the great problem which the proponents of these measures claim,” he asked his Southern colleague, “would not the Senator from Alabama have received many communications from his own State?” Hill responded plainly in the affirmative. “Certainly [,]” he said.

A Senator always knows that if people are hurting he will hear from them. So far as the Senator from Alabama can recall, in all of the years during which the Senator from Florida has been proposing his amendment, the Senator from Alabama has not received one word, by word of mouth, by line, or by communication in any shape, fashion, or form from a single Alabaman on behalf of the proposed amendment. On the other hand, knowing the people of Alabama as I do, I know they are against the proposed amendment. I would say they even resent the proposed amendment.

Eastland then quickly seconded his colleague’s assertion. “I say the same thing for the State of Mississippi [,]” he declared. “I have not received a single protest about the tax. In fact, every piece of mail I have received from Mississippi in this regard has been in opposition to this proposal.” Evidently, Senator Holland’s concerns were entirely unwarranted. At least, so far as the states of Alabama and Mississippi were concerned.

    Of course – and as previously discussed – this was patently untrue. It may indeed have been the case that Senator J. Lister Hill received very few, if any, complaints from his constituents concerning the undue burdens imposed upon them by the poll tax. But this did not mean that thousands, or tens of thousands, or even hundreds of thousands of people weren’t the victims of disenfranchisement as a direct result of that selfsame policy. Hill represented a state still very much in the grip of the Jim Crow regime of institutionalized racial discrimination. Specific measures had been put in place for the purpose of ensuring that a significant portion of the overall population simply didn’t have a voice in the economic, social, or political life of Alabama, one result of which, among others, was that men like Hill were only made aware of the concerns of part of the community that they claimed to speak for in the halls of power. Consider, to that end, the following figures. In 1960, the Black population of Alabama stood at something like nine hundred and eighty thousand out of a total population of about three and a quarter million. Now, granting that not every Black person otherwise eligible to vote in Alabama would have been automatically disqualified by an inability to pay the poll tax – which is to say that some of them could afford to spare the added expense – the degree to which Black people in the contemporary United States were also subject to severe economic discrimination as well as social and political discrimination more or less ensured that the vast majority of these nearly one million Black Alabamans were disenfranchised by the poll tax on account of being unable to pay.

    And what were they to do about it? What was supposed to be their recourse? They could conceivably have sent letters to either Hill or John Sparkman (1899-1985), his fellow senator from Alabama. And they could have called their constituency offices, and called their offices in Washington, and sent telegrams, and appeared in person, and organized petitions of some form. These are the things good citizens are supposed to do when they have a grievance, after all. And maybe, in spite of the various hardships involved, some of them did do just that. In spite of the time and effort it would take, and the cost of postage, and telegrams, and phone calls, and bus fare, Black Alabamans perhaps tried to make their voices heard. But was there any possibility, once either man found out that the petitioners in question were Black, that their complaints were heard and considered? Would Black people even be allowed to set foot in their offices? Would letters from addresses known to be located in Black neighborhoods even be opened and read rather than summarily discarded? There would seem to be no other reasonable answer to these questions but a flat denial. Of course Senator Hill hadn’t heard any complaints about the poll tax. The was the whole point of Jim Crow. The people who would complain, who had cause to complain, had been systematically suppressed and sidelined so as to be out of sight and out of mind of polite – i.e., white – society. Hill’s assertion, therefore, that he’d, “not received one word, by word of mouth, by line, or by communication in any shape, fashion, or form from a single Alabaman on behalf of the proposed amendment” was entirely meaningless as a point in his favor. He and his fellow Southerners had worked for generations to achieve exactly that specific result. Its existence was not proof that no one in Alabama had a problem with the poll tax. It was proof that those who did have a problem had successfully been silenced.

    Senator Holland, of course, wasn’t about to point this out. Though it had repealed its poll tax in the late 1930s, Florida was at that point as much a Jim Crow state as Alabama or Mississippi. And in any case, Holland’s argument against the poll tax had never been about race. It was a question, he always insisted, of economic discrimination. A person’s ability to cast a ballot should not have been based upon their income, but rather ought to have been extended to all Americans without favor. Such an assertion, to be sure, very conveniently elided the intended purpose of the tax, which was unequivocally to disenfranchise the Black inhabitants of the American South. It was also clearly meant to sidestep any accusations that Holland was in any way associated with the contemporary movement for civil rights. This didn’t work, of course, as the flow of the debate herein cited should make quite clear. His assertions to the contrary notwithstanding, certain of Holland’s fellow Southerners were determined to draw a line between his effort to secure a national ban on poll taxes and the ongoing struggle for the full recognition of Black citizenship. The result was that Holland was at times left in a rather awkward spot. He could not effectively counter Hill’s assertion that no Alabamans had been complaining about the poll tax, for instance, without delving into a subject which he’d made a specific point of avoiding. The very existence of the poll tax was explicitly the result of the racial politics of the post-Civil War South, but the resulting status quo was not something Holland was at all eager to call into question. In consequence, he was forced to occasionally cede ground to the bad faith arguments of his opponents, to the detriment of his stated goal of securing a constitutional amendment.

The Purpose and Powers of the Senate, Part LXVIII: “Something Which is so Basically American”

Undeterred by his fellow Southerners’ various bad faith attempts at counterargument, Senator Spessard Holland of Florida responded by trying out several novel approaches for himself as the Senate session of March 15^th, 1962 wore on. First, seemingly in response to Alabama senator J. Lister Hill’s earlier invocation of the Framers and their supposed intentions, he tried out the historical angle. Property qualifications were once the norm in terms of conditioning the franchise, he avowed, but these regulations had all been repealed over the course of the 19^th century. The American people, during the 1820s and 1830s, gradually embraced a more liberal definition of democracy than their forebears would have found acceptable, the result of which was a dramatic expansion of the nation’s legally qualified electorate. The poll tax was no different, as near as Holland could tell – its time had simply come and gone. Couldn’t Senator Hill see that? Hill, for his part, decidedly could not. “Some definite changes have been made [,]” he admitted, referring to the electoral laws of the various states, 

But I point out that those who are opposing this proposed constitutional amendment are fighting for the right of their States to make their own decision as to whether they want this small, minimal poll tax. That is our right; it is our right under the Constitution of the United States [.]

Rather than push back against this change in focus, Holland opted to embrace it. “I recognized the fact that this is a constitutional matter [,]” he said,

And for that reason I am proposing a constitutional amendment, rather than a statutory proposal […] I ask my friend, the Senator from Alabama, whether the Constitution has provided, since the day when it was adopted, that the regular way to go about changing fundamental law in any State or in all States is to proceed by way of the submission of a constitutional amendment, which requires the approval of three-fourths of the States before it can become operative; and is it not also true that that right existed long before Florida, Alabama, Mississippi, or any of the later admitted States came into the Union?

Hill, seemingly not to be outmaneuvered, responded by again changing the emphasis of his argument. “There is no question that that procedure is provided by the Constitution of the United States [,]” he said, “But that procedure does not mean that it is an invitation to try to take away from the States the rights which have been guaranteed to them since the time when the Constitution of the United States was first written.” A moment before, he'd been talking about the rights of the states under the Constitution; now he was talking about what was right notwithstanding the same. Coming from an avowed proponent of states’ rights, of course, this was a very by-the-book sort of answer. In seeking to protect what they believe to be the unchallengeable sovereignty of the various constituent states of the American republic, advocates of this species of political philosophy have historically vacillated between invoking what protections they feel they can locate in the Constitution and denying that certain other aspects of that same document actually apply. They hold fast to the 10^th Amendment, for example, and its guarantee that “The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively” while also ignoring any clauses that confer superior authority upon the federal government. The Supremacy Clause – which states that “This Constitution, and the Laws of the United States which shall be made in Pursuance thereof; and all Treaties made, or which shall be made, under the Authority of the United States, shall be the supreme Law of the Land” – consequently tends to be ignored or downplayed, as does the aforementioned section of Article II that grants Congress power over the election of its own members. The result is something of a contradictory position. States’ rights advocates like Hill will tend to claim that the Constitution actively prevents the federal government from interfering in the internal affairs of the various states while at the same time glossing over those sections of the same document that permit exactly that.

Being also, by conviction, a states’ rights Southern Democrat, Senator Holland was naturally well familiar with this approach to constitutional discourse. Indeed, as his response to the Brown v. Board decision had shown, he was himself perfectly willing and able to denounce the federal influence over state law that the Constitution mandated while at the same time claiming the protection of the Constitution itself. In this instance, however, seemingly blind to all considerations but his goal of eliminating the poll tax, the Floridian plowed unceasingly forward as though Hill offered no resistance. “The Senator from Alabama recognizes, does he not,” he proceeded to enquire,

That the other 45 States, which have considerable interest in the election of the President, the Vice President, and the Members of Congress, also have some rights, including the complete privilege and right, under the Constitution, to ask that this matter be submitted to the conscience of all 50 States? They have that right, do they not?

Philosophically speaking, this was also a very cogent point. The Constitution does give a two-thirds majority of the states the right to alter that selfsame document notwithstanding the objections of the remaining third. In effect, this means that a supermajority of Americans has the right to make decisions about the structure and character of the federal union itself regardless of the objections of a minority as large as thirty percent of the total. By design, of course, such supermajorities will only take shape around matters of sufficient importance to a sufficiently large swath of the electorate so as to ensure that any changes made as a consequence will not result in immediate regret or repeal. The fact nevertheless remains, however, that as a result of this arrangement, decisions of the highest import may sometimes be foisted upon minorities numbering in the millions without allowing said millions any form of institutional recourse. If the majority has the numbers, to put it simply, the majority gets what it wants.

            Under different conditions, to be sure, Holland would not be the one to make such an assertion. The notion that, as he put it, a majority of the states, “have some rights, including the complete privilege and right, under the Constitution, to ask that [any] matter be submitted to the conscience of all 50 States” would not normally have been a source of comfort to the elected representative of a Southern state in the midst of the mid-20^th century struggle for civil rights. But, as discussed above, his desire to eliminate the poll tax at the federal level had seemingly placed the Floridian in a rather unusual position. And Senator Hill, at something of a loss, could only respond with equivocation. “I would say that any American citizen has a right to ask for any change he may see fit to request [,]” he cautiously admitted. “But the fact that he has a right to request such a change does not mean that the change he proposes is wise and should be made or is justified by any existing condition or any particular situation.” It was, once again, a rather weak argument under the circumstances, and arguably a testament to the fact that Hill’s position was similarly rickety. He could not say, unambiguously, that what Holland was asserting was false for the very simple reason that it wasn’t. Nothing in the text of the Constitution could protect any state or group of states from being forced to comply with a federal mandate if said mandate took the form of an amendment to the Constitution itself. For that reason, then, Hill was forced to try – somewhat shakily – to claim the moral high ground. The fact that the majority of states could force change upon those in the minority, he declared, did not mean that such an action was necessarily justifiable. Simply because they could, in essence, did not mean that they should.

            Again, and under the circumstances, this did not make for much of an argument. The thing that Hill was decrying as a morally unjustifiable intrusion into the internal affairs of a handful of Southern states was, after all, the morally unjustifiable disenfranchisement of millions of financially disadvantaged Americans. Indeed, his assertion that the addition of an anti-poll tax amendment to the text of the Constitution was legally sound but morally wrong could just as easily have been directed at the poll tax itself. Going by the increasingly flaccid state of his discourse, one wonders if he knew this to be the case. From aggressively driving his point home, he now seemed to be on the defensive. Senator Eastland appeared to be as well, if his next interjection was any kind of proof. “The distinguished Senator from Alabama knows that in connection with the Federal highway system, the vast amount of money is contributed by the Federal Government, is it not?” the senator from Mississippi began.  “That is correct [,]” Senator Hill responded, before going on to clarify that the figure was something like ninety percent of the total. “Every American citizen has a right to use those highways, does he not?” said Eastland. “That is correct [,]” said Hill, “he does, indeed. It is interstate commerce.” “Does the Senator from Alabama know [,]” continued Eastland, “that the State of Maine collects a poll tax, and that a resident of Maine cannot obtain a driver's license until he pays that poll tax, and cannot drive on the Federal highways in the State of Maine until he pays that poll tax?” “Yes [,]” said Hill. “In other words, the payment of that poll tax is a prerequisite to driving on the Federal highways.” “Is not that situation similar to the one now confronting us?” asked Eastland. “Certainly,” said Hill, “because the Federal Government has a very large, direct, and immediate pecuniary interest in that matter, having put up 90 percent of the funds for the construction of those highways.” “That is right [,]” said Eastland, finally coming to the point. “Why does not the distinguished Senator from Florida try to correct that condition, instead of picking on several of his neighboring States in the South?”

            In the parlance of the professional comedian, there was a lot of shoe-leather on that argument. It was a roundabout claim made in a very roundabout way, and one which, while not entirely without merit, was rather beside the point. Granted, there may have been a conversation worth having about the State of Maine’s then-standing policy to withhold driver’s licenses from its citizens unless and until they had paid their annual poll tax. After all – and as the pair of senators rightly observed – the people of Maine paid into the federal highway system on the same basis as their fellow citizens living in other states. Why, then, were the inhabitants of the Pine Tree State restricted from making use of this piece of infrastructure that they’d already helped fund by a law which demanded that they first pay a fee? It was a perfectly fair question to pose in the general context of the United States Senate, but this fact did not at all excuse the five Southern states in question from using essentially the same tactic to deny their poorest citizens the right to vote. Responding to criticism by pointing at someone else and asking why they’re not the one being scrutinized doesn’t necessarily do anything to alter the validity of the original criticism. It may indeed have been the case that the State of Maine was behaving in an unjustifiable manner, but this did not change the fact that the states of Arkansas, Mississippi, Texas, Virginia, and Alabama were likewise withholding from certain of their citizens something which should have been theirs by right.

            Once again, and to his credit, Holland simply refused to engage. His position on this issue was a simple one, and he adamantly refused to engage in any pointless attempts at misdirection. “If I may be allowed to answer,” he thus replied,

In a patient way, the question that was raised by the Senator from Mississippi, the Senator from Florida hates to see people right across the line in Alabama, exactly like people in Florida, who can vote and do vote, deprived of their right of voting because they have either forgotten to pay the poll tax, or because they did not have the $6 to pay it […] The Senator from Florida does not think that is a sound situation. He feels he has a complete right to move toward a sounder participation of all citizens, and makes no apology to anybody. He has stood arm in arm with his distinguished friends in opposition to other measures, but the Senator from Florida cannot for his life see how anybody can oppose something which is so basically American as to have this submission to the jury of States, which has been a part of our Constitution since it was founded.

One once more cannot help but be struck, when reading this very plainspoken assertion of the fundamental nature of certain rights under the American system of government, by the utter incongruity of the words themselves and the politics of the man who gave voice to them. Holland claimed that his only motivation was that it pained him to see any of his fellow Americans “deprived of their right of voting because they have either forgotten to pay the poll tax, or because they did not have the $6 to pay it [.]” There was nothing legally questionable about this state of affairs, of course. The Supreme Court had repeatedly ruled that poll taxes were perfectly permissible under the terms of the Constitution. But the pain that Holland claimed to feel spurred him to action regardless.

The Floridian did not like what was going on the states of Arkansas, Mississippi, Texas, Virginia, and Alabama, and so he sought to use his power as a United States Senator to change it. By his own admission, he had “stood arm in arm with his distinguished friends in opposition to other measures,” but in this case, for whatever reason, he felt compelled to make an about face. On any other day of the week, Spessard Holland was a firm believer in states’ rights, segregation, and – concomitantly – white supremacy who would vehemently deny the authority of the federal government to decide which state laws were either acceptable or invalid. To his thinking, and that of men like him, it simply was not the place of those who came from one state to tell the government of another how it ought to conduct itself. Every state was sovereign and embodied the will of its citizens. To bend to the directives of an outside authority would accordingly represent a betrayal of that selfsame popular will. On this day, however – March 15^th, 1962, to be exact – Holland could not “for his life see how anybody can oppose something which is so basically American as to have this submission to the jury of States [.]” It was no wonder his Southern colleagues seemed so disappointed.

The Purpose and Powers of the Senate, Part LXVII: “A Proper Interest in His State”

Having adjourned until noon the following day – March 15^th, 1962 – the United States Senate thereafter resumed consideration of the Alexander Hamilton national monument bill which Senator Spessard Holland was preparing to use as a vehicle for his anti-poll tax amendment. New York Republican Jacob Javits then proceeded to introduce said bill, his fellow New Yorker, Kenneth Keating, then spoke to the need for such legislation – Hamilton’s house, it seemed, was then going to “rack and ruin” – and the Majority Leader, Mike Mansfield, then moved that debate should thereafter proceed. Whereupon, rather predictably, a brace of Southerners made themselves known. And while Richard Russell was not among them, the sentiments which he had expressed during the previous day’s debate were nevertheless very much in evidence. The first to speak, as it happened, was Alabama’s J. Lister Hill (1894-1984), a New Deal, populist Democrat who was known to occasionally break with his more conservative colleagues in support of legislation that gave greater power to the federal government. In this instance, however, Hill appeared to be in a conservative mood.

First, Hill echoed Senator Russell’s remarks of the previous day. The notion of substituting a constitutional amendment for a piece of normal legislation, he said, was “a most unusual and extraordinary and, I think, unprecedented and preposterous course [.]” The Southern reputation for strict propriety was well-earned, it would seem. Then – echoing Russell once again – he began lamenting the loss of state power that the proposed amendment seemed to portend. “This is an attempt to amend the Constitution,” he said,

To take away from the States the rights which they have enjoyed from the very day the Constitution was written and became effective. It is an attempt to take away their rights to fix the qualifications of their electors. We oppose it because we are deeply moved by our concern and desire and our willingness to fight for the preservation of the cherished rights of our States to prescribe the qualifications of their electors. I may say that these are rights which the Founding Fathers specifically preserved and secured to our States in the original Constitution.

Such invocations of the Founders have been a cornerstone of congressional debate since almost the moment of the Founding itself, of course. No matter the position being taken by the lawmaker in question, a precedent in its favor always seems to present itself from among the writings and orations of that selfsame illustrious cohort. To that end, Senator Hill noted accordingly that when the Constitution was first drafted in 1787, a guarantee of state autonomy in terms of setting the parameters of the franchise had been absolutely essential to securing the final agreement of all involved. Bearing this in mind, he concluded, “there would have been no Constitution if that right had not been clearly, specifically, and absolutely preserved to the several States.”

The Senator from Alabama was not wrong, of course, when he affirmed that state control over the franchise had been very important to the Framers. It would be hard to name a group of American political thinkers who, in their time, were more conscious of the need to balance state and national power or who were more sensitive of the specific responsibilities best allocated to each sphere. But there was a great difference between the circumstances under which the Constitution was drafted and those which, in the early 1960s, confronted the United States Senate. So many of the Framer’s expectations and assumptions had been proven faulty or misguided in the nearly two centuries that had elapsed since they collectively hashed out the text of the American republic’s governing charter. Indeed, the relationship between the federal government, the various states, and the American people had changed to such a tremendous extent over the course of the 19^th and 20^th centuries from what the Founding Generation had envisioned that one might be given to wonder whether the Framers would even recognize the nation whose fundamental charter they had penned. To say, then, that a particular practice was worthwhile simply because the Framers had endorsed it did not – and does not – make for much of an argument in its favor. The Constitution had, at the time of Hill’s remarks, been amended fully twenty-three times. Clearly, there were many things about that original document which successive generations of Americans determined were insufficient to their changing needs.

            Hill’s argument against an anti-poll tax amendment did not begin and end with a simple invocation of tradition for tradition’s sake, of course. Like Russell the day before, the senator from Alabama was prepared to pull out all the stops. To that end, he also made a point of noting that the actual costs of the poll tax in his state were, in his words, “extremely moderate. They range from $1 to $1.50. The influence of the tax on the size of the electorate is [therefore] too insignificant for anyone even to attempt to measure.” As if this were not evidence enough, Hill then went on to further affirm that some prerequisites must inevitably accompany voting no matter how liberal the electoral system. “To register,” he began,

A person must go to a particular place where the registration is held. Persons do not register in their own homes; they must go to the courthouse or to some other place designated for that purpose. Furthermore, in order to vote, a citizen must go to the polling place. He must transport himself to that place. When he gets there, sometimes he must stand in line before he may vote. It may take some time out of a very busy day for him to stand and wait his turn to exercise his right to the ballot and to vote. So […] there are certain prerequisites to voting, and this little tax is one of them.

Hill’s assertion that “a little tax” was just one of many potential obligations every American was bound to fulfil in attempting to cast their ballot vastly oversimplified the issue at hand, of course. There were indeed a great many things which a person might be required to do in order to exercise their right to vote, from registering, to applying for an absentee ballot, to standing in line, to putting off personal obligations. But inasmuch as it is the theoretical aim of every democratic society to encourage voter turnout – so that the officials accordingly elected represent the will of their constituents as accurately as possible – most democratic governments tend to put in place such procedures and policies as to render the process of voting as easy and as painless as is possible.

The United States, in this regard, is– and was – no different. Absentee ballots cost nothing to apply for and come with prepaid return envelopes. Polling stations are generally allocated so as to keep wait times to a minimum. Registration is often a one-time necessity and requires relatively little paperwork. These measures are certainly not foolproof or infallible – people have still waited in long lines, still encountered problems with their absentee ballots – but they have done a great deal, collectively, to eliminate the most common barriers to voting. But whereas the inconveniences Hill noted represent either the unavoidable failure of otherwise sound policy or else the inevitable consequence of attempting to solve complicated logistical problems, the poll tax that he was defending served no purpose other than to act as a barrier to voting. Granted, the revenue generated was often put to use funding public schools. Indeed, Hill made a point of noting exactly that. But a tax on whiskey, say, or cigarettes could have served the same purpose without compromising the ability of the economically disadvantaged to cast a ballot. Far from being a necessary prerequisite to voting, therefore – that is, something unpleasant but functionally unavoidable – the poll tax represented a deliberate attempt to make voting more difficult for those most in need.

None of this, of course, made any never mind to the likes of Senator Hill. Like Senator Russell had been before him, he was less interested in the facts on the ground in states where poll taxes remained on the books than in defending the right of any given state to levy such taxes as it pleased. Nor, for that matter, did it at all rankle the sensitivities of Senator James O. Eastland (1904-1986), the Mississippi Democrat who next asked to take the floor. Quite the opposite, in fact. Far from seeking to counter Hill’s assertions, Eastland sought instead to continue his colleague’s exploration of the supposed harmlessness of the poll tax. “Does the Senator know whether the poll tax in Alabama disqualifies anybody from voting?” he asked. “I do not think the poll tax in Alabama disqualifies anybody from voting [,]” Hill responded. “I do not know of anyone in Alabama who does not have a dollar and a half that he cannot contribute to the education of the youth in Alabama in order to vote.” Eastland pressed on. “Does not the Senator think that that is true in all the States which have the poll tax?” he said. “I think that is true in all those States [,]” answered Hill. “I think the Senator would say the same thing about his own State of Mississippi.” The Alabaman then went on to add – as if his point had not sufficiently been made – that “The poll tax does not prevent anyone from voting. Can it be that a citizen of a State does not have enough interest in the welfare and progress of his State to make the little contribution of a dollar or a dollar and a half to the education of the youth of his State, so that the citizen may vote?”

It was, on balance, a substantially pointless exchange. Both men represented states where poll taxes were still being collected. And so neither man had any reason to call into question the validity of the same. On the contrary, they had every reason to make those who did not pay the poll tax appear miserly, foolish, or otherwise “un-American.” “Can it be that a citizen of a State does not have enough interest in the welfare and progress of his State to make the little contribution of a dollar or a dollar and a half to the education of the youth of his State [?]” Hill asked. Another senator, thus engaged with Hill in this same line of questioning, might have responded by telling him that some Americans who wanted to vote simply couldn’t spare a dollar to do so. They might even have asked him, as a corollary, whether requiring people to pay a sum of money in order to vote regardless of their economic circumstances effectively amounted to voter suppression. But Eastland didn’t request the floor so that he could actually engage in a debate with his colleague from Alabama. On the contrary, as someone who had a vested interest in keeping the government of his own state from looking needlessly cruel, he was simply seeking to offer his support to someone who shared this same position.

After next going on to compare the poll tax to the dues required to be paid by the member-nations of the UN – non-payment of which the Kennedy Administration had lately stated should disqualify member nations from voting, leading Eastland to conclude that the US Government “endorsed the principle of the poll tax” – the pair were thankfully interrupted by the previously-silent Senator Holland. The chief architect of the anti-poll tax amendment had evidently had enough, and at this moment chose to initiate his own line of questioning. First, Holland asked Hill if it was required, in Alabama, for a citizen of voting age to pay the poll tax in order to cast a ballot. Hill said that it was, though he emphasized that the minimum cost was one dollar and fifty cents and that the accumulated cost – for consecutive years of non-payment – could amount to no more than three dollars. When Holland then seized upon this figure of three dollars – “is it not true that a citizen between the ages of 22 and 45 must pay $3 or 2 years' poll tax in order to be qualified to vote?” – Hill again attempted to minimize the significance of any such payment. “If a person lets a year or more go by,” he said, “or, as I said, if he lets as many as 15 years go by, or if he lets as many as 20 years go by, he never has to pay more than $3.” Undeterred, Holland sought to clarify: “But he does have to pay $3?” Hill’s answer was characteristically dismissive. “If he has not kept up his poll tax,” he said, “the little tax of $1.50—every cent of which, as I have said, is devoted to the public schools of Alabama—if he has not kept that tax current and paid each year, the most he would have to pay would be $3.”

Senator Eastland then stepped in again by way of a diversion. “Does not the Senator think that the $3 that a person must pay is quite puny and does not discommode anyone?” he said. Hill’s response might as well have been rehearsed. “I thoroughly agree with the Senator from Mississippi [,]” he said. “Certainly it does not discommode anybody. After all, what citizen is there, who has a proper interest in his State […] who is not perfectly willing to pay this small amount of $1.50?” The phrasing that Hill employed here is particularly worth noting. He did not ask whether they were any citizens who were not perfectly able to pay the poll tax. Rather, he asked whether they were any citizens not perfectly willing. Evidently, the senator from Alabama was particularly keen on insinuating that non-payment of the poll tax was a choice, that no one was in a position where they literally could not afford to pay it, and that those who chose not to do so lacked “a proper interest” in the general welfare of their state. When one also takes into account the racial component of the discussion at hand, the impression that Senator Hill was trying to cultivate becomes clearer still. What was the Alabaman saying about those who failed to pay the poll tax? That they were uninterested either in voting or in contributing to the general welfare. And who, by design, were generally unable to pay the tax? The economically disadvantaged members of the nation’s Black community. So what, then, was Hill trying to say without simply coming out with the words? That the nation’s Black community didn’t care about voting, that they didn’t care about supporting schools, and that it could accordingly be said that they lacked “a proper interest” in public affairs. This was, of course, a very old canard – that Black people are lazy, or unmotivated, or generally quiescent – but one which many a Southerner would still have cleaved to in the early 1960s. And it was for this reason, no doubt, that Senator Hill sought to deploy it. Lacking in proof or not, it conformed to what many of his colleagues already believed in their hearts.       

Holland, for his part, remained unmoved by this relatively subtle bit of race-baiting. And so, as was his wont, he attempted to steer things back on track. “A man and his wife would have to pay $6 in order for both of them to be qualified to vote in a primary election or in a general election in Alabama […] would they not?” he asked Hill. The Alabama Democrat seemed to bristle. “No [,]” he said. “The only time when they would have to pay $6 would be when they were in default. If they were current in the payment of that tax, they would have to pay only $1.50 a piece.” Eastland – as though he and Senator Hill were members of a Vaudeville-era comedy team – then jumped in yet again. “The answer to the question of the Senator from Florida is that in the vast majority of cases he is wrong, is he not?” he said. “Yes [,]” said Hill. “In 99 percent of the cases he is wrong, is he not?” said Eastland. “Yes [,]” repeated Hill. “He is undertaking to cite the most extreme case. He must be thinking about the people of his own State, not the people of Alabama.” Neither man, to be sure, offered any evidence to back their claim. In ninety-nine percent of cases, they said, people paid the poll tax and were thus free to cast a ballot when the time came. From where did they source this figure? Was the underlying data up to date? Neither of them seemed inclined to say, if indeed it was possible for them to do so. Practically speaking, then, the claim that they were making was entirely lacking any basis in fact.

            Senator Holland, as ever, remained unphased. “So far as the people of Florida are concerned,” he replied to Hill’s parting jibe, “they have not had to pay a poll tax since 1937—which I think is a sound thing.”  Again, the fact that the elimination of the poll tax was tied to his own history as a public servant was never all that far from the conversation at hand. He then continued: “Does not the Senator from Alabama know that the amendment which I and 66 other Senators propose does not prohibit the imposition of a poll tax as a prerequisite to voting in State and local elections, but relates only to the election of President, Vice President, and Members of Congress?” Hill’s response, unsurprisingly, was to shift his angle of attack yet again. He had implied that eliminating the poll tax went against the intentions of the Framers. He had argued that the poll tax was but one of many requirements Americans were required to fulfil in order to vote. And he had declared, unequivocally, that the individual cost of the poll tax was so low as to be inconsiderable to any individual who actually desired to vote. Now, faced with Holland’s avowal that an anti-poll tax amendment would only apply to federal elections, Senator Hill of Alabama decried the chaos which was bound to result. “Can the Senator from Florida think of anything which would be more confusing [,]” he said

Or would require more bookkeeping, redtape, and all that sort of thing, than to require the payment of a poll tax […] if one wishes to vote in elections for State and local officers, but then say, “But so far as national elections are concerned, the payment of a poll tax will not be required.” I cannot think of anything that would be more divisive or confusing or would come nearer to undermining the system of obtaining, by means of the payment of this small amount of money, funds to be used for the education of our youth.

Before Holland had a chance to respond, Eastland again jumped in. “Why should not a man pay a poll tax in order to be able to vote in an election for Members of Congress?” he said. “I know of no reason why he should not [,]” said Hill. “What is the difference between paying a poll tax in order to be able to vote in an election for Members of Congress and paying a poll tax in order to be able to vote in an election for the Governor of the State?” asked Eastland. “There is no difference [,]” said Hill, “and certainly there is no reason why a poll tax should not be paid in order to qualify to vote in all elections.” It was a strange argument the two were making, if it could indeed be called an argument. “There is no reason why a poll tax should not be paid in order to qualify to vote in all elections [,]” said Hill, as if that was the beginning and the end of the matter. Neither man argued why this should be the case – why any citizen of the United States should have been made to pay a fee in order to exercise one of the fundamental rights to which they were entitled. Rather, they simply acted as though the underlying reasoning was self-evident. “Why should not a man pay a poll tax in order to be able to vote in an election for Members of Congress?” said Eastland. “I know of no reason why he should not [,]” said Hill. The brazen disregard for basic democratic norms which these two United States Senators thus gleefully displayed would almost be impressive were it not so deeply disquieting.   

Holland – doubtless growing tired of this senseless back-and-forth – responded to this fairly nauseating display by offering what he doubtless hoped would be a substantial blow to Hill’s earlier argument. Was it not true, he said, irrespective of what the senator from Alabama had just declared,

That on the present registration rolls in the State of Alabama, places have to be left for exemptions for those who are veterans and for exemptions for those who are over a certain age, and for exemptions for other reasons; and is it not true that it has not proven to be difficult at all to have little stamped showings of exemptions appear on the same registration roll?

It was, by and large, a perfectly cogent point on Holland’s part. Hill’s complaint had been that creating a system in which people were required to pay the poll tax in some circumstances but not in others would simply be too confusing to even contemplate. But it was already true that certain people in Alabama weren’t required to pay the poll tax because they qualified for an exception. People over the age of forty-five weren’t required to pay; nor were veterans; nor were certain others. As every year went by and more people turned forty-five, and more people were discharged from the military, and more people were able to qualify for whatever other exceptions were on offer, didn’t this create a great deal of complexity on its own? And hadn’t the government of the State of Alabama managed to sort things out just fine? So what, then, was so complicated about creating another species of exception? What was so hard about creating “little stamped showings of exemptions [to] appear on the same registration roll?”

Naturally – given that they were most assuredly less interested in engaging in an exchange of ideas than simply saying the things they felt obligated to say – neither Hill nor Eastland were given pause by this inquiry, or else felt at all compelled to provide Holland with an answer. On the contrary, their response was to further hammer on their core talking point. “Does not the Senator from Alabama think the distinguished Senator from Florida has just now destroyed his own argument?” Eastland began. “In Alabama, one who is 45 years of age is exempt, is he not?” Hill answered with a simple, “That is correct.” “And veterans are also exempt, are they not?” Eastland continued. “That is correct [,]” Hill repeated. “When the Senator from Florida refers to a requirement to pay $3,” said Eastland, “he is picking out a few, little, puny cases here and there, is he not? “Yes [,]” Hill responded. “The requirement to pay $3 itself does not disenfranchise anyone, does it?” Eastland asked. “That is correct [,]” Hill concluded, “there are only a few, little, puny cases.” Again, one is struck by the apparent similarity between this pair of Southern senators and an early 20^th century comedy duo. They had not at all demonstrated how it was that Senator Holland has supposedly “destroyed his own argument,” but their patter was nothing if not snappy and to-the-point.  

Hill and Eastland’s primary strategy, such as it was, was decidedly one of minimization. They did not seek to dispute the fact that the existence of the poll tax prevented some people from being able to cast a ballot. On the contrary, they were of the opinion that this was only right and proper. When the cause being funded was the education of the next generation of American citizens, what kind of person could possibly object to being parted from a dollar or two? Well, whoever they were – miserly, selfish, quite lacking in civic spirit – they were very few in number. “A few, little, puny cases [,]” the pair agreed. Insignificant. Not worth considering. In light of the fact that these two men represented Southern states in which the segregationist Jim Crow regime remained largely intact, their characterization of the number of people in Alabama disenfranchised by the poll tax as “few,” “little,” and “puny” would seem once more to warrant a certain amount of scrutiny. Being both of them products of a society – that is, the white, middle-class South of the early 20^th century – wherein “separate but equal” was the unquestioned rule, Black people were functionally regarded as something less than full citizens, and lynchings occurred with startling regularity, it would not be at all difficult to imagine Hill and Eastland alike considering the disenfranchisement of several million Black Americans as being inconsiderable in the grand scheme.

The disenfranchisement of the region’s Black community, after all, had been one of the central goals of Southern lawmakers, executive officials, and judges since the ratification of the 15^th Amendment in the winter of 1870. And the entire purpose of the poll tax was to help achieve this exact objective. So why, then, should Hill and Eastland have been anything other than dismissive? Indeed, it would be fair to say that there was no reason to expect otherwise. From their perspective – along with that of many of their fellow Southerners in Congress – the disenfranchisement of the South’s Black inhabitants really was a trifling thing. The entire purpose of the law, to them, was the continual entrenchment of white control. And no matter how often or how convincingly anyone might argue to the contrary – or even suggest that certain customary practices ultimately did more harm than good – they were not prepared to change their minds. The Jim Crow regime had been plodding along for the better part of a century, and in that time had ground down generations of Black Americans to a state of legal helplessness and spiritual indignity under the sheer weight of its manifold mechanisms of oppression. The white, Democratic South, in that time, had managed not only to prevent the fundamental upending of the established racial power structure which the Reconstruction had seemed to presage, but they had further succeeded in solidifying their grip on local political power to the point that Sothern society became governed, in effect, by a kind of ethno-political oligarchy. In consequence, from the perspective of men like J. Lister Hill and James Eastland – beneficiaries of this culture, to be sure – there really was no reason to admit that anything was amiss. Institutionalized racial oppression had worked out just fine for the South, and any evidence to the contrary could be safely and entirely dismissed.  

The Purpose and Powers of the Senate, Part LXVI: “So Anomalous, Such a Strange Development in Our National Life”

    Foiled in his attempt to mire the anti-poll tax amendment debate that took place on March 14^th, 1962 in a sentimental digression about the American Civil War, Georgia Senator Richard Russell instead chose to respond to the amendment’s primary sponsor, Florida Senator Spessard Holland, by defaulting once more to rank condescension. “The Senator from Florida [,]” he said,

Is at least to be commended for seeking this objective through the process of amendment to the Constitution, instead of a statute. His process is consistent with the constitutional system. I think that the objective is inconsistent with the philosophy of the rights of the States. That is where my friend and I differ.

It was a slight insult, to be sure, but an insult, nonetheless. Here was Richard Russell, attempting, in his own words, to defend the rights of the states against unwarranted federal intrusion. And whom did he find himself opposing in this instance? Not only a fellow Democrat, but a fellow Southerner. It was enough to make a person question the depth of Senator Holland’s convictions. Senator Russell cared deeply about the constitutional protections afforded to the states. Indeed, he would go on to quote certain of them to the letter over the course of the oration that was to follow. Was it the case, then, that Holland didn’t care about these things? Were his claims to support state sovereignty a misrepresentation of his true beliefs? For his part, Senator Russell did not dwell on these implied questions for very long. Before Holland had a chance to answer the charge that he was acting in a manner “inconsistent with the philosophy of the rights of the states [,]” the Georgian moved swiftly into yet another acid-tongued assertion that the poll tax wasn’t really a problem.

    “A great many of those who depend for their election year after year on the votes of minority groups within their States [,]” Russell began,

Have tried to make it appear there was some question of imposition on colored people, or some question of rights of Negroes as contradistinguished from rights of whites, involved in the question of the poll tax. It has nothing whatever to do with it. The States which require a poll tax today apply this levy equally to all voters and to all prospective voters without regard to race, creed, or color. We all know that if that were not the case, and if the States were not doing so now, the pressure groups would have had the Supreme Court strike down these State poll tax laws a long, long time ago.

Russell’s barely concealed bitterness at the state of contemporary American political culture is particularly evident in this passage. Previously, he had lamented what he saw as a mounting trend toward political conformity among the American people and their elected representatives. America, he said, “grew faster, built a better system of government, and developed […] a way of life that has been the envy of mankind all over the world” precisely because the various states “did not conform or have to conform [.]” And now, to the same end, he was complaining specifically about the Supreme Court.

    “We all know [,]” said Russell, that if poll taxes did not apply to all Americans of voting age regardless of race, color, or creed, “the pressure groups would have had the Supreme Court strike down these State poll tax laws a long, long time ago.” Plainly, this was in reference to Brown v. Board of Education (1954) and the series of pro-civil rights decisions that followed it over the course of the late 50s and early 60s. Brown, of course, mandated the desegregation of American public schools, the primary response to which, across the American South, was shock, anger, and ardent resentment on the part of local citizens groups and political power brokers alike. But while Southern legislators serving in Congress gave voice to their displeasure in the form of the Southern Manifesto (1956) – the purpose of which was to essentially inform the Supreme Court that further anti-segregation rulings would meet with the utmost resistance – further such rulings were handed down all the same. In Cooper v. Aaron (1958), for example, the Court quashed an attempt by the Little Rock, Arkansas school district to postpone its desegregation program in deference to the pro-segregationist actions of the state’s governor and legislators. “State support of segregated schools through any arrangement, management, funds or property cannot be squared with the command of the Fourteenth Amendment that no State shall deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws [,]” all nine justices unanimously agreed. Two years later, in Gomillion v. Lightfoot (1960), the Court responded to a lawsuit filed by Tuskegee Institute professor Charles G. Gomillion (1900-1995) against the city of Tuskegee, Alabama claiming the existence of a discriminatory gerrymander by declaring that “Even the broad power of a State to fix the boundaries of its municipalities is limited by the Fifteenth Amendment, which forbids a State to deprive any citizen of the right to vote because of his race.” That same year, the Court also found – in Boynton v. Virginia – that the practice of racial discrimination on interstate bus lines represented a violation of the Interstate Commerce Act (1887), the immediate result of which was the Freedom Rider movement of 1961.

    Naturally – given his status as a Southern, segregationist, states’ rights Democrat – Richard Russell was not at all pleased by the increasingly activist bent of the Warren Court represented by cases like these. He himself had co-authored the aforementioned Southern Manifesto, and it must have been both personally and ideologically galling to have his own concerted efforts to warn the Court away from such behavior so completely and publicly ignored. Throughout most of the 19^th century, the Supreme Court had been a bastion of judicial conservatism and a bulwark against the expansion of the practical authority of the federal government. Decisions like Dredd Scott v. Sanford (1857) and Plessy v. Ferguson (1896) – which respectively asserted the inability of Black Americans to claim citizenship and established the doctrine of “separate but equal” – were the inevitable result, leading many a Southern segregationist to quite naturally conclude that the federal courts were one of the most powerful tools at their disposal for the protection and expansion of the Jim Crow regime in particular and white supremacy in general.

    The replacement of the cautious Southerner Fred Vinson (1890-1953) as Chief Justice in 1954 with the unapologetically progressive Earl Warren (1891-1974) quickly and completely upended this assumption, however, leading to an equally understandable reaction on the part of ardent segregationists like Richard Russell. Where once – in his opinion – the Court had been a dependable guardian of unchallenged state sovereignty, now it was reduced to little more than the obedient lapdog of liberal pressure groups like the NAACP and the ACLU. The discussion at hand was not about the Supreme Court, of course, any more than it was about the Civil War or the 14^th and 15^th Amendments. But all of these things, to a greater or lesser extent, did orbit around the center of gravity that was – and is – race relations in the United States. The Court had recently refashioned itself as dependable guardian of minority rights and an opponent of Jim Crow, principally by seizing on a more liberal interpretation of the 14^th and 15^th Amendments than had previously been the norm. It was understandable, then, why someone like Russell might take the opportunity to cast aspersions upon what he perceived to be an overly activist Supreme Court in the midst of a discussion about amending the Constitution for the purpose of banning poll taxes. In his mind – and in many others’ – it all came from the same place.

    Russell next proceeded, as aforementioned, to quote from the text of the Constitution in support of the right of the states to determine the parameters of the electoral franchise – see Article I, Section 2 – before then resorting to a species of outright gaslighting in an attempt to once more shrug off the very idea that the poll tax was actually a problem. “We hear much about the differences in the State laws [,]” he observed.

That is one of the great things about this country of ours. If a man does not like the laws in one State he can move to another State […] If he finds that the majority of the people in the State in which he lives are irrevocably committed to a law or to a system of law in which he does not believe, we have great interstate highways, great railway systems, extensive methods of transportation to enable the man to move to a State in which he does find laws to his liking [.]

A more willfully ignorant view of the burdens imposed by the poll tax, one would fairly struggle to imagine. To Russell’s thinking, it would seem, freedom of movement within the United States was guarantee enough against being forced to either pay an undesirable tax or suffer the consequences of non-payment. Don’t like the electoral laws in Alabama? Simply pick up and move to Georgia. The highways are there, the railways are there, and there’s really no excuse for failing to use them. There are, of course, at least two things fundamentally faulty with this perspective.

     On the one hand, speaking practically, it simply wouldn’t have been possible – or if possible, would have been exceedingly burdensome – for those most effected by the poll tax to simply pick up and move to a different state. These were people, after all, who couldn’t spare a dollar a year to be able to register to vote. It was not in the least bit reasonable to expect them to leave behind their lives and livelihoods in order to escape an unjust law. Many of them did not own automobiles, or couldn’t afford train tickets, or simply couldn’t afford to be out of work for more than a few days at a time. Americans have moved to different states – and continue to move to different states – in order to escape the effects of laws that they consider to be burdensome, of course. But one should never conclude from this unfortunate fact that such movement ought to be thought of as anything other than a last resort. The uprooting of people’s lives, the effective exiling of entire families; these things should never be spoken of in a casual, offhand manner, or held up as evidence of an effective system of government. At the same time, speaking morally, it simply isn’t right to create and maintain a system of fundamental rights that is less than comprehensively applied. If the ability of a given person to exercise all of their rights is conditional on where they live and how much money they can spare, then the things they are seeking to exercise are not really rights at all. Privileges may be purchased; privileges may be granted unevenly. But rights are applied universally, unconditionally, and without favor. That Richard Russell would argue against this in his position as a United States Senator is truly a disheartening thing. But in light of his being a Southerner, a Democrat, and an avowed white supremacist, it is perhaps not an unexpected thing.

    Nor is the fact that, as he continued his diatribe against Senator Holland’s anti-poll tax amendment, he next shifted his tone to a kind of breathless alarmism. “In my opinion,” he declared,

This issue should not divert the attention of the Senate in this very critical period of our history […] I do not think that a constitutional amendment, standing by itself […] would be so harmful. But I resent efforts from any source to take away and circumscribe the few rights and powers that the States have left. When we finally destroy the Federal system by making the States impotent and constituting mere geographical areas that are designated from Washington […] we shall have destroyed this great system that has made our country what it is.

Evidently, far from constituting simply the final and unequivocal removal of an unjustifiable barrier to the exercise of one of the fundamental rights of American citizenship, an anti-poll tax amendment of the kind favored by Senator Spessard Holland of Florida represented the beginning of the end of the federal system of government. So completely had the national government thus far robbed the states of the rights and powers to which they were otherwise due that simply prohibiting them from levying a dollar per year per person to register to vote would bring about their utter disintegration into “mere geographical areas that are designated from Washington [.]”

    Clearly, though Senator Russell was guilty of a great many things, he was at the very least innocent of doing anything less than his utmost to defeat the anti-pol tax amendment then being offered by Senator Holland. He employed misdirection, appeals to emotion, condescension, and finally hyperbole, all while maintaining the tenor of civility and collegial respect required by the rules and traditions of the United States Senate. Indeed, were it not so misguided, it would have made for a truly impressive rhetorical display. In reality, of course, it was the people whose vote was being held hostage by an unjustifiable tax whose fate was then in the hands of the assembled members of the United States Senate. And though they numbered in the millions, their disenfranchisement ensured that their ability to in any way shape the character or the actions of the governments to whose authority they were beholden was functionally non-existent. As described by Russell, however, the actual situation was almost entirely the reverse. The people who were daily suffering under the effects of the poll tax were not the victims their advocates claimed them to be. On the contrary, Russell avowed, it was the states who were suffering. The states whose rights had been stripped away piece by piece. The states whose authority over their own citizens was being diluted to nothingness. And the states, if this trend continued, who were doomed to dissolution. To every American who loved their home state just as much as they loved their country, this was doubtless an alarming outcome to be forced to consider. There was no truth to it, to be sure – the states were not in any fundamental danger, least of all from the banning of the poll tax – but that mattered little under the circumstances. If Richard Russell could convince enough of his colleagues that the states were on the verge of total disintegration, they would react with the same urgency as if the sky itself was falling.    

    Fortunately, both for Senator Russell and for the captive audience that were his Senate colleagues – the man needed to rest his voice, just as they needed a rest from it – the Georgian next opted to cede the floor rather than continue on at greater length. Thus it was that New York Republican Jacob Javits (1904-1986) finally joined the discussion. Javits, for his part, had supported Senator Holland’s previous effort to introduce a constitutional amendment eliminating the poll tax in 1960. But in this instance, some two years later, he found fault with the Floridian’s method. Not only was he troubled by the fact that the proposal in question was coming at the expense of a previously-scheduled bill for the purpose of declaring the home of Alexander Hamilton’s to be a national monument – something which, as a New Yorker, he was more or less bound to support. But he also felt that Holland’s insistence on specifically pursuing a constitutional amendment to be fundamentally misguided. The poll tax, he firmly asserted, was “so anomalous, such a strange development in our national life, that we ought to take the first and the earliest opportunity to be rid of it.” Indeed, he further affirmed, “both as a lawyer and as a Senator, […] this is an anomaly, an encumbrance upon the rights of the citizens, not of any State, but of the United States.” But was a constitutional amendment either the best way or the most expedient way to eliminate it for all time? Senator Javits had his doubts.

    The United States Civil Rights Commission, in its report following the Election of 1960, had made twenty-seven recommendations to Congress with the aim of protecting and promoting the civil rights of the American people. Of those, Javits observed, only a handful had been acted upon in any substantial way in the two years following the report’s release. One of the recommendations had been the elimination of electoral literacy tests, another the elimination of poll taxes. But while the Senate was in the process of addressing both of these issues, Javits openly wondered at the sincerity of certain members of the same. A draft bill banning literacy tests had only recently been sent to committee, the result of which, Javits was sure, would be a full hearing on the Senate floor. But if the assembled senators, in the meantime, endorsed the banning of poll taxes by amendment, would that not set a binding precedent for the banning of literacy tests as well? Would it not render invalid the legislative approach to civil rights reform? And was this not, perhaps, the aim of certain senators, to raise the threshold of support that civil rights reforms were required to clear? Indeed, Javits further wondered, was this all part of the plan of the opponents of civil rights? Was it not quite likely the case “that the most ardent segregationist, if he could settle for these two matters, literacy tests and poll taxes, and know that that is all there would be, would probably support these measures himself [?]”

    The surest way to combat such plots – if, indeed, such plots were in motion – was to pursue what Senator Javits called “the statutory route.” That is, rather than seek a constitutional amendment – which would require supermajority support in both houses of Congress and the ratification of two-thirds of the various state legislatures – the opponents of the poll tax should instead simply seek to propose a law with the effect of banning the same. “We have the right and we have the duty,” the New Yorker accordingly asserted,

When that question arises, to take the path which in good conscience will most directly and immediately lead to the desired result. That very clearly is the path of a statute. I will be prepared to argue that that path is entirely constitutional and entirely appropriate under the amendments to the Constitution as well as under the Constitution itself, and also under the decided cases of the United States Supreme Court.

The notion that an amendment to the Constitution might not even have been necessary in order to ban the levying of poll taxes is compelling enough on its own, of course. Javits was effectively calling into question that last several years of Senator Holland’s career. Had he actually been wasting his time? Could he have achieved his stated goal long ago? The New Yorker seemed to think so. It was his opinion, as a legislator and as a lawyer, that the Constitution already gave Congress the right to regulate the electoral policies of the various states. Recalling the text of Article I, Section 4, one does find potential cause for agreement.

    “The Times, Places and Manner of holding Elections for Senators and Representatives, shall be prescribed in each State by the Legislature thereof [.]” the clause begins, “but the Congress may at any time by Law make or alter such Regulations, except as to the Places of chusing Senators.” Granting that “the manner of holding elections” is rather a vague concept within the context of the law, one might nevertheless reasonably argue that it encompasses the delimitation of qualified electors. Presumably, this is the first step in determining who is registered and who is not. Are they a citizen? Are they of age? Have they committed a felony? Are they otherwise disqualified? In five states, as of 1962, non-payment of a poll tax would register as an alternative disqualification. Presumably, then, under the banner of prescribing “the manner of holding elections” in the various states, Congress might have passed a law which simply declared that failing to pay a poll tax could not be considered a valid bar against casting a ballot in a federal election. The effected states would cry foul and file suit, of course, leaving the legislation in question in legal limbo for some time. But if only these five states stood in opposition to the relevant bill – thus making a successful filibuster in the Senate effectively impossible – then it still might have been faster to go the statutory route. That is to say, depending on how long it took the matter to be resolved in the federal courts, an anti-poll tax bill could potentially become law in less time than it would take for an anti-poll tax amendment to be successfully ratified by the states.

    More interesting, however, in terms of Javits’s argument to his fellow senators, was his open speculation that there was more than there seemed to the discussion at hand. “The most ardent segregationist,” he said, “if he could settle for these two matters, literacy tests and poll taxes, and know that that is all there would be, would probably support these measures himself.” And was that not what was happening? Of the recommendations put forward by the aforementioned Civil Rights Commission, the only two that had received anything like widespread support in Congress were the banning of literacy tests and the banning of poll taxes. Not everyone was in favor of either or both of these measures, to be sure. Southern Democrats in particular offered their share of resistance. But a bill meant to eliminate literacy tests had made it to committee in the Senate. And a proposed amendment eliminating the poll tax had some sixty co-sponsors. How was it, after decades of obfuscation and obstruction, that the segregationists serving in Congress had suddenly decided to give way? Not on everything, mind you; the Commission had made a great number of recommendations, of which the assembled lawmakers had determined to address but a fraction. But even so, agreeing to allow any of the Jim Crow regime to be dismantled by federal fiat was more than a little remarkable. Had the segregationists finally seen the writing on the wall? Had the aforementioned activism of the Warren Court finally forced them to admit that the era of segregation was coming to a close? This may have been all that it was, of course. The segregationists in Congress may simply have realized that they were fighting a losing battle and were moving slowly toward full integration only to salve their wounded pride. But Jacob Javits suspected otherwise.

    Without going into all of the reasons the New Yorker might have had to distrust the apparent quiescence of his Southern Democratic colleagues, the fact that Spessard Holland was the principal supporter of the anti-poll tax crusade was arguably cause enough for suspicion. True, Holland had been one of the legislators responsible for seeing Florida’s own poll tax repealed in the late 1930s. And it was also true that he’d pursued a national ban on the same in every session of Congress since he first joined the Senate in the late 1940s. But so much had changed since those deeply troubled days. The United States was no longer in the throes of a devastating economic crisis and its accompanying political realignment. In the late 1930s, it had made perfect sense for a Florida Democrat looking to shore up support for his party while also making a name for himself to support a populist measure like eliminating the poll tax in order to extend the franchise to the increasingly impoverished working classes. It also arguably made sense to carry on this same effort at the federal level in the late 1940s, if for no other reason than to ensure that no veteran returning to an uncertain job market would be forced to swallow disenfranchisement as a reward for their service. But by 1962, the political calculus of American public life had fundamentally shifted. The New Deal Coalition was decidedly fraying, alleviating the plight of the working poor was no longer the national priority it once was, and the events of the 1950s had lent new impetus to the movement for civil rights.

    For Spessard Holland, in this altered context, to nonetheless continue seeking a national ban on poll taxes would accordingly have seemed to many an observer to be more than a little inexplicable. The man was, after all, an avowed segregationist. He’d come out vehemently in opposition to Brown v. Board of Education in 1954. He’d signed the Southern Manifesto in 1956. He’d voted against the Civil Rights Act of 1957. There was no question as to his bona fides as a Southern, states’ rights Democrat. And yet, into the 1960s, he was still pushing for a ban on poll taxes, one of the cornerstones of the Southern Jim Crow regime. Could he not see that the political landscape had shifted under his feet? Did he not understand that in the years since his tenure as a state senator in Florida, the idea of eliminating poll taxes had taken on a liberal reformist connotation? Evidently, he did not, for which reason people on both sides of the issue were given to question his motives. His fellow Southerners, like Richard Russell, thought he’d grown soft on segregation, or else believed that he was foolishly trying to appease those calling for reform. Oddly enough, Senator Javits seemed to agree with the latter assessment. Perhaps Holland was of the opinion that eliminating the poll tax by constitutional amendment would placate the foes of segregation by granting them an impressive enough victory to stave off further demands for reform, both men observed. Russell had defied this impression explicitly when he earlier chided Holland on the subject, of course. Far from quieting down the mounting furor, he said, “the adoption of this amendment would be like feeding a couple of peanuts to a hungry bear: It would only whet his appetite for more [.]” But did all segregationists feel this way? Did some of them – perhaps even most of them – secretly hope that Holland’s effort would succeed, thus staving off further intervention by the federal government into state affairs? Jacob Javits, once again, very much seemed to think so, the fact of which further highlights how strange was the situation at hand. That an anti-poll tax amendment was on the verge of being approved by the Senate in the spring of 1962, given the circumstances, was not all that odd. But that it was being championed by Florida Democrat who otherwise favored segregation? That was odd. Decidedly so.