As quickly as he had shifted his tone during the Senate session of March 16th from one of weary gratitude to something perhaps best described as acidic condescension – the better to upbraid his Southern critics, J. Lister Hill and James Eastland – Senator Holland then proceeded to switch moods yet again, this time to his more customary attitude of matter-of-fact persistence. He was eager, he said, to answer the question posed the day prior by his colleague from Kentucky, the aforementioned Senator Morton, as to whether or not the Kennedy Administration supported the abolition of the poll tax. It was his contention that they did, of course, but he was particularly keen on offering proof that could be read into the Record. So it was that Holland proceeded to quote at length from a piece of testimony delivered before an arm of the Senate Judiciary Committee by Assistant Attorney General Nicholas Katzenbach (1922-2012). It was Mr. Katzenbach’s conviction, it would seem – and in this, he claimed to speak for both the Department of Justice and for the President himself – that while poll taxes may once have served the purpose of actively expanding access to the franchise – a poll tax being, in his words, “easier to meet than general taxpaying or property qualifications” – its purpose was altered in the late 19th century,
In order to block and discourage the
citizen’s participation at the polls. Today it operates unduly to restrict the
rights of national citizenship by disenfranchising thousands of white and Negro
voters. It is an arbitrary condition which bears no reasonable relation to a
citizen’s fitness to vote.
While this would seem to have been a fairly definitive declaration of the Kennedy Administration’s position on the nature of the poll tax and the need for its abolition, there nevertheless remained some amount of disagreement – however good-natured – between Senator Holland and Senator Keating. The New Yorker remained convinced, based on other remarks made by representatives of the Justice Department, that simple legislation was still the preferred method of eliminating the poll tax, though he was still by no means opposed to Senator Holland’s prospective amendment. The Floridian seemed not at all distressed by this assertion – he admitted that the Attorney General himself had voiced his support for both the statutory and constitutional approaches – and merely attempted to point out what recent history had proven; namely, that an anti-poll-tax bill was unlikely to receive sufficient support in the Senate to secure passage.
It was, in all, a very cordial exchange, and one which in no way threatened to derail or divert the course of the debate. Accordingly, it fell to Senator Eastland to once more needlessly complicate the proceedings. First – after gaining permission from Holland to pose a question – he asked Senator Keating precisely why it was that the Attorney General had offered his support for legislation eliminating literacy tests while favoring a constitutional amendment as the best method for banning poll taxes at the federal level. When the New Yorker answered that the Attorney General had actually expressed his support for legislation eliminating either qualification while also voicing specific support for an anti-poll-tax amendment, Eastland proceeded to demand further explanation for the apparent inconsistency. If it was the position of the Justice Department that legislation was the proper method for eliminating literacy tests, he insisted, should it not have followed that this same method was the proper approach for eliminating poll taxes? Keating’s response, as ever, was a measured one. While he still claimed to favor the statutory approach in both cases, he agreed with the conclusion offered by the Civil Rights Commission that discriminatory literacy tests, of the two, more clearly represented a violation of the terms of the 15th Amendment and therefore did not require a separate amendment as a remedy.
To this further invocation of the authority of the Commission on Civil Rights, Senator Eastland reacted with characteristic pettiness. “Can the Senator state an instance where the literacy test has been used to disqualify a person from voting?” he demanded. “Can he name any person who has been so disqualified?” When Keating began to refer back to the testimony of the Attorney General, the Mississippian then proceeded to cut him off. “I am talking about the Senator’s knowledge [,]” he said “Does he know of any? Does he know what he is talking about?” Managing, somehow, to maintain an even temper, Keating assured his Southern colleague that, “There are plenty of instances cited in the reports of the Commission on Civil Rights.” When this, too, failed to mollify the senator from Mississippi – “Who are they?” he insisted – Keating was forced to repeat himself. “The Civil Rights Commission has volumes of evidence on that,” he asserted, “but it is entirely beside the point here.” When Eastland became more agitated still, the New Yorker at last gave vent to his simmering frustration. “I do not propose to engage in unnecessary debate upon a subject which has no pertinency to the proposed amendment which relates to the poll tax [,]” he declared.
The Senator from Florida very kindly
yielded to me, but I did not ask him to yield to me for the purpose of engaging
in an extended discussion with the Senator from Mississippi about information
readily available in the reports of the Commission on Civil Rights.
Keating, too, clearly had limits in terms of his patience. He was willing to engage with Eastland, at least, and willing to answer some of his questions. But there was a point beyond which he was not willing to be drawn out. The Mississippian, as ever, was trying to distract his opponents by bogging the discussion down in an argument about minutiae whose emotional resonance far outstripped its actual significance to the matter at hand.
The names of those unlucky Americans who had been disenfranchised as a result of discriminatory literacy tests or poll taxes were not, under the circumstances, of any great importance. Nor was the fact that Keating seemed unable to call any one of them to mind. These people did exist. Their stories had been recorded by the Commission on Civil Rights and their names had been published in its publicly available report. Calling out any one of them on the floor of the Senate would have done nothing to either change this fact or enhance the likelihood that they would receive speedy relief from the assembled lawmakers. Nor would it have quieted down the likes of James Eastland of Mississippi. Because he was not actually demanding proof that such individuals existed. He knew full well that they did. Rather, what he wanted was to make it seem as though they didn’t by forcing the supporters of electoral reform to cast doubt on their existence. It was a sound rhetorical tactic, to be sure – a way of maneuvering one’s opponent into appearing to admit that their primary argument lacked a solid foundation – but not one to which Keating was going to allow himself to fall victim. “I do not propose to engage in unnecessary debate upon a subject which has no pertinency to the proposed amendment [,]” he said, thereby refusing to grant Eastland the rope the Southerner had been persistently trying to play out.
The Mississippian was not about to admit defeat just because he’d been called on his nonsense, of course. On the contrary, his next move was to unilaterally claim victory. “When a Senator makes a statement on the floor of the Senate he should be prepared to back it up [,]” he said. “On this question I ask the Senator to name one living human being whom a literacy test has prevented from voting. He cannot do it. That shows what is behind this whole thing—nothing.” The fallacy at the heart of this declaration is plain enough to see, of course. The fact that Keating was seemingly unable to name even a single disenfranchised victim of the discriminatory literacy tests and poll taxes that remained in force in certain states did not mean, ipso facto, that such people did not exist. He might have done himself the favor of memorizing the name and details of one such person, if for no other reason than to force Eastland, at such a moment as this, to demonstrate how little he actually cared about such things, but it would likely have made very little difference in the long run. Eastland might just as well have cast his eyes upon the most recent report of the Commission on Civil Rights and read any number of these names himself. He would not do that, of course, having previously argued that the Commission was one of the great enemies of the Southern people. But the record of their existence was there for his perusal all the same. That Eastland chose to disregard this fact did not strengthen his argument one iota. Very much to the contrary, it weakened it considerably.
Holland, once again, attempted to appeal to reason. Keating may not have been able to name even one individual whose right to the ballot had been taken from them by contemporary poll tax laws, but the Floridian had seen more than enough of these people with his own eyes to speak unequivocally to the truth of their existence. “As one who has lived in a former poll tax State,” he said,
Who is familiar with the conditions
which prevailed there under the poll tax, which were less onerous than those
now existing in Mississippi, I know that many of our citizens were precluded
from voting. I have seen at the polls good ladies come in, expecting to vote,
and finding that either their husbands had forgotten to pay their poll taxes,
or that they themselves had forgotten to pay them. I have seen literally dozens
of people turned away from the voting booth in the precinct where my wife and I
vote in those far-away days prior to 1937, when we abolished the poll tax. I do
not pretend to be able to name the persons to whom this experience has accrued
in the State of Mississippi, because I do not have the pleasure of knowing many
people there.
What more proof did
the assembled senators need than the good word of one of their own? Holland had
known these people, marked them by the dozens, and had come to the Senate to
speak on their behalf. Naturally, this did not satisfy Eastland, but then only
a fool would think otherwise. From all that Holland had related, he heard only the
man’s admitted ignorance of conditions in Mississippi. “I deny that [,]” he
thus retorted.
The Senator has described horrible
conditions that he says existed in the State of Florida. I deny categorically
that any such thing has happened in the State of Mississippi. I defy anyone on
the floor of the Senate to name anyone to whom it has happened.
Evidently, the poll
tax in Mississippi operated in an entirely different fashion and had entirely
different effects than had previously been the case in Florida. What those
effects might have been, specifically, Eastland was not inclined to say, save
that they absolutely did not result in the disenfranchisement of a single individual.
Unmoved by Eastland’s protest,
Holland continued to make his case. Previously, he had read into the Record
certain remarks made by Assistant Attorney General Katzenbach to the Senate
Judiciary Committee on the subject of the poll tax and its potential abolition.
Now, he was determined to quote from such testimony once more, this time on the
part of the Attorney General – one Robert F. Kennedy (1925-1968) – as delivered
to the Judiciary Committee of the House. “A constitutional amendment is a
realistic and commendable path to the same goal [,]” Kennedy had reportedly
stated. “There should be little doubt of the speedy ratification of such an
amendment, since 45 of our 50 States already do not have such useless
legislation. I therefore endorse this method of eliminating the poll tax as a
condition for voting in elections for Federal offices.” This, as far as Holland
was concerned, should have settled any possible doubts. “I do not see how
anyone hearing these words,” he said, “or seeing them in the printed record can
doubt what the opinion of the Attorney General is and what he has endorsed,
because he is endorsing the constitutional method, which we are intending to
use here.” When Eastland predictably declined to concede the point – “his
reasoning would apply also to a bill [,]” he remarked – Holland then proceeded
to quote from a letter from President Kennedy himself. This letter, he said,
had been sent to him personally, and it made perfectly clear where the leader
of the Executive Branch – not to mention the leader of the Democratic Party –
stood on the issue of the poll tax.
President Kennedy, it seemed, while
serving as a senator, had been one of the many cosponsors of Holland’s most
recent amendment proposal. And while that measure had ultimately gone down to
defeat in the 86th Congress, he nevertheless expressed his support
for the same proposal being reintroduced during the life of the 87th
Congress. “I assure you of my continued support for the principles set forth in
that legislation [,]” he declared accordingly.
Adoption of this proposal would
constitute an important contribution to good government. It would encourage
wider voter participation in the elections for President, Vice President,
Members of the U.S. Senate, and Members of the House of Representatives.
Participation is inevitably accompanied by a strengthened sense of civic
responsibility. I recall your having said many times that the abolition of poll
taxes in Florida contributed to sound government in your State. It was a source
of regret that, although this measure passed the Senate by the overwhelming
vote of 70 to 18 early in 1960, it failed to be enacted. I understand that the
failure of the House to act was due largely to complicated factors unconnected
with the merits of the proposal. This year, a new opportunity to enact this
amendment is presented. I hope it will be considered and approved by the
Congress during this session and submitted to the states for ratification.
It was not, to be
sure, a particularly energetic endorsement. Then again, one couldn’t reasonably
expect every declaration on President Kennedy’s part to be the next “New Frontier”
speech. But it was clear, at the least, what the President was getting at. He
had supported Holland’s anti-poll-tax amendment while serving as a senator as
recently as the 86th Congress. As the President of the United
States, he continued to support Holland’s efforts to that exact same end. And
while he, as the leader of the Executive Branch, had no formal role to play in
either the initial approval or the final ratification of any theoretical
anti-poll-tax amendment, it was nevertheless his hope that just such an
amendment would be approved and ratified with due speed.
Holland was careful not to claim
this presidential endorsement as some kind of binding executive mandate, of
course. “I do not think the President of the United States has the right,” he stated
pointedly,
Nor do I think he has tried, to tell
any Senator or Member of the House how he should vote; but I think the
President has the right, and it is his duty constitutionally, on matters of
grave import, to advise Congress on the state of the Nation; as to how he
believes the Nation may be better served under our laws. He has certainly done
that in the course of this letter, and I am very happy that he has seen fit to
do so.
This was, to be
sure, a canny line on Holland’s part. So much of the domestic power of the
President of the United States comes from the ability of the office to sway
rather than demand and cajole rather than order. The Presidency, for better or
worse, carries a great deal of moral weight – being, as it is, the only elected
office in the nation whose constituency is the nation – and by applying
that weight with care, presidents can accomplish and have accomplished a great
deal within the domestic sphere in spite of having little formal power therein.
Presidents, yes, and also the allies of the same. Eliminating the poll tax was
not Kennedy’s pet project, after all, but clearly, he thought it to be
worthwhile enough to lend the weight of his new office to a former Senate
colleague. He wrote a letter, sent it to Holland, and then Holland waved it
around. “The President,” he said, “is on my side.” It was not a binding
declaration, again, but then it didn’t need to be to be effective. Because what
kind of Democratic senator, in their right mind, would come out in opposition
to the express desire of a Democratic president in the second year of their
first term of what looked likely to be a two-term presidency? The kind with few
friends and little influence, Holland undoubtedly hoped. The kind that talked
to excess and yet was hardly ever heard.
The Floridian seemed eager to make
this hope manifest when next he turned his attention back to his Southern
compatriots. Specifically, it was to Senator Hill that he shifted his focus,
and to the remarks the man had previously made on the subject of franchise
restrictions in the states. “I complimented him [,]” he said,
As highly as I could compliment
anyone for the scholarly way in which he dealt with the subject of the
constitutional history of the States of the Nation in his long and exceedingly
interesting and enjoyable address yesterday. He saved me the necessity of going
into that subject, because certainly a part of our case on the constitutional
amendment is to show the history that lies back of it. I compliment him again
on the thoroughness of his research.
Again, one cannot
help but read a degree of irony into Holland’s uses of the word “long” and the
phrase “exceedingly interesting and enjoyable,” particularly so when one studies
the rest of his remarks. “I comment, however,” he went on to say,
That nine-tenths of his speech, or
perhaps more, was spent on that feature of this question which has nothing at
all to do with this case, except that he firmly established what I would have
otherwise had to establish, namely, that this is a constitutional question and
that it can be dealt with properly only by a constitutional amendment. So I
thank the distinguished Senator from Alabama for that.
“Nine-tenths” of
Hill’s speech, it seemed, had “nothing at all to do with this case.” The
Floridian might as well have declared that his colleague had completely wasted
his breath. Hill had established, at the very least, that the future
disposition of the poll tax was a constitutional question. And Holland was
grateful enough for that, if indeed for nothing else.
Hill’s narrative amounted to little, Senator Holland continued to explain, because he had left out the most important and the most relevant detail of all. Though it was true that a great many states, at one time or another, had instituted some form of franchise restriction, Hill “did not see fit to say, which he could truthfully have said, that every one of those restrictions and limitations has long since been removed by the States themselves [.]” Were franchise restrictions like the poll tax legal and constitutional? Holland freely agreed that they were. But clearly, though the Senator from Alabama had neglected to say as much, the vast majority of the American people had effectively turned against their continued use. By 1962, only five out of fifty states continued to restrict the franchise based on the individual payment of poll taxes. And however much men like Hill and Eastland might have tried to deny or ignore it, this fact, in itself, was exceedingly significant. Because the elections being contested in these states under the aegis of the poll tax were not county or state-level alone. Senators were being chosen, and Representatives, and presidential electors. This made the outcomes of the elections in question matters of national significance.
The Electors chosen by the voters of Alabama or Mississippi, for example, helped to decide who the next president would be. Was it conceivable that their votes would end up tipping the balance in favor of one candidate over another? Absolutely. And the same could be said of the Representatives and Senators elected in these very same states. Alabama and Mississippi were each entitled to the same number of Senators as every other state, thereby granting them the same relative power over cabinet appointments, judicial appointments, binding treaties, and constitutional amendments. It would be fair to say, in consequence, that the voters of Mississippi possessed a degree of power over the foreign and domestic affairs of the nation rather out of proportion with their actual numbers. Bearing this in mind, it could also be said to have mattered a great deal to the inhabitants of particularly populous states like California, and New York, and Pennsylvania, and Florida both whom the voters of states like Alabama and Mississippi chose to represent them and how the laws of these states regulated the franchise therein. State sovereignty, to be sure, need not have been thrown out the window. But if a small handful of less populous states chose their lawmakers and presidential electors along drastically different lines than did the majority, it was bound to create a rather skewed and unsatisfactory outcome for all concerned. Californians and Floridians were apt to feel as through they were being held hostage by these smaller poll tax states – the result being an atmosphere of acrimony and resentment – while the likes of Mississippi and Alabama were liable to feel as though their priorities were not being taken seriously in the great councils of the nation.
Holland sought to illustrate exactly how and why this might all come to pass by delving into some of the electoral statistics recently compiled by the House and the Senate. The issue, he said, was that Senators, and Representatives, and Electors,
Are elected […] by such scanty
percentages of the people of their States as to give rise to the question what
would have happened had there been actual participation in the election by a
much greater number of voters. Let us consider this question for a moment. I
have before me not only the list appearing in the records of the Subcommittee
on Constitutional Amendments of the Committee on the Judiciary […] but also the
statistics of the presidential and congressional election of November 8, 1960
[…] Clearly those two records show what happened in that particular election.
First, it is shown that the two fine States of Alabama and Mississippi […] appear
at the very end of the list of 50 States, from the standpoint of the percentage
of their civilian population of voting age who participated in that election. The
State of Mississippi is shown by these data to have participated in the
election to the extent of 25.63 percent of the qualified electors or those who
were of qualified age, or just a tiny bit over one-fourth of them. The good
State of Alabama, according to this list, is right at the 31-percent mark [.]
Compared to the
rates of electoral participation seen in other states, these were distressing
figures indeed. In California, the voter participation rate for president in
1960 was 67.4%. In Florida, it was a flat 50%, and in Pennsylvania, it was
70.5%. When one also takes into account the differences in relative population
between these states, the extent to which the likes of Alabama and Mississippi
were operating under almost completely different assumptions about electoral
democracy becomes clearer still. In California in 1960, some six and a half
million people cast ballots in support of one presidential candidate or
another. In Mississippi in that same year, a little less than three hundred
thousand people did the same. And while those nearly seven million Californians
represented the majority of that state’s total voting age population of
slightly less than ten million, Mississippi’s vote for president was decided by
a comparatively tiny fraction of its one and a quarter million eligible voters.
In California, therefore, electoral democracy could be described as solidly
majoritarian. In Mississippi, meanwhile, it was decidedly a question of
minority rule.
No comments:
Post a Comment