As a follow-up to J. William Fulbright’s relatively canny and pragmatic approach to the debate on Spessard Holland’s proposed anti-poll-tax amendment, the return of Senator James Eastland to the conversation during the March 14th Senate session makes for something of an unfavorable contrast. With exceptions, Senator Fulbright had argued in opposition to the amendment primarily from a place of practical concern for his state’s welfare. The poll tax, he explained, supplied a huge portion of Arkansas’s education budget and its loss – in the absence of a federal education bill – would accordingly cause great suffering to the Natural State’s student population. He said other things as well – that the poll tax wasn’t really a burden, that discussing it was a waste of time, etc. – but one assumes that his highest priority was that which he offered first and foremost. It was almost certainly not worth continuing to withhold the franchise from a large swath of Arkansas’s Black population in the name of ensuring that the children of that state received a better education than they might otherwise, of course. But at the very least, Fulbright refrained from making very many grandiose or melodramatic statements as to his sense of personal outrage. He opposed eliminating the poll tax, to be sure, but mostly because he felt that the negative effects outweighed the positive. And he notably did not declare that the fate of the federal union itself hung in the balance. The same could not be said of Mississippi Senator James Eastland.
From the jump,
Eastland’s tone was decidedly one of outrage. “The back-door avenues that are
employed in presenting civil rights measures to the Senate” he began, “are
abhorrent to orderly legislative processes.” This was all too typical as an
opener for a senator with a bone to pick. Whatever Eastland’s personal
objections to Mississippi’s poll tax being summarily invalidated might have
been – one can be sure, at least, that they were racially motivated – the man
led with an appeal to the processes and traditions of the upper house. It
wasn’t that he found fault with the content of the proffered reform so much as
the manner in which it had been thrust upon the Senate’s attention. Improperly,
that is to say; disrespectfully; even illicitly. And wasn’t that sort of
behavior an offense to every member of the Senate, regardless of party? Wasn’t
common respect for the rules the bedrock upon which the Senate functioned?
Eastland surely would have said so – indeed, he more or less did say so – in
spite of the fact that the issue of civil rights had already shown itself to
arouse greater enthusiasm among the various members of the Senate than the
comparatively dry and proscriptive concept of strict adherence to precedent and
procedure. The examples that Eastland provided ironically seemed to bear this
out.
“We went through
this ordeal in 1957 [,]” he said, “when a House-passed bill was taken from the
table and presented to the Senate without referral to a Senate committee.” The
bill in question was almost certainly that which became the Civil Rights Act of
1957, the first of its kind approved by Congress in over eighty years. And
while it was true that the original measure had been introduced onto the
floor of the Senate following its approval by the House without first passing
through a committee of the former, this was by far the least memorable incident
attached to the bill in question. The Southern Senators of the 85th
Congress who objected to the passage of this particular piece of civil rights
legislation did not do so because it had been introduced into the upper chamber
improperly. Nor did South Carolina Senator Strom Thurmond attempt to filibuster
the bill for a record twenty-four hours and eighteen minutes out of an abiding
respect for the rules of parliamentary procedure. The Civil Rights Act of 1957
aroused the opposition that saw it substantially neutered – and the support
that saw it finally approved – because of its contents and its objectives, not
the manner in which it was passed. For one thing, it established the
aforementioned Commission on Civil Rights, a body which – if the commentary of
J. Lister Hill and James Eastland are any indication – continued to provoke the
ire of Southern members of the Senate fully five years after its creation. It
also made voter intimidation a federal crime and changed federal jury selection
rules to make it possible for Black people and women to serve as jurors no
matter where a given trial was being held. One can be sure that both of these
measures displeased Southern segregationists and resulted in their opposition
to the bill to a far greater degree than did its supposedly improper
introduction onto the floor of the upper house.
“At the
beginning of each Congress for the past 8 years [,]” Eastland continued, “we
have been confronted with the attempt […] to have rule XXII changed or
obliterated without referral of the matter in controversy to the proper
committee of the Senate for its study and report.” Rule XXII, in point of fact,
is the Senate standing procedure for invoking cloture that was first adopted in
1917. Without getting into a great deal of terribly dry and technical
“parliamentese,” what it states is essentially that at any time during the
course of a debate, any senator can present a motion to the chair – signed by
sixteen additional senators – which then triggers a cloture vote, the success
of which depends on the support of “three-fifths of the Senators duly chosen
and sworn [.]” Bearing this in mind, what Eastland was accordingly implying was
that for the eight years leading up to 1962 – which is to say, since 1954 –
someone(s) had been endeavoring to either change or eliminate the cloture rule
– thus altering the basic dynamic of the filibuster – in a supposedly improper
manner. His emphasis, of course, was on the manner of the thing. That it was
being attempted “without referral of the matter in controversy to the proper
committee of the Senate for its study and report” was the issue. A cursory
evaluation of the facts would suggest otherwise, however. Eliminating Rule XXII
would not have injured Senator Eastland or his fellow Southerners to any
significant degree. It was created for the specific purpose of allowing filibusters
to be stopped if a sufficiently large percentage of the Senate’s membership
deemed such a course to be appropriate. Without it – as was the case prior to
1917 – a given senator would be able to carry on a filibuster indefinitely, the
only end results being either the withdrawal of the relevant measure or their
physical inability to continue. And since Southern senators had shown
themselves over the course of the 20th century to be by far the most
frequent filibusterers in the upper chamber – chiefly in aid of foiling
pro-civil rights legislation – the loss of Rule XXII would have been an aid to
their cause if anything.
If Rule XXII was
merely changed, however – to lower the threshold for a successful
cloture vote to a simple majority from a supermajority, for example – Eastland
and his colleagues would have found themselves suddenly robbed of much of their
power. As it then stood, a minority of senators – forty-one of one hundred –
could arrest the passage of any piece of legislation or constitutional
amendment they desired simply by refusing to yield the floor to any outside
their number. Granted, there were less than forty-one senators who represented
Southern states in 1962. And some, like Kentucky and Maryland, were represented
by relatively reform-minded Republicans. But the nature of inter-party
politicking made it so that Southern Democrats did not need to control all
forty-one of those seats themselves. As long as enough Northern Democrats remained
disinclined to publicly rebuke their Southern compatriots – and as long as
enough Southern Republicans remained disinclined to upset their less
reform-minded constituents – then a Southern-led filibuster could successfully
be maintained by the active participation of relatively small number of
senators. Decreasing the support required to achieve cloture, of course, would
necessarily increase the number of senators potential filibusterers
would need in their corner. Around thirty Southern senators, it had been shown,
were historically capable of both maintaining solidarity amongst themselves and
attracting the support of a further ten to fifteen compatriots for the purpose
of mounting a successful filibuster. But it had yet to be proven whether that
same cohort of thirty could secure even the passive support of twice that
number of their compatriots. Certainly, it was possible that a group of
Southern senators opposed to civil rights legislation might still find a way to
engineer a successful filibuster according to this more challenging calculus.
But it most definitely would have been a fair bit more difficult. And in the
short term, practically speaking, it might even have proven impossible.
Bearing all of
this in mind, one might reasonably assert that what really concerned Senator
Eastland was not that certain of his colleagues were attempting to advance a
particular legislative agenda without proper regard for the rules and
traditions of the upper chamber but rather that recent events therein had been
trending decidedly away from a status quo that tended to favor his personal
convictions. In 1957, for the first time in some eight decades, Congress had
approved a piece of federal civil rights legislation. A Southern senator had
attempted a filibuster and that filibuster had failed. Three years later, in
1960, another civil rights act was passed, largely in order to plug the
loopholes that had been written into its immediate predecessor. And all of this
had played out against the backdrop of Supreme Court-ordered public-school
desegregation and what Eastland described as continuous attempts by certain
members of the Senate “to have rule XXII changed or obliterated without
referral of the matter in controversy to the proper committee of the Senate for
its study and report.” The heady days of the 1930s and 1940s, it seemed, when
the phrase “civil rights” was hardly ever spoken aloud in Congress and
supporters of reform quaked in fear of the unassailable power of the Southern
filibuster, were well and truly a thing of the past. Congress and the courts
were slowly but surely bending towards a fundamental reformation of civil
rights law in the United States and there seemed to be little more that Southern
legislators like James Eastland could do but wave their arms and make long
speeches about tradition and decorum and “orderly legislative processes.”
But if this was
truly all that remained for Eastland and his Southern comrades – to complain,
and lament, and shout in an attempt to hold back the tide of history – one can
be sure that that is what they would do. As a case in point, consider the
remainder of the Mississippian’s remarks during this particular section of the
debate on Senator Holland’s proposed anti-poll tax amendment. Having opened by
protesting the supposedly slipshod and unseemly manner by which the
contemporary supporters of civil rights reform had pursued and were continuing
to pursue their various objectives, Eastland then proceeded to rattle off
several more reasons – none of which had much to do with the substance of the
proposal at hand – why he felt Congress was better off concerning itself with
just about anything else. First, he lamented the tremendous waste of time and
energy which he believed any discussion of civil rights legislation
represented. “It now appears [,]” he said,
That every time the workload of the
Senate slows down a little bit, the bone of civil rights would be flung into
the pit of the Senate, so that time can be again consumed by making Southern
States the whipping boy of proposed punitive actions, whether they be by
legislative proposals or constitutional amendments. This country is today
confronted with many grave and serious problems far reaching in nature. Many
observers deeply and sincerely feel that 1962 is a year that will mark a
milestone and a developing point in the history of mankind. The nature of these
problems demands the greatest possible degree of bipartisan consideration. In
many respects the future course of the United States for generations to come is
wrapped up in the decisions that must be made in regard to the President's
proposed trade development plan.
In point of
fact, the “trade development plan” to which Eastland referred in such reverent
tones was almost certainly the Trade Expansion Act, signed into law in October
of 1962. And while certainly not a trifling thing – it gave the President the
authority to impose tariffs on the recommendation of the Commerce Secretary
alone and helped pave the way for a fairly significant round of negotiations
under the auspices of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade – one could
hardly describe the results of this law’s passage as effecting “the future
course of the United States for generations to come” while maintaining a
straight face. International trade was – and is – important. But so were – and
are – the essential rights and privileges of the American citizen. It was
certainly possible that Eastland truly believed the impact of international
trade upon the future prospects of the United States of America to be of
greater import in the spring of 1962 than whether or not every citizen
inhabitant of Alabama, Arkansas, Texas, Virginia, or Mississippi was legally
permitted to vote. But it does seem rather unlikely, given the circumstances.
As a senator, Eastland was never someone who particularly troubled himself with
the vicissitudes of foreign policy or foreign trade. On the contrary, he spent
twenty-one of his thirty-six years in the upper chamber as the Chairman of the
Judiciary Committee, where he necessarily spent far more time considering
judicial nominations and engaging in oversight of the Department of Justice
than speculating on the potential impact of a given piece of trade legislation.
Bearing this in mind, it seems likely Eastland was casting about for an excuse
to wring his hands when he issued the complaint cited above rather than
expressing anything like genuine concern.
The Senator from
Mississippi chose to continue with this train of argument, however, and in
doing so arguably gave voice to the true nature of his objections to the
proposed anti-poll-tax amendment. “No good purpose [,]” he went on to say,
Can be served in again making a
handful of people-five States-containing less than 12 percent of the population
of the United States, the subjects and victims of a proposed constitutional
amendment that is unwise, unsound, unreasonable, and contrary to the historic
practices and procedures that have existed in this country since the Colonies
were first established on the coast of the Atlantic seaboard.
The five states in
question, it seemed, were not only the collective subject of the proposed
anti-poll tax amendment but also its prospective victims. Eastland had earlier
indicated that the nature of his objection was personal as much as it was
procedural when he claimed that the “bone of civil rights” was really only
being used to make “Southern States the whipping boy of proposed punitive
actions, whether they be by legislative proposals or constitutional
amendments.” Was Holland’s amendment objectionable because it was being pursued
with undue haste and in contravention to various Senate regulations or was it
objectionable because it unfairly attacked a small group of Southern states – “containing
less than 12 percent of the population” – in a way that was “unwise, unsound,
unreasonable, and contrary to the historic practices and procedures that have
existed in this country since the Colonies were first established on the coast
of the Atlantic seaboard [?]” While the Mississippian seemed to have decided in
advance – alike with certain of his Southern compatriots – that a procedural
approach was likelier to meet with success than one which relied solely on
arousing sympathy, he nevertheless appeared incapable of not squeezing at least
a little moral indignation into what was otherwise intended to be a sober call
for adherence to established Senate procedure.
And it was just as well that
Eastland chose not to emphasize the supposed plight of the five Southern states
whose electoral practices were at that moment under discussion. What little he
did have to say on the subject was vague, unconvincing, and fundamentally
lacking in substance. The issue of civil rights, he said, was being used to
make the South “the whipping boy of proposed punitive actions,” as though the
only reason anyone might have proposed the abolition of the poll taxes that
were still in place in Alabama, Arkansas, Texas, Virginia, and Mississippi in
1962 was as a form of punishment. Punishment for what, exactly, Eastland failed
to say. Perhaps he didn’t know himself. What he did seem to be certain
of, however, was that this small group of Southern states was set to be
victimized by the terms of the proposed amendment in the event that it was
ratified. Obviously, this kind of claim entirely failed to grant the premise
that it was the citizens living in these states whom the poll tax laws
prevented from voting that were actually being victimized. Alabama,
Arkansas, Texas, Virginia, and Mississippi were guilty, it was true, of denying
to those unable to pay the poll tax the right to vote. But it was neither
Senators Holland’s intention nor those of his cosponsors to punish anyone as a
result. On the contrary, all that Holland seemed to want – and he stated as
much numerous times – was to help prevent economic inequality from actively
contributing to democratic inequality. The poll tax, he avowed, was an unjust
and entirely needless qualification upon the electoral franchise and
accordingly needed to be abolished.
Eastland’s
allusion to the fact that the five states in question contained only a small portion
of the overall population of the United States was similarly lacking in merit.
As a point of fact, of course, it was true. Circa 1962, Alabama, Arkansas,
Texas, Virginia, and Mississippi between them contained 20,777,779 people, a
figure which, as a fraction of the contemporary population of the United States
of America (179,323,175), indeed amounted to only 11.5%. But the veracity of
the figure he cited in no way gave credence to the argument that Eastland
heavily implied by citing it. What he almost certainly meant to say was that
the Southern States in question, containing between them such a small fraction
of the overall population, simply weren’t worth the trouble of passing a
constitutional amendment. Because really, what was the point of modifying the
governing charter of the entire American republic if it was only going to
effect twelve percent of the population? What this kind of logic entirely
overlooks, of course, is the fact that, while abolishing the poll tax in the
five states in question would indeed only have allowed a small fraction of this
small fraction of the American population to exercise the right to vote, it
still would have permitted millions of people who were otherwise qualified to exercise
the electoral franchise to do so regardless of their economic status. Not
thousands, or hundreds of thousands, but millions. And while it was surely the
case that Senator James Eastland was willing to live with the notion that
millions of Americans – many of whom he nominally represented in Congress –
were incapable of exercising one of the most fundamental rights of citizenship
simply because they couldn’t pay a tax, it would be more than fair to say that,
as of 1962, the majority of his fellow senators were not.
Meaningless as
Eastland’s other arguments were, however – his claims of Southern victimhood or
his misleading use of population statistics – it was his attempted invocation
of tradition and precedent that rang hollowest of all. The passage of a
constitutional amendment banning the use of poll taxes, he asserted, was, “contrary
to the historic practices and procedures that have existed in this country
since the Colonies were first established on the coast of the Atlantic
seaboard.” First, let it be said here with all due emphasis that the phrase
“historic practices and procedures” is one which, lacking any clarifying
context, is wholly without any inherent legal meaning or moral significance.
Without more specific reference to the precedents which he felt weighed upon
the case at hand, Eastland might as well have claimed that George Washington once
said something vaguely complementary about poll taxes as an argument in their
favor. That something possibly qualifies as a historic practice or procedure in
no way justifies its continuation in the face of evidence indicating its
harmful effects. For the first century and a half of the life of the American
republic, it was a historic practice and procedure not to allow women to vote.
Did this necessarily mean that the 19th Amendment was “unwise,
unsound, [and] unreasonable” as a result? Was Eastland of the opinion that the
66th Congress had erred in approving it? And what of slavery? By the
time that the final draft of the 13th Amendment was approved by the
House in January of 1865, chattel slavery had been a historic practice and
procedure in the United States and its colonial antecedents for something on
the order of two hundred years. Would Eastland truly have argued – if the
question was put to him – that this precedent should have prevented the members
of the 38th Congress from acting as they did?
No comments:
Post a Comment