As the Senate debate of March 16th, 1962 continued, so too did the opponents of Spessard Holland’s proposed anti-poll-tax amendment persist in their attempt to put forward some manner of reasonably convincing argument as to why such a measure was either invalid or undesirable. No matter how long and how widely these primarily Southern Senators pontificated, however, they never seemed to approach anything like a convincing argument. As previously discussed, Mississippi Senator James Eastland’s endeavor to characterize his opponent’s desire to ban poll taxes at the federal level as a “transitory purpose” was more than a little misguided. Since the ratification and subsequent repeal of the 18th Amendment, no one serving in Congress could reasonably hold that amendments were the exclusive preserve of only the most weighty and consequential legal and moral principles. His assertion that Alabama Senator J. Lister Hill’s threatened point of order was a sound one carried slightly more weight – inasmuch as it was true that using a piece of normal legislation as a kind of container for a constitutional amendment was more than a little irregular and might even had represented a violation of Senate rules – though his expansion upon this point was characteristically vague and obtuse. “Since human societies were first organized,” he declared,
It became evident that they could not
exist as communities without observing the rules and precedents, the mores and
the folkways that made living together possible. It is now proposed, in order
to lay this intended constitutional amendment before the Senate, to violate not
only rules, precedents, and procedures of the Senate and House of
Representatives, but to shunt aside those sections of the U.S. Constitution
which provide specifically for the manner and means by which congressional
bills are to be processed and the manner and means by which congressional
resolutions are to be processed. The point of order, when made, should be
upheld.
Without turning
this into a discussion about something else entirely, it would nevertheless
seem necessary to remark for a moment upon certain elements of Eastland’s
choice of expression.
Human societies,
he said, from their earliest origins, “could not exist as communities without
observing the rules and precedents, the mores and the folkways that made living
together possible.” Coming from an avowed white supremacist, this would seem to
be a rather loaded concept. In order for humans to be able to live together in a
functioning society, said society must abide by certain “rules and precedents
[,] mores and […] folkways [.]” What rules? What folkways? And were their
limits upon what was acceptable? What if one part of a given society considered
the precedents and mores of another to be morally reprehensible? What if the
majority of this same society felt this way about the behaviors of a minority?
Was it possible for the majority to effectively ban the practices that it found
to be inexcusable, or were they supposed to quietly tolerate them in the name
of “living together?” Given the nature of Eastland’s personal ideology, it
would be hard to imagine that there was anything on his mind other than race.
After all, was not segregation a more, a folkway, a precedent of Southern
society? Was it not an integral practice to the Southern way of life? The
gentleman from Mississippi, no doubt, would have answered in the affirmative.
And so, while he was ostensibly addressing himself to the point of order
offered by his Senate colleague, his choice of words also seemed to constitute
something of a shot across the bow at the very concept of the proposed
amendment being discussed. Because if segregation was an essential “folkway” of
Southern society, then any externally directed efforts to eliminate it –
inasmuch as it would make it harder for segregationist Southerners to “live
together” with reformist Northerners – must necessarily have represented a threat
to American social cohesion.
As to the rest
of Eastland’s cited assertion, his intentions were similarly as clear as his
choice of words was vague. He accused Senator Holland and his various
supporters, in the manner by which they sought to secure passage of an
anti-poll-tax amendment, of violating, “Not only [the] rules, precedents, and
procedures of the Senate and House of Representatives,” but also of attempting,
“to shunt aside those sections of the U.S. Constitution which provide
specifically for the manner and means by which congressional bills are to be
processed and the manner and means by which congressional resolutions are to be
processed.” What he meant by this, no doubt, was that he believed the method by
which Holland and Senate Majority Leader Mike Mansfield (1903-2001) were
attempting to introduce the former’s proposed anti-poll-tax amendment was to
some extent in violation of Senate rules governing amendments to legislation. Inserting
a constitutional amendment into a legislative container by amending an existing
bill or resolution, he said, required the unanimous consent of the body in
question, which neither he nor his fellow Southerners were willing to provide. It
was an objection very much rooted in parliamentary procedure, to be sure, and
in that sense stood out from the rest of Eastland’s assertions. And it was a
sound argument, if true. The Senate – like any legislature – has standing rules
by which means its business is transacted and the purpose of which is to ensure
that order, transparency, and fairness are maintained at all times. To be in
violation of these rules is to be “out of order” and thus to have one’s actions
ruled invalid and of no effect. If Holland’s attempt, along with Majority
Leader Mansfield, to effectively circumvent the Senate Judiciary Committee by
slotting the former’s proposed anti-poll-tax amendment into the eviscerated
husk of an unrelated piece of legislation was indeed out of order, this
accordingly presented something of a problem.
Unsurprisingly,
Senator Eastland did not specify precisely which rule it was that Holland and
Mansfield had supposedly violated. Rather, he referred only vaguely to “rules,
precedents, and procedures of the Senate and House of Representatives [.]” Nor
did he deign to illuminate which “sections of the U.S. Constitution which
provide specifically for the manner and means by which congressional bills are
to be processed and the manner and means by which congressional resolutions are
to be processed” the two were attempting to “shunt aside.” This would seem to
have been entirely characteristic of the gentleman from Mississippi, his
objections to the aforementioned anti-poll-tax amendment having thus far taken
the form of something more like an alarmist screed than a carefully reasoned
dissertation. Unfortunately, this style of argument – while rhetorically not
without value – also makes verification a bit of a process. The Constitution,
at least, is clear enough as to the responsibilities and powers of Congress vis-à-vis
the legislative process and the amending process. Article I, Section 7, for
example, states very simply that,
Every Order, Resolution, or Vote to
which the Concurrence of the Senate and House of Representatives may be
necessary (except on a question of Adjournment) shall be presented to the
President of the United States; and before the Same shall take Effect, shall be
approved by him, or being disapproved by him, shall be repassed by two thirds
of the Senate and House of Representatives, according to the Rules and
Limitations prescribed in the Case of a Bill.
As to the amending
formula, Article V makes matters similarly clear. “The Congress,” it declares, “whenever
two thirds of both Houses shall deem it necessary, shall propose Amendments to
this Constitution […] which […] shall be valid to all Intents and Purposes, as
Part of this Constitution, when ratified by the Legislatures of three fourths
of the several States, or by Conventions in three fourths thereof [.]” The
Constitution has little more to say in either case. The legislative process is
not explicated any further, save to say that, “Each House may determine the
Rules of its Proceedings, punish its Members for disorderly Behaviour, and,
with the Concurrence of two thirds, expel a Member.” Nowhere is it stated
whether or not an amendment might be substituted for a bill. “Every Order,
Resolution, or Vote to which the Concurrence of the Senate and House of
Representatives may be necessary […] shall be presented to the President of the
United States [,]” it says, while proposed amendments simply require the support
of “two thirds of both Houses [.]”
Bearing these simple regulations in
mind, Senators Eastland and Hill would seem to have been right about at least
one thing. In order for a bill to become law, either a presidential signature
or a veto override vote was required. And in order for a proposed amendment to
be ratified, the approval of “the Legislatures of three fourths of the several
States” was what was needed. Attempting to transform a bill into an amendment
partway through the legislative process was accordingly a bit irregular.
Did the bill cease to be a bill once it was successfully modified? Would it
still require the president’s signature or could it proceed immediately to the
states for consideration? The Constitution itself could not answer these
questions, in no small part because the Framers never envisioned what it was
that Holland and Mansfield were attempting. Proposed amendments, before they
can be voted upon by the Senate at large, must first be submitted to the
scrutiny of the Senate Committee on the Judiciary. Specifically, they must be
reported out to the floor by the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on the
Constitution. If the Subcommittee rejects a proposed amendment – or if it
simply does nothing and keeps the proposed amendment “bottled up” – then no
further action can be taken and the proposal is effectively dead. Since
Eastland himself was the Chairman of the Judiciary Committee as of 1962 – and
would continue to be until his retirement in 1978 – it was perfectly reasonable
for the likes of Holland and Mansfield to conclude that the former’s
anti-poll-tax amendment would suffer exactly this fate. That is to say, without
Eastland’s cooperation, Holland’s proposed amendment would never make it to the
floor for a vote. That is, unless the proposed anti-poll-tax amendment’s supporters
had in mind some manner of parliamentary trickery.
They
did, of course, in the form of the aforementioned substitution. The way it was
supposed to work, in essence, was that Senate joint Resolution 29 – “providing
for the establishing of the former dwelling house of Alexander Hamilton as a
national monument” – having previously been introduced, read, submitted to
committee, and reported out to the floor, would then be modified in its
entirety into Holland’s proposed amendment. Since the bill itself would emerge
from the process theoretically intact – severely amended but technically still
the same piece of legislation – there would be no need to re-submit it to
committee. In point of fact, it had already gone to committee and been reported
out to the floor. All that Holland and Mansfield were proposing to do was
modify it before it was finally submitted to the floor for a vote. Eastland
would not need to be involved in the process any more than was mandated by his
role as a voting senator and Holland’s sixty-odd cosponsors would thus be
permitted to carry the day. Again, there was arguably a question yet to be
answered as to whether the resulting joint resolution really was the same
measure that had been reported out of committee, but Eastland certainly wasn’t
in a position to make any declarations on the matter. If anyone could claim the
authority necessary to resolve the issue, it was likely the Senate
Parliamentarian, a man named Charles L. Watkins (1879-1966). It was Watkins’
job to resolve conflicts stemming from the Senate’s complex rules of procedure,
after all. It would accordingly have made all the sense in the world for either
Hill or Eastland to declare their intention to appeal to his wisdom. In actual
fact, of course, the Southerners declined to do so. Rather, Eastland simply
declared that unanimous consent was what was required. That is, the
substitution being attempted would require the unanimous consent of the Senate
in order to be accomplished. And since he was not inclined to give his
consent, that should have effectively been that.
This, as one
might expect, is where things get a little tricky. Eastland – again, entirely
characteristically – neglected to mention which of the Senate’s standing rules
he believed applied to the situation at hand. And since there are, at present,
forty-four standing rules – each of which possesses their own set of clauses
and subsections – it is not immediately obvious which directive he was
attempting to invoke. A cursory examination of these selfsame rules, however,
reveals the existence of two clauses within Rule XIV which would seem to apply
to the situation in question. Senate Standing Rule XIV, Clause 3, states, in
part, that, “No bill or joint resolution shall be committed or amended until it
shall have been twice read, after which it may be referred to a committee [.]”
And Senate Standing Rule XIV, Clause 7, states that,
When a bill or joint resolution shall
have been ordered to be read a third time, it shall not be in order to propose
amendments, unless by unanimous consent, but it shall be in order at any time
before the passage of any bill or resolution to move its commitment; and when
the bill or resolution shall again be reported from the committee it shall be
placed on the Calendar.
Taken together,
what these rules would seem to mean is that a bill or joint resolution under
consideration by the Senate cannot be amended at all before its second reading and
can only be amended after its third reading by the unanimous consent of the
same. Specifically, Rule XIV notes that after a bill or resolution is read the
second time, it is commonly “referred to a committee.” And after it is reported
out of committee, it may then be “committed or amended [.]” The relevant
question in the case of S.J. Res. 29 would accordingly seem to be as follows.
At the time that Holland and Mansfield proposed their amendment, had the
measure been read twice only or had it already been read a third time?
Based on the account recorded in the
Congressional Record for March 15th, 1962, the former would seem to
be the case. As formally introduced onto the floor of the Senate by Vice
President Lyndon Baines Johnson (1908-1973) in his capacity as the upper
chamber’s presiding officer, the resolution in question, “Providing for the
establishing of the former dwelling house of Alexander Hamilton as a national
memorial, introduced by Mr. JAVITs (for himself and Mr. KEATING), was received,
read twice by its title, and referred to the Committee on Interior and Insular
Affairs.” Senator Javits then responded by noting that, “This joint resolution
is precisely in the form in which the Senate committee reported the measure
which is to be the subject of whatever action the Senate shall take with
respect to the poll tax.” There would appear to be no other conclusion to draw
from this exchange but that the resolution was in exactly the state in which
the Senate Standing Rules deemed it ought to be for amendments to be properly
considered. It had been read twice, submitted to a committee, reported out of
committee, placed on the calander, and at that moment – according to Javits –
“is precisely in the form in which the Senate committee reported the measure
[.]” Once amendments had been considered and either approved or rejected, it
would then presumably proceed to a third and final reading – at which point it
would no longer be permissible to introduce further modifications without the
unanimous consent of the Senate – and the yeas and nays would then be called.
Bearing all of this in mind, Hill
and Eastland’s threatened point of order would seem to have been functionally
moot. The resolution that Holland and Mansfield intended to modify into an
anti-poll-tax amendment proposal had only just been reported out of committee
on March 15th. And on March 16th, this intention having
been made clear to them, Hill and Eastland protested that their consent was
required in order for such a modification to occur. Between its introduction on
March 15th and the first mention of the threatened point of order on
March 16th, the relevant resolution was discussed at length.
But at that time, it did not proceed from its second reading to its third. Its
time on the calander had arrived, it was introduced onto the floor by Javits,
and discussion commenced. That was all. Does this mean that Hill and Eastland
were lying to their fellow senators when they raised the aforementioned point
of order? Not necessarily. As aforementioned, the rules of the Senate can often
be quite complex, and very few senators at any given time can claim to be
exhaustively knowledgeable as to their intricacies and interactions. This is
why the position of Senate Parliamentarian exists. It would have been rather an
odd turn of events for two such long-serving senators as J. Lister Hill and
James Eastland to have been ignorant of exactly which stage of the legislative
process freely permitted amendments, but it was certainly not an impossibility.
Hill and Eastland, to put it simply, may have merely been mistaken. Then again,
in light of Eastland’s apparent propensity for high-flying rhetoric when he was
backed into a corner, he may also have been frantically grasping at straws. He
knew that the numbers were not in his favor and that any attempt at a
filibuster would fail. And he knew that there was a rule that prevented
amendments from being offered without unanimous consent after a certain point
in the legislative process. So he fudged the details of the applicable rule
just slightly. Perhaps he intended to frighten his opponent into submission.
Perhaps he only hoped to buy a little more time while the veracity of his claim
was verified. In either case, it was certainly possible that Eastland knowingly
misspoke. The point, of course, is that he did misspeak, and that his claim
was without basis in fact.
The remainder of
Eastland’s address constituted yet another barrage of exaggerated rhetoric and
vague, self-serving declarations of dubious veracity. He said that, “All
right-thinking Members of the Senate must realize that State action,
determination by the States themselves, is the preferable route to take.” Clearly
this was not the case, or else all the right-thinking senators were decidedly
in the minority. He questioned, “the wisdom and judgment of the proponents in
addressing themselves to this poll tax issue when there are only five States
today that require the payment of a poll tax as a prerequisite for voting” and
further opined that Congress, “could devote itself to more constructive
legislation […] than directing its efforts, time, and energies toward a
question having to do with only 5 States out of our Union of 50 States.” This
was notwithstanding the fact that as a result of the continued existence of
poll tax laws, millions of citizens in those five states could not exercise one
of their foundational rights as Americans. He then concluded this portion of
his address by stating, in reference to previous sessions of Congress in which
the poll tax had been under discussion, that,
I consistently took the position
during those debates that this issue could not be resolved simply by
legislation; that if it were to be accomplished, the only constitutional way is
by a constitutional amendment. However, I do challenge the wisdom of this
approach, in view of the fact that the States themselves under the initiative
of their own State legislatures, have repealed the poll tax requirement, and if
the remaining five States are left to themselves, their respective State
legislatures will take care of the situation.
From the
perspective of those senators present who favored civil rights reform and saw
little if any merit in the obfuscatory efforts of diehard segregationist like
Hill and Eastland, this last statement was doubtless highly revealing of the
essential nature of the challenge they collectively faced.
On the one hand, Eastland had more
or less revealed to all and sundry the extent to which his complaints about
procedure, and precedent, and consistency were almost wholly insincere. When
Spessard Holland, or one of his various allies, had previously attempted to
introduce a piece of legislation onto the floor of the Senate that would have
banned the collection of poll taxes at the federal level, Eastland opposed it
on the grounds that, “this issue could not be resolved simply by legislation;
that if it were to be accomplished, the only constitutional way is by a
constitutional amendment.” And this was fair enough. Article I, Section IV of
the Constitution does state that, “The Times, Places and Manner of holding
Elections for Senators and Representatives, shall be prescribed in each State
by the Legislature thereof; but the Congress may at any time by Law make or
alter such Regulations, except as to the Places of chusing Senators.” While
Congress, therefore, is permitted under the Constitution to legislate the
“Times, Places and Manner of holding Elections for Senators and
Representatives,” the fact that the state assemblies were also given this power
would seem to indicate an intention on the part of the Framers that federal
elections exist as an area of shared responsibility between state and federal
authorities. It would accordingly seem to be a reasonable enough argument that
though it is permissible for Congress to singlehandedly alter federal voter
qualifications, it is always preferable not to overrule the states by way of
federal legislation alone. A constitutional amendment was therefore the ideal
method by which to modify existing election procedures, particularly as it
blended state and federal power.
Naturally, in response to this,
Holland and those who supported his efforts began introducing constitutional
amendment proposals in the Senate for the purpose of eliminating the poll tax.
If the Chairman of the Judiciary Committee declared of the crusade to ban said
tax that “the only constitutional way is by a constitutional amendment [,]”
then this was precisely what the reformers were going to do. Eastland’s
response? Obfuscation, of course. The aforementioned Senate Judiciary
Subcommittee on the Constitution fell under his authority. Accordingly, if he
decided that a proposed amendment shouldn’t make it to the floor, one could
rest assured that the proposed amendment in question would die a quiet and
ignominious death. Doubtless he would declare, when asked, that the Senate had
far more important matters to consider than whether or not a handful of people
in a handful of states could vote in federal elections. Whether he believed it
or not, of course, the effect would be the same. That is, while Eastland was
one of those who helped steer the advocates for a federal ban on the poll tax
towards the idea of pursuing a constitutional amendment, he was also
responsible – in his position as a Senate committee chair – for ensuring that
any such amendment never made it to the floor.
Eventually – over the course of many
years and as the result of a great deal of effort – Holland and his allies did
manage to overcome even this seemingly insurmountable obstacle. By 1962,
Holland’s proposed amendment had over sixty co-sponsors, thereby ensuring its
passage in the event that it was ever put to a vote. And thanks to some canny
parliamentary maneuvering on the part of Majority Leader Mike Mansfield, it would
get put to a vote by way of a little legislative bait-and-switch. Granting that
the latter procedure was perhaps a little irregular, there was nothing in
either the Senate rules or the text of the Constitution that might have
prevented it from going ahead. And what, to this, was Eastland’s
response? After having heeded his advice, pursued a constitutional amendment,
and pulled an end-around on the Judiciary Committee, what did Eastland have to
say to Holland and his supporters? “I […] challenge the wisdom of this approach
[,]” he declared. Despite having advocated for it previously, having set the
terms of the resulting game, and having been soundly defeated, he was still of
the opinion that the whole idea of a federal poll tax ban was a mistake in
itself. Why, one might accordingly be given to ask, did he previously argue
that “the only constitutional way is by a constitutional amendment” if, in
fact, he thought such an approach to be fundamentally unwise? As is so often
the case, the simplest answer is almost certainly the correct one. Eastland did
not care about procedure. Eastland did not care about rules. Eastland did not
care about precedents. Eastland cared about maintaining the powerbase of white
supremacy in the contemporary American South. And if, in order to do that, he
had to bend his stated principles and use his authority to shift the goalposts
of reform, he would not hesitate to do so.
“The States
themselves [,]” said the Mississippian, “under the initiative of their own
State legislatures, have repealed the poll tax requirement, and if the
remaining five States are left to themselves, their respective State
legislatures will take care of the situation.” One would struggle to come up
with a more cunning dodge than this. There was no need to intervene; the states
would take care of it themselves. Recent history was certainly on Senator
Eastland’s side. As discussed at length in the present series, Tennessee, South
Carolina, Georgia, and Florida had all voluntarily repealed their own poll tax
laws in the quarter century preceding Holland’s latest attempt to introduce a
national ban. It was accordingly far from unreasonable to conclude that the
five poll-tax states that remained were only a handful of years from becoming
non-poll-tax states themselves. And in the end, wasn’t the outcome that didn’t
involve federal intervention in state affairs the preferrable outcome anyway?
Clearly, the South wasn’t madly in love with the poll tax. If Georgia and
Florida could see their way clear to giving it up, was there really reason to
assume that Virginia and Mississippi wouldn’t ever get around to doing the
same? No, the issue wasn’t the policy so much as how Senator Holland was going
about pursuing the abolition of the same. The Southern states in question,
after all, were uniformly governed by Democrats, the prevailing philosophy of
whom traditionally prized state action over federal action. It wasn’t necessarily
that the political leadership in the five remaining states were wholly
unconvinced that the poll tax itself no longer served a useful purpose. It was
just that they were ideologically disinclined to acquiesce when the federal
government told them that they had no choice but to abolish it. So why not –
with these facts in mind – simply leave the states to their own devices?
Indeed, Eastland
continued after a slight prompting from J. Lister Hill, it was his opinion that
the efforts of people like Senator Holland to abolish the poll tax at the
federal level over the course of the 1940s and 1950s was precisely the reason
that the five states in question still stubbornly clung to the same. “People
resent being dictated to by the Federal Government,” he explained,
And they resent being kicked around.
That is what this attempt is. It is an attempt to kick around the people in the
various States and impose on those States. It is an attempt by other States and
pressure groups primarily within those States to impose their will on the
people of other States. Of course the people in the States aimed at resent it.
In my judgment that is the reason why they have stood fast and retained the
payment of poll taxes as a qualification for electors.
This description of
the contemporary white Southern mindset vis-à-vis the federal government and
federal authority may have been a reasonably accurate one, but it certainly
wasn’t very flattering. Granted, it made a certain amount of sense for Eastland
to portray his fellow white Southerners as victims of an overbearing federal
government intent on “kicking them around” and imposing its will upon them. A
victim, after all, tends to be deserving of sympathy. But it nevertheless seems
a strange kind of strategy to council patience and understanding by asserting
that the party being targeted is simply petty by nature. And this was, at
bottom, what Eastland was saying. It wasn’t that the people in the five
remaining states loved the poll tax. Left to themselves, they’d surely
abolish the practice eventually. It was that they resented being told that they
had to and were inclined to dig in their heels rather than give way to
authority.
None of this is to say that Eastland
didn’t have a point, of course. As the example of the United States Commission
on Civil Rights and the various travails it experienced during the first years
of its existence makes abundantly clear, white Southern Democrats in the 1950s
and 1960s often violently resisted attempts by federal authorities even just to
gather information about basic legal practices in the contemporary South.
Circuit Judge George C. Wallace (1919-1998) had voter registration records
impounded and threatened to imprison any federal agents who tried to get ahold
of them when the Commission conducted its first investigation in Montgomery,
Alabama in 1957. Eastland’s claim that white Southerners in the five poll-tax
states were largely motivated by a kind of reflexive rejection of federal power
in any form would therefore appear far from unsound. That being said, one
cannot help but get a rather poor impression of the mentality of the
contemporary Southerner. Granted, proponents of civil rights reform had
arguably already seen the worst that the South had to offer the nation at large
over the course of the 1950s between the handing down of the Brown v. Board decision
in 1954 and the various protests and political counterattacks launched in the
years that followed by the Southern political class in places like Arkansas,
Alabama, and Mississippi. But for the senior senator from Mississippi to simply
come out and say that his fellow Southerners living in the five states in
question actually didn’t hold to the poll tax because they believed it served a
vital purpose? That they were only being stubborn because they didn’t like
being pushed into things? That they were denying millions of American citizens
the right to vote out of some obstinate need to take things at their own pace?
To borrow a modern turn of phrase, that would seem a bit like saying the quiet
part loud.
Eastland, to be sure, did not
believe in the slightest that he was admitting to anything undesirable on the
part of the contemporary American South. From his perspective, his countrymen were
standing on principle. Not the principle of white supremacy, of course. Almost
no one who supported civil rights reform was going to be convinced to back down
by appeals to outmoded theories about race. But there was nothing reprehensible
in theory about advocating for the principle of subsidiarity. That is, there
was nothing necessarily wrong or abhorrent about the citizens and political
leaders of a given state wanting to decide for themselves how best to address
the various policy areas that most directly affected their daily lives. The
fact, in line with this principle, that Southerners often made decisions that
led to the relegation of their Black neighbors to second-class status was, as
far as Eastland was concerned, entirely beside the point. Southerners, in his
mind, were maintaining a foundational principle of American republicanism by
jealously guarding their autonomy and by at all times regarding central
authority with the utmost suspicion. Was it likely that the residents of the
five remaining states also found the poll tax to no longer serve a useful
purpose? Most certainly. As Eastland had said, left to settle the matter
themselves, all five of the states in question would probably already have dispensed
with their respective poll tax statutes. But it would have been un-American –
to their thinking – to simply give in to a federal mandate whose purpose was to
accomplish the same. Their continued attachment to the poll tax was therefore
not to be construed as stemming from any particular love for exceptionally
stringent voter registration laws. Rather, it was best understood as
representative of their attachment to the essential principle of states’
rights.
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