The portion of the debate on Florida Senator Spessard Holland’s proposed anti-poll-tax amendment that took place during the March 16th, 1962 session of the United States Senate was substantially less cordial than that which occurred over the course of the session of the previous day. Having failed to make much headway in their attempt to see the measure categorically defeated, Southern senators James Eastland and J. Lister Hill seemed to grow more desperate and less genial as their attempts at obfuscation and diversion were repeatedly rebuffed or dismissed. And while the odds remained strongly in favor of the eventual passages of Holland’s coveted joint resolution – his sixty-something cosponsors having remained steadfast in their support – having to listen to their opponents babble on and on until they tired themselves out inevitably took its toll on Holland and his various allies. The result, before very long, was a discussion that seemed to have about as much to do with the relative merits of the constitutional amendment the Floridian was seeking to propose as it did with the sectional rivalries of the day, the specific partisan circumstances of the early 1960s, and the character of the legislators involved. And this was, in many ways, par for the course. The rhythms of representative democracy, even at the best of times, are often defined as much by the personalities of the individuals doing the representing as by who or what they claim to represent. That being said, the March 16th, 1962 debate on what would soon enough become the 24th Amendment to the Constitution would seem to be a particularly fascinating example of just that. While the Civil Rights Movement was, at that moment, already in effect, it was still early in the process by which the most egregious ills of the Jim Crow regime would eventually be dismantled. Battlelines were yet in the process of being drawn and it remained possible – if only just – for a segregationist Southerner like Spessard Holland to pursue electoral reform without necessarily fearing for his continued electability.
This isn’t to say, of course, that
Holland’s fellow Southerners didn’t try their damnedest to disrupt the relevant
proceedings. Far from concluding that their efforts of the previous day had proven
the futility of their cause, a night’s contemplation instead seemed to convince
Eastland and Hill that the way forward for them lay in sabotage. Specifically,
they sought to weaponize the power of the federal government to “meddle in the
affairs” of the various states in order to court the ire of their Senate
colleagues from Maine and Vermont and expand the discussion about poll taxes
into a wider conversation on the nature of American federalism. And in order to
do this, they proposed an amendment of their own. “The Senator from Mississippi
does not believe in meddling in the affairs of the sovereign States [,]”
Eastland stated by way of an opener.
However, if the Senate is determined
to meddle in the affairs of my State and other States on the question of the
poll tax, it is my judgment that we should go into all phases of that question.
If the Senate is determined to adopt such an amendment, then at the proper time
the distinguished Senator from Alabama and I shall offer an amendment to the
joint resolution which would prohibit the requirement of the payment of a poll
tax to operate a motor vehicle on the public highways. I think the people of
the great States of Maine and Vermont should be rescued from such a condition,
if Congress proposes to meddle in the affairs of the States.
This represented,
of course, the instrumentalization of one of the arguments Eastland and Hill
had deployed the previous day. Namely, that the poll taxes levied by Maine and
Vermont, because they prevented the nonpaying citizens of those same states
from obtaining driver’s licenses, were more egregious in practice than those of
Alabama or Mississippi. On March 15th, this assertion had
effectively gone nowhere. Not even the senators from Maine and Vermont had
deigned to respond. And so now, a day later, the pair were attempting to drive
that same issue home in manner was more likely – they hoped – to elicit a
forceful response.
“Today,” as
Eastland accordingly went on to explain,
Under the statutes of Maine and the
statutes of Vermont, before a person can secure a license to operate a motor
vehicle, he must pay a poll tax. Our plan is much more pertinent to those
States, because in Maine and Vermont the U.S. Government contributes up to 90
percent of the cost of the construction of highways. Those highways are open to
everyone. They are for public use. Yet those States provide that a motor
vehicle may not be operated unless the driver has paid a poll tax.
Again, this could
hardly be said to represent new information. The pair had explained this exact
set of circumstances to their colleagues in the Senate during its March 15th
session without much effect at all. All that differed this time was the broader
context of the conversation. Whereas previously, Eastland and Hill had only been
attempting to divert their fellow senator’s attention, now, they sought to
splinter the coalition Holland had assembled in favor of his proposed amendment
by introducing a very targeted poison pill. They cried crocodile tears all the
while, to be sure, unwilling as they repeatedly stated that they were to
“meddle in the affairs of other States” under less than catastrophic
circumstances. But the passage of an anti-poll-tax amendment was evidently a
bona fide catastrophe. And so the pair of Southerners were willing, in this
instance, to endorse the usage of federal power in such a way that they would
otherwise have abhorred on general principle.
In some ways, Hill and Eastland’s latest strategy amounted to a species of political accelerationism. Not in the contemporary 21st century sense of the term, perhaps, by which right-wing and left-wing groups seek to promote social collapse and regeneration by the intensification of unrestricted capitalism on the one hand and interethnic social strife on the other. But there was undeniably a quality of calculated abandon to what the pair of Southerners proposed. By their own admission, they detested even the thought of federal power being used in a coercive manner against the states. So why, then, faced with just such a measure in the form of Holland’s aforementioned amendment, were they now proposing to move even further in that same direction? The answer, seemingly, was that they hoped to turn the majority of their fellow senators against ever even contemplating any such initiative again. Senator Holland wants to pass an amendment because he doesn’t like the laws in certain states? Well, why stop there? Why doesn’t every senator pick out a state law they don’t like and draft an amendment that will strike it down? Why doesn’t the Senate make it its sole business going forward to police the laws of the states? Like a teenager caught with a cigarette and told by their parents to smoke the whole pack, a Senate thus glutted with extremely specific amendments targeting one state law after another would become – figuratively speaking – too sick to function. Was this actually going to happen? Almost certainly not. But by attempting to kick off the process by which it might happen – in the form of an amendment intended to change the behavior of only two out of fifty states – Hill and Eastland were threatening to mire the Senate in a great deal of pointless sectional and partisan conflict in much the same way that senators in the present era can elicit a desirable reaction by merely threatening to filibuster a bill that they claim to dislike.
In any case, after going on once more about the cost of the federal highway system – the federal government, they repeated again and again, paid for ninety percent or better – Hill and Eastland then proceeded to proclaim the existence of a transparently absurd set of conditions under which the peoples of Maine and Vermont were supposedly suffering. “As the Senator from Mississippi has pointed out in connection with the Maine statute and the Vermont statute,” Hill began, “if a citizen of one of those States does not pay his poll tax, he not only cannot drive his automobile, but he cannot even drive his car if he wishes to leave the State, if he sees fit to leave it. Is that correct?” “That is correct [,]” Eastland dutifully replied. “One who does not pay his poll tax can move out of Alabama or out of Mississippi; but one who does not pay his poll tax cannot even move out of either Maine or Vermont with his family.” “So,” Hill then asked, “so far as Maine and Vermont are concerned, such a person is absolutely a captive there; he cannot drive in his car out of either of those States, if he does not pay his poll tax, and if he is a citizen of one of those States. Is that correct?” “Yes,” answered Eastland, “the Senator from Alabama is entirely correct, as he usually is.” All of this amounted to a patently ridiculous assertion, of course. While it may have been the case, legally speaking, that such residents of Maine and Vermont as were unable or unwilling to pay their annual poll taxes were formally prohibited from being granted a license to operate a motor vehicle, this did not necessarily mean that they were therefore “captive” within said states. Besides the fact that nothing in the laws of either of those states – as cited by Senator Eastland – declared that non-payment of a poll tax would result in the active confiscation of a driver’s license that had been issued previously, it was also most assuredly the case that a significant number of people in both of these states could and did drive either without being licensed or with a license that had expired.
The largest group of people whose very existence defied Eastland and Hill’s cited claim were the doubtless many thousands of Mainers and Vermonters who had paid their poll tax, been granted licenses, and then found themselves unable or unwilling to pay again. They would be caught, of course, if their license expired and they sought to have it renewed without first ensuring that their accumulated tax burden had been paid in full. But in the meantime, between renewals, nonpayment could hardly be said to result in immediate captivity. On the contrary – and in direct contravention to the assertion made by Senator Eastland – a resident of either state could easily pay their poll tax, obtain a license, refuse to pay any further, wait until just before the relevant renewal period, and then leave the state forever. They would have to get a new license wherever it was they settled, of course, but payment of a poll tax would almost certainly not be a prerequisite.
It has also historically been the case that in rural areas of the United States – which both Maine and Vermont possess in abundance – people learn to drive at what might seem to most city dwellers to be a shockingly young age. And one result of this tendency is that, by the time most young people are first getting their learner’s permit, these country-bred youths have already been behind the wheel for quite a number of years. Folks who come from rural America, in consequence – and this was particularly the case in the early to mid-20th century – sometimes don’t even bother going to the trouble of being formally licensed. This being especially the case in particularly remote regions of the country located at great distance from the nearest outpost of the relevant licensing body, it would seem a reasonably safe bet to conclude that a significant number of the people whose wretched fate Eastland and Hill were lamenting had no cause to fear being perpetually stranded in their home states. They had started driving without being licensed and they would simply continue to do so, quite apart from whether or not they were able or willing to pay their poll taxes.
Finally, it was also almost certainly the plain truth that a great many people in the states of Maine and Vermont were – as of the spring of 1962 – operating motor vehicles while possessed of licenses that had expired. Indeed, this is almost certainly the case in just about every licensing jurisdiction in the world at any given time. Sometimes, people don’t notice that their licenses have expired. Or they do, but they put it off. Or they do, and try to renew it, but they just can’t seem to find the time. And all the while, they keep driving themselves to work, and to pick up their children, and to doctor’s appointments, and so on. If ever they were pulled over, they’d be in for a citation and a fine, at the least. But unless and until they ever run afoul of the law – and most people don’t get pulled over more than a handful of times in their life – the fact that they’re not legally permitted to drive a car does not in any way stop them from doing exactly that.
None of this should be taken as any kind of judgement upon the good peoples of Maine and Vermont, mind you. They were not, and are not, especially or unusually irresponsible, or in any way lacking in civic virtue or respect for the law. The same things that were true of these two states in the early 1960s could be said about any other state at that same moment in time. And this is exactly the reason that Eastland and Hill’s argument made no sense. The relationship in these two Northeastern states between poll taxes and motor vehicle licenses was no more absolute than that which exists at any given time anywhere between motor vehicle licenses and those who actually get behind the wheel. Simply because a given jurisdiction requires a person to possess a valid license in order to drive a car, one cannot then conclude that everyone who does drive within said jurisdiction actually possesses a valid license. Some people don’t feel the need to bother with licenses. Some people forget to renew them when they expire. These are simply facts of life. But no one becomes incapable of driving the very moment the law says they should. As discussed above, there were – and are – plenty of ways that a person who is technically no longer licensed to drive a car – or was never licensed to drive a car – can still go on doing so without any repercussions. Just so, it was most certainly that case that a person living in either Maine or Vermont in the early 1960s could have neglected to pay their poll taxes for years on end – thus becoming legally ineligible to operate a motor vehicle – without in any way becoming “captive” within the confines of either of those states.
As was the case with just about every argument they had made within the context of this particular debate, neither Eastland nor Hill were necessarily intent on making particularly logical or consistent assertions, however. They did not want their fellow senators, in short, to give what they were saying a great deal of thought. On the contrary, all that they desired was to engage their colleagues’ emotions. They wanted to rile them up, to trigger their sympathies, to get them feeling rather than thinking. The various scenarios they went on to paint would seem to make this quite clear. “If such a person remains in either the State of Maine or the State of Vermont,” Senator Hill continued, “he cannot drive his car to business or to church or to take his children to school or to seek recreation or to visit his friends or to go to the hospital.” Senator Eastland, by way of agreement, then went on to add that, “If a resident of one of those States found that his wife was dying, he could not take her in his automobile to a hospital, unless he had previously paid his poll tax.” Since, as aforementioned, the basic premise of these assertions was patently illogical, the only purpose they could have served was to tug at the heartstrings of those who were listening. Driving to work, driving to church, driving one’s children off to school; the invocation of such simple tasks was doubtless meant to conjure images of the celebrated “regular American” to whom the nation’s public servants so often pledge their fealty. To rob their fellow citizens of the ability to thus earn a living, worship freely, or see to their children’s proper upbringing was accordingly tantamount to the most heinous of crimes. And as far as Senator Eastland and Senator Hill were concerned, this was exactly what the states of Maine and Vermont were doing. By making the issuance of a driver’s license contingent on the payment of an annual poll tax, Maine and Vermont were guilty – supposedly – of preventing millions of their own residents who either could not pay or would not pay from taking part in some of the most essential aspects of the contemporary American experience.
This simply wasn’t true, of course, for the reasons discussed at length above. But truth, once again, wasn’t what Hill and Eastland were aiming for. What they sought, above all, was a convenient form of distraction. First, they wanted to direct their fellow senators away from any further consideration of the questionable morality of the poll tax laws then in force in their home states. Certainly, some people could argue that placing financial restrictions on the franchise was not in the best interests of the affected community. But what about placing the same restrictions on one of the most basic activities that most adult Americans engaged in? People voted once or twice every handful of years, but millions of Americans drove somewhere every day of their lives. So, in what way were the poll tax laws at that moment in force in Alabama and Mississippi worse, in a practical sense, than those on the books in Maine and Vermont? It was a game of sleight-of-hand, in essence, an attempt at misdirection. “Look over there,” the pair of Southerners might have said, “and whatever you do, don’t look back.” Cheap chicanery, one might call it. Sensationalism. Mawkishness. Or, as far as the Senate goes, business as usual.
Their homes states having thus been accused of subjecting the inhabitants thereof to a downright un-American set of conditions, the representatives of Maine and Vermont then present in the Senate chamber – Edmund Muskie (1914-1996) and Margaret Chase Smith (1897-1995), and Winston L. Prouty (1906-1971) and George Aiken (1892-1984), respectively – would most assuredly have been forgiven for actively condemning the relevant remarks. If Hill and Eastland then persisted, this would surely have prompted further discussion. Not about the necessity or the propriety of banning the poll tax by constitutional fiat, mind you, but rather about which state’s poll tax was the most objectionable in its effects. And the longer that this new conversation was dragged out by its Southern instigators, the more time the pair would have to think up new ways of keeping a proposal for an anti-poll-tax amendment from actually reaching the Senate floor for a vote. The two men would never admit this, of course. As far as their fellow senators were concerned, Hill and Eastland cared only about the wellbeing of their fellow Americans. “I do not believe in meddling in the affairs of the great States of Maine and Vermont,” the Mississippian reiterated accordingly,
But if we are going into this question
we should certainly rescue their people and give them adequate access to the
highways for which the Federal Government puts up most of the money to
maintain. The distinguished Senator from Alabama and I, if the Senate is so
determined, give notice that, at the proper time, we will offer an amendment to
this measure.
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