After a relatively brief foray into the various other matters which the Senate was due to confront at that moment in time, the session of March 15th, 1962 did eventually return to the subject of the poll tax and its elimination. Specifically, it returned to the same three-man dynamic which had characterized the earlier discussion on the matter. Senators Eastland and Hill continued – by whatever means they could conjure – to throw obstacles into the path of a swift passage of a Senate Joint Resolution while Senator Holland – with abiding patience – continued to calmly but firmly dismiss them. In this instance, rather than Hill, it was Eastland who took the lead, though the substance of his commentary ended up being much the same as that of his colleague. Or rather, as that of his colleagues, for he chose initially to return to a point made previously by Senator Russell. As the Georgian had asserted during the discussion of March 14th, Senator Holland’s apparent intention to substitute a proposed amendment for a piece of legislation was not only highly irregular but also plainly unconstitutional. “The senior Senator from Florida [,]” Eastland accordingly observed,
Now proposes to be an alchemist, one
who would transfer base metals into gold, or a magician so adept that he can
drop a rabbit in a hat and pull out a polecat. His proposal confronts a constitutional
barrier that is insurmountable.
It now being his turn to play the dutiful straight-man, Senator Hill then piped in with his assuredly planned response. “It is a fact, is it not,” he said, referring to Holland’s previous attempt to secure an anti-poll tax amendment in 1961, “that it was a resolution to amend the Constitution of the United States?”
This was not a question that anyone particularly needed answering, of course. If the text of the Congressional Record was not clear enough on the matter, the incident in question had occurred in that same Senate chamber less than one year prior. Holland had last attempted to secure an amendment in the usual manner. And now, as a trio of Southern senators had each of them made clear, he was advancing the same measure in a distinctly different fashion. Indeed, it was Hill’s contention – and Eastland’s, and Russell’s – that Holland was knowingly attempting to circumvent some of the most essential rules of Senate procedure by doing so. “It was recognized [,]” Eastland thus elaborated,
That the only way the Senate can
proceed to amend the Constitution of the United States is by means of a joint
resolution. which does not have to go to the President of the United States. In
fact, we would violate the Constitution of the United States if we tried to
proceed to amend the Constitution through legislation. However, that is what is
being attempted in this case.
Hill, as was his wont, then stepped in to explain. “Any proposal to amend the Constitution of the United States must be passed by two-thirds votes in both Houses of Congress,” he affirmed, “whereas a legislative proposal requires only majority votes.” Thus it was, at long last, that the southerners put forward a somewhat substantive argument.
There are distinct procedural requirements in place when it came to the approval of legislation and amendments, respectively. A proposed amendment to the Constitution, in order to be submitted to the approval of the states, has to first receive the formal approbation of two-thirds of a quorum of each of the houses of Congress. A normal piece of legislation, by comparison, needs the support of only a simple majority in both chambers before being sent on to the President for their signature of veto. Practically speaking, of course, the existence of the filibuster effectively raises the threshold of support for normal legislation to two-thirds as well, but this is only true if a senator – or a group of senators – are inclined to force the issue. And in the years before the creation of the “two-track” system in the early 1970s, most senators tended not to. Southern, pro-segregation Democrats deployed them most frequently – specifically when the Senate moved to consider a civil rights bill of some sort – but even they understood that constantly grinding the business of Congress to a halt would ultimately hurt their cause more than help it. In consequence, while the distinction to which Eastland and Hill were attempting to draw the attention of their colleagues was indeed a very real one, it was also somewhat ambiguous as to whether it applied in all cases. In this particular case, it really was a moot point. At last count, Senator Holland’s joint resolution had some sixty-eight co-sponsors, more than enough to clear the threshold of support required to either defeat a filibuster or secure the approval of a proposed amendment. If that number were lower and a filibuster was somehow prevented from taking place, of course, one might conceivably have claimed that Holland was trying to play a fast one by gaining approval for a proposed amendment by way of a simple majority vote. But since this was demonstrably not the case – since Holland, as aforementioned, already had more support than he needed – Hill and Eastland’s objective remained somewhat unclear.
Unclear, that is, until they went on to explain themselves further. Responding to Senator Hill, Senator Eastland signaled his agreement before elucidating one last crucial point. “Throughout the entire history of the Senate,” he explained,
When constitutional amendments have
been substituted or when a legislative proposal has been amended by striking
out all after the enacting clause and inserting, in lieu thereof, a proposal to
amend the Constitution of the United States, that has been done by unanimous
consent of the Senate; and that is the only proper way and the only legal way
in which it can be done. Therefore, I now give notice that under no conditions
can unanimous consent be obtained, because I and other Senators will object.
One is given to
wonder why it was that neither Hill, nor Eastland, nor Russell had seen fit to
make this argument at some earlier point in the discussion. For hours, they
been arguing between them that the poll tax was perfectly permissible under the
American system of republican government, that there was precedent in its favor
stretching back as far as the Anglo-Saxons, and that seeking to eliminate it by
way of an amendment would somehow trigger the end of American civilization.
They’d even avowed – if somewhat unconvincingly – that attempting to substitute
a proposed amendment for a piece of normal legislation was improper and
impermissible. But until now, for whatever reason, they’d never made their
case quite as simply as Holland had been making his. The Floridian had
been saying, since nearly the beginning, that he simply wished to submit the
elimination of the poll tax to the jury of the states, and that the
Constitution gave him the power to do so. Had his opponents responded just as
early on that while his intentions were all well and good, the method he had
chosen was not possible within the context of contemporary Senate rules, one
wonder how much more quickly the whole matter might have been resolved.
Regardless of their exact reasoning
– the intricacies of which remain mysterious to this day – the pair of senators
who’d stood in opposition to Holland’s anti-poll tax amendment since the start
of business on March 15th did eventually arrive at a practical
argument against it. As far as substituting a proposed amendment for a normal
piece of legislation was concerned, “unanimous consent is required [,]”
Eastland avowed. “That is the way it has been done throughout the history of
this body.” And unanimous consent was not something that the Mississippian was
at all inclined to provide. “I, for one,” he continued, “do not give unanimous
consent; and I emphatically object to having the present amendment in the
nature of a substitute attached to Senate Joint Resolution 29.” Now, any
reasonable person would tend to conclude from this statement that the
discussion at hand was more or less at an end. If, as Senator Eastland made
note, unanimous consent was both required of Holland’s proposal and not in the
least bit forthcoming, the Senate should accordingly have moved on while the
Floridian considered his options. His joint resolution still had over sixty
guaranteed votes. And so its passage – once it got to the floor – was something
of a fait accompli. Holland would just need to find a new way to introduce it. In
the meantime, as Holland strategized, Hill and Eastland could go to work
chipping away at the coalition the Floridian had assembled. Provided they worked
fast enough – and were convincing enough – they needn’t have spoken another
word on the floor.
As it happened, however, this was not
the end of Hill and Eastland’s little routine. They could have rested
their case. Indeed, perhaps they should have rested their case. Instead,
they kept arguing, kept grasping, kept casting about for purchase. More than
winning the debate at hand, they seemed to just want it to keep going. And so
they switched, yet again, to another topic of conversation entirely. Eastland
began with a little reflection before finally coming to the point. “While I am
one of those who have always believed that the poll tax was a legitimate
prerequisite to exercise of the franchise,” he said,
And that it was unwise to adopt any constitutional
amendments which would deny to a State the right to levy a poll tax if it so
chose, I do admit that over a long period of years a great number of persons
have disagreed with my personal views in this regard. It is now heartening to
see that the pendulum is swinging back to my point of view. No less person than
the President of the United States, in a recent message to Congress,
wholeheartedly endorsed the principle involved in the poll tax.
Earlier that same
day, Eastland had attempted to make this exact argument. Holland declined to
take the bait at the time, so here was Eastland trying to make it again. “It is
the opinion of the United States that special assessments voted by a two-thirds
majority of the General Assembly are obligatory [,]” he elaborated.
The President here is not only
stating his opinion, but he purports to speak for the United States. If the
United States believes that a nation which does not pay its assessments should
be denied the right to vote in the General Assembly of the United Nations, then
where is the consistency in saying that a sovereign State cannot require a
small per capita or head tax as a prerequisite for its citizens to exercise the
privilege of suffrage?
As with so much of what either Eastland or Hill had said over the course of the debate concerning Senator Holland’s proposed anti-poll tax amendment, there really wasn’t very much to this argument. What Eastland was arguing for, in his own words, was consistency. If the government of the United States was prepared to uphold the notion that a lack of annual dues payments within the context of the United Nations should render the delinquent country unable to cast a vote therein, then it only made sense for that same government to recognize the right of any of the American states to withhold the franchise from those of its citizens who similarly failed to pay a head tax. “Is there any reason or justification that a separate standard of conduct should be imposed on nations than that which is required of the individuals who make up any sovereignty, be it a State or a nation?” the Mississippian asked his fellow senators accordingly. His answer, of course, would have been a resounding “no,” notwithstanding the fact that the premise of the question was more than a little nonsensical. Not only was the United States in no way legally obligated to maintain any degree of practical consistency between the many and various mechanisms of its foreign and domestic policy, but the specific comparison to which Eastland was attempting to draw his colleagues’ attention was also an exceptionally awkward one.
The United Nations possesses no more authority over its members states than those member states are willing to grant it. Not being able to vote therein, while certainly frustrating to those countries that value concepts like international law and collective decision making, accordingly amounts to very little if a given nation is determined to pursue a particular course. Granted, UN peacekeeping missions have helped to arrest the violent activities of certain countries in the past, but as often – indeed, perhaps more often – UN resolutions are little more than dead letters. If enough members states possessed of sufficient practical power between them don’t care to enforce a particular decision of the UN, then it doesn’t really matter who voted for what. The citizens of Mississippi, circa 1962, did not have the same relationship with the government of their state. Citizens were not directly responsible for policing other citizens, for one thing. The state itself was possessed of all the power and all the resources necessary to enforce its own decisions on its own terms. Also, the number of areas in which state authority could and did affect the day-to-day existence of the people of Mississippi far exceeded the relatively narrow scope of influence which the United Nations could possibly claim to hold over the nations of the world. In consequence, whereas a UN member state could decline to pay its dues and then violate international law with relative impunity – knowing that, so long as it maintained good relations with the right countries, nothing would come of its brazenness – a citizen of the Magnolia State who hadn’t paid their poll tax could not similarly violate state law with the expectation that their friends and neighbors would simply decline to hold them to account. Mississippi, as aforementioned, had all the resources and all the legal justification that it needed in order to enforce obedience to its authority upon any and all perceived violators. In consequence, one of only ways for a Mississippian who felt that a given law or policy was unjust and should not be obeyed to translate their feelings into action was to vote.
To be sure, organized campaigns of civil resistance have wrung tremendous change out of even the most stubbornly conservative regimes. But for those unwilling to potentially risk their lives – a state of mind for which no one should be made to apologize – electoral politics represents the surest means by which governments can be made to respond to the changing needs of those who are otherwise beholden to their authority. And while there are any number of ways in which even the most progressive electoral systems are weighted or biased towards certain outcomes or demographics, it also cannot be denied that, historically speaking, elections have been directly responsible for some of the most dramatic political developments – revolutions; transformations – ever recorded. Mississippi, at the best of times, is susceptible to this basic characteristic of democratic regimes the world over. The citizens of Mississippi can vote their way to the change that they want to see. And it is for that reason, among others, that the ability of Mississippians – and Americans more broadly – to vote was, is, and will always be extremely important. The United Nations, by comparison, really isn’t a democratic regime. Member states can and do vote, of course. But there really isn’t any guarantee that their votes are going to trigger any meaningful change. Sometimes they do, to be sure. Sometimes successful UN resolutions result in dramatic international collective action. But as often as not – again, really more often than not – being able to vote in the UN General Assembly or the Security Council, or being barred from the same, really doesn’t stop sufficiently powerful countries – or those possessed of sufficiently powerful allies – from simply doing whatever it is they want to do.
Assuming that he was even aware of this distinction – and let us assume, for his own sake, that he was at least that perceptive – one may rest assured that Senator Eastland was only interested in justifying his previously stated position. It didn’t matter to him in the slightest that barring a citizen of a given state from voting was not at all, in its practical effects, like barring a member nation of the UN from exercising that same right. All that he cared about was that, when looked at from a certain angle, recent declarations on the part of the Kennedy Administration could be argued to equate to support for the principle of the poll tax. Under normal circumstances, Eastland did not give a toss for the United Nations. Nor was it in any way a given that he should have embraced the policy pronouncements of President John F. Kennedy. Though the two men were members of the same political party, Kennedy was a Northwestern liberal while Eastland was a Southern conservative. And while Kennedy needed the support of men like Eastland in order to push his various legislative priorities through Congress, what men like Eastland needed from Kennedy was that he simply let the South keep being the South. If there was much love between them, in short, it was a marriage of convenience first and foremost. And yet here, on March 15th, Senator James Eastland of Mississippi invoked Kennedy and his administration as though he held them in the highest esteem. “The President of the United States,” he said, “the Secretary of State of the United States, the Ambassador of the United States to the United Nations have in principle endorsed the theory of the poll tax and have made it the official policy of the United States Government.” One wonders whom Eastland would not have spoken of in the most glowing terms if only they would say something that could vaguely be construed as supportive.
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