The Purpose and Powers of the Senate, Part LXVIII: “Something Which is so Basically American”

Undeterred by his fellow Southerners’ various bad faith attempts at counterargument, Senator Spessard Holland of Florida responded by trying out several novel approaches for himself as the Senate session of March 15^th, 1962 wore on. First, seemingly in response to Alabama senator J. Lister Hill’s earlier invocation of the Framers and their supposed intentions, he tried out the historical angle. Property qualifications were once the norm in terms of conditioning the franchise, he avowed, but these regulations had all been repealed over the course of the 19^th century. The American people, during the 1820s and 1830s, gradually embraced a more liberal definition of democracy than their forebears would have found acceptable, the result of which was a dramatic expansion of the nation’s legally qualified electorate. The poll tax was no different, as near as Holland could tell – its time had simply come and gone. Couldn’t Senator Hill see that? Hill, for his part, decidedly could not. “Some definite changes have been made [,]” he admitted, referring to the electoral laws of the various states, 

But I point out that those who are opposing this proposed constitutional amendment are fighting for the right of their States to make their own decision as to whether they want this small, minimal poll tax. That is our right; it is our right under the Constitution of the United States [.]

Rather than push back against this change in focus, Holland opted to embrace it. “I recognized the fact that this is a constitutional matter [,]” he said,

And for that reason I am proposing a constitutional amendment, rather than a statutory proposal […] I ask my friend, the Senator from Alabama, whether the Constitution has provided, since the day when it was adopted, that the regular way to go about changing fundamental law in any State or in all States is to proceed by way of the submission of a constitutional amendment, which requires the approval of three-fourths of the States before it can become operative; and is it not also true that that right existed long before Florida, Alabama, Mississippi, or any of the later admitted States came into the Union?

Hill, seemingly not to be outmaneuvered, responded by again changing the emphasis of his argument. “There is no question that that procedure is provided by the Constitution of the United States [,]” he said, “But that procedure does not mean that it is an invitation to try to take away from the States the rights which have been guaranteed to them since the time when the Constitution of the United States was first written.” A moment before, he'd been talking about the rights of the states under the Constitution; now he was talking about what was right notwithstanding the same. Coming from an avowed proponent of states’ rights, of course, this was a very by-the-book sort of answer. In seeking to protect what they believe to be the unchallengeable sovereignty of the various constituent states of the American republic, advocates of this species of political philosophy have historically vacillated between invoking what protections they feel they can locate in the Constitution and denying that certain other aspects of that same document actually apply. They hold fast to the 10^th Amendment, for example, and its guarantee that “The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively” while also ignoring any clauses that confer superior authority upon the federal government. The Supremacy Clause – which states that “This Constitution, and the Laws of the United States which shall be made in Pursuance thereof; and all Treaties made, or which shall be made, under the Authority of the United States, shall be the supreme Law of the Land” – consequently tends to be ignored or downplayed, as does the aforementioned section of Article II that grants Congress power over the election of its own members. The result is something of a contradictory position. States’ rights advocates like Hill will tend to claim that the Constitution actively prevents the federal government from interfering in the internal affairs of the various states while at the same time glossing over those sections of the same document that permit exactly that.

Being also, by conviction, a states’ rights Southern Democrat, Senator Holland was naturally well familiar with this approach to constitutional discourse. Indeed, as his response to the Brown v. Board decision had shown, he was himself perfectly willing and able to denounce the federal influence over state law that the Constitution mandated while at the same time claiming the protection of the Constitution itself. In this instance, however, seemingly blind to all considerations but his goal of eliminating the poll tax, the Floridian plowed unceasingly forward as though Hill offered no resistance. “The Senator from Alabama recognizes, does he not,” he proceeded to enquire,

That the other 45 States, which have considerable interest in the election of the President, the Vice President, and the Members of Congress, also have some rights, including the complete privilege and right, under the Constitution, to ask that this matter be submitted to the conscience of all 50 States? They have that right, do they not?

Philosophically speaking, this was also a very cogent point. The Constitution does give a two-thirds majority of the states the right to alter that selfsame document notwithstanding the objections of the remaining third. In effect, this means that a supermajority of Americans has the right to make decisions about the structure and character of the federal union itself regardless of the objections of a minority as large as thirty percent of the total. By design, of course, such supermajorities will only take shape around matters of sufficient importance to a sufficiently large swath of the electorate so as to ensure that any changes made as a consequence will not result in immediate regret or repeal. The fact nevertheless remains, however, that as a result of this arrangement, decisions of the highest import may sometimes be foisted upon minorities numbering in the millions without allowing said millions any form of institutional recourse. If the majority has the numbers, to put it simply, the majority gets what it wants.

            Under different conditions, to be sure, Holland would not be the one to make such an assertion. The notion that, as he put it, a majority of the states, “have some rights, including the complete privilege and right, under the Constitution, to ask that [any] matter be submitted to the conscience of all 50 States” would not normally have been a source of comfort to the elected representative of a Southern state in the midst of the mid-20^th century struggle for civil rights. But, as discussed above, his desire to eliminate the poll tax at the federal level had seemingly placed the Floridian in a rather unusual position. And Senator Hill, at something of a loss, could only respond with equivocation. “I would say that any American citizen has a right to ask for any change he may see fit to request [,]” he cautiously admitted. “But the fact that he has a right to request such a change does not mean that the change he proposes is wise and should be made or is justified by any existing condition or any particular situation.” It was, once again, a rather weak argument under the circumstances, and arguably a testament to the fact that Hill’s position was similarly rickety. He could not say, unambiguously, that what Holland was asserting was false for the very simple reason that it wasn’t. Nothing in the text of the Constitution could protect any state or group of states from being forced to comply with a federal mandate if said mandate took the form of an amendment to the Constitution itself. For that reason, then, Hill was forced to try – somewhat shakily – to claim the moral high ground. The fact that the majority of states could force change upon those in the minority, he declared, did not mean that such an action was necessarily justifiable. Simply because they could, in essence, did not mean that they should.

            Again, and under the circumstances, this did not make for much of an argument. The thing that Hill was decrying as a morally unjustifiable intrusion into the internal affairs of a handful of Southern states was, after all, the morally unjustifiable disenfranchisement of millions of financially disadvantaged Americans. Indeed, his assertion that the addition of an anti-poll tax amendment to the text of the Constitution was legally sound but morally wrong could just as easily have been directed at the poll tax itself. Going by the increasingly flaccid state of his discourse, one wonders if he knew this to be the case. From aggressively driving his point home, he now seemed to be on the defensive. Senator Eastland appeared to be as well, if his next interjection was any kind of proof. “The distinguished Senator from Alabama knows that in connection with the Federal highway system, the vast amount of money is contributed by the Federal Government, is it not?” the senator from Mississippi began.  “That is correct [,]” Senator Hill responded, before going on to clarify that the figure was something like ninety percent of the total. “Every American citizen has a right to use those highways, does he not?” said Eastland. “That is correct [,]” said Hill, “he does, indeed. It is interstate commerce.” “Does the Senator from Alabama know [,]” continued Eastland, “that the State of Maine collects a poll tax, and that a resident of Maine cannot obtain a driver's license until he pays that poll tax, and cannot drive on the Federal highways in the State of Maine until he pays that poll tax?” “Yes [,]” said Hill. “In other words, the payment of that poll tax is a prerequisite to driving on the Federal highways.” “Is not that situation similar to the one now confronting us?” asked Eastland. “Certainly,” said Hill, “because the Federal Government has a very large, direct, and immediate pecuniary interest in that matter, having put up 90 percent of the funds for the construction of those highways.” “That is right [,]” said Eastland, finally coming to the point. “Why does not the distinguished Senator from Florida try to correct that condition, instead of picking on several of his neighboring States in the South?”

            In the parlance of the professional comedian, there was a lot of shoe-leather on that argument. It was a roundabout claim made in a very roundabout way, and one which, while not entirely without merit, was rather beside the point. Granted, there may have been a conversation worth having about the State of Maine’s then-standing policy to withhold driver’s licenses from its citizens unless and until they had paid their annual poll tax. After all – and as the pair of senators rightly observed – the people of Maine paid into the federal highway system on the same basis as their fellow citizens living in other states. Why, then, were the inhabitants of the Pine Tree State restricted from making use of this piece of infrastructure that they’d already helped fund by a law which demanded that they first pay a fee? It was a perfectly fair question to pose in the general context of the United States Senate, but this fact did not at all excuse the five Southern states in question from using essentially the same tactic to deny their poorest citizens the right to vote. Responding to criticism by pointing at someone else and asking why they’re not the one being scrutinized doesn’t necessarily do anything to alter the validity of the original criticism. It may indeed have been the case that the State of Maine was behaving in an unjustifiable manner, but this did not change the fact that the states of Arkansas, Mississippi, Texas, Virginia, and Alabama were likewise withholding from certain of their citizens something which should have been theirs by right.

            Once again, and to his credit, Holland simply refused to engage. His position on this issue was a simple one, and he adamantly refused to engage in any pointless attempts at misdirection. “If I may be allowed to answer,” he thus replied,

In a patient way, the question that was raised by the Senator from Mississippi, the Senator from Florida hates to see people right across the line in Alabama, exactly like people in Florida, who can vote and do vote, deprived of their right of voting because they have either forgotten to pay the poll tax, or because they did not have the $6 to pay it […] The Senator from Florida does not think that is a sound situation. He feels he has a complete right to move toward a sounder participation of all citizens, and makes no apology to anybody. He has stood arm in arm with his distinguished friends in opposition to other measures, but the Senator from Florida cannot for his life see how anybody can oppose something which is so basically American as to have this submission to the jury of States, which has been a part of our Constitution since it was founded.

One once more cannot help but be struck, when reading this very plainspoken assertion of the fundamental nature of certain rights under the American system of government, by the utter incongruity of the words themselves and the politics of the man who gave voice to them. Holland claimed that his only motivation was that it pained him to see any of his fellow Americans “deprived of their right of voting because they have either forgotten to pay the poll tax, or because they did not have the $6 to pay it [.]” There was nothing legally questionable about this state of affairs, of course. The Supreme Court had repeatedly ruled that poll taxes were perfectly permissible under the terms of the Constitution. But the pain that Holland claimed to feel spurred him to action regardless.

The Floridian did not like what was going on the states of Arkansas, Mississippi, Texas, Virginia, and Alabama, and so he sought to use his power as a United States Senator to change it. By his own admission, he had “stood arm in arm with his distinguished friends in opposition to other measures,” but in this case, for whatever reason, he felt compelled to make an about face. On any other day of the week, Spessard Holland was a firm believer in states’ rights, segregation, and – concomitantly – white supremacy who would vehemently deny the authority of the federal government to decide which state laws were either acceptable or invalid. To his thinking, and that of men like him, it simply was not the place of those who came from one state to tell the government of another how it ought to conduct itself. Every state was sovereign and embodied the will of its citizens. To bend to the directives of an outside authority would accordingly represent a betrayal of that selfsame popular will. On this day, however – March 15^th, 1962, to be exact – Holland could not “for his life see how anybody can oppose something which is so basically American as to have this submission to the jury of States [.]” It was no wonder his Southern colleagues seemed so disappointed.

The Purpose and Powers of the Senate, Part LXVII: “A Proper Interest in His State”

Having adjourned until noon the following day – March 15^th, 1962 – the United States Senate thereafter resumed consideration of the Alexander Hamilton national monument bill which Senator Spessard Holland was preparing to use as a vehicle for his anti-poll tax amendment. New York Republican Jacob Javits then proceeded to introduce said bill, his fellow New Yorker, Kenneth Keating, then spoke to the need for such legislation – Hamilton’s house, it seemed, was then going to “rack and ruin” – and the Majority Leader, Mike Mansfield, then moved that debate should thereafter proceed. Whereupon, rather predictably, a brace of Southerners made themselves known. And while Richard Russell was not among them, the sentiments which he had expressed during the previous day’s debate were nevertheless very much in evidence. The first to speak, as it happened, was Alabama’s J. Lister Hill (1894-1984), a New Deal, populist Democrat who was known to occasionally break with his more conservative colleagues in support of legislation that gave greater power to the federal government. In this instance, however, Hill appeared to be in a conservative mood.

First, Hill echoed Senator Russell’s remarks of the previous day. The notion of substituting a constitutional amendment for a piece of normal legislation, he said, was “a most unusual and extraordinary and, I think, unprecedented and preposterous course [.]” The Southern reputation for strict propriety was well-earned, it would seem. Then – echoing Russell once again – he began lamenting the loss of state power that the proposed amendment seemed to portend. “This is an attempt to amend the Constitution,” he said,

To take away from the States the rights which they have enjoyed from the very day the Constitution was written and became effective. It is an attempt to take away their rights to fix the qualifications of their electors. We oppose it because we are deeply moved by our concern and desire and our willingness to fight for the preservation of the cherished rights of our States to prescribe the qualifications of their electors. I may say that these are rights which the Founding Fathers specifically preserved and secured to our States in the original Constitution.

Such invocations of the Founders have been a cornerstone of congressional debate since almost the moment of the Founding itself, of course. No matter the position being taken by the lawmaker in question, a precedent in its favor always seems to present itself from among the writings and orations of that selfsame illustrious cohort. To that end, Senator Hill noted accordingly that when the Constitution was first drafted in 1787, a guarantee of state autonomy in terms of setting the parameters of the franchise had been absolutely essential to securing the final agreement of all involved. Bearing this in mind, he concluded, “there would have been no Constitution if that right had not been clearly, specifically, and absolutely preserved to the several States.”

The Senator from Alabama was not wrong, of course, when he affirmed that state control over the franchise had been very important to the Framers. It would be hard to name a group of American political thinkers who, in their time, were more conscious of the need to balance state and national power or who were more sensitive of the specific responsibilities best allocated to each sphere. But there was a great difference between the circumstances under which the Constitution was drafted and those which, in the early 1960s, confronted the United States Senate. So many of the Framer’s expectations and assumptions had been proven faulty or misguided in the nearly two centuries that had elapsed since they collectively hashed out the text of the American republic’s governing charter. Indeed, the relationship between the federal government, the various states, and the American people had changed to such a tremendous extent over the course of the 19^th and 20^th centuries from what the Founding Generation had envisioned that one might be given to wonder whether the Framers would even recognize the nation whose fundamental charter they had penned. To say, then, that a particular practice was worthwhile simply because the Framers had endorsed it did not – and does not – make for much of an argument in its favor. The Constitution had, at the time of Hill’s remarks, been amended fully twenty-three times. Clearly, there were many things about that original document which successive generations of Americans determined were insufficient to their changing needs.

            Hill’s argument against an anti-poll tax amendment did not begin and end with a simple invocation of tradition for tradition’s sake, of course. Like Russell the day before, the senator from Alabama was prepared to pull out all the stops. To that end, he also made a point of noting that the actual costs of the poll tax in his state were, in his words, “extremely moderate. They range from $1 to $1.50. The influence of the tax on the size of the electorate is [therefore] too insignificant for anyone even to attempt to measure.” As if this were not evidence enough, Hill then went on to further affirm that some prerequisites must inevitably accompany voting no matter how liberal the electoral system. “To register,” he began,

A person must go to a particular place where the registration is held. Persons do not register in their own homes; they must go to the courthouse or to some other place designated for that purpose. Furthermore, in order to vote, a citizen must go to the polling place. He must transport himself to that place. When he gets there, sometimes he must stand in line before he may vote. It may take some time out of a very busy day for him to stand and wait his turn to exercise his right to the ballot and to vote. So […] there are certain prerequisites to voting, and this little tax is one of them.

Hill’s assertion that “a little tax” was just one of many potential obligations every American was bound to fulfil in attempting to cast their ballot vastly oversimplified the issue at hand, of course. There were indeed a great many things which a person might be required to do in order to exercise their right to vote, from registering, to applying for an absentee ballot, to standing in line, to putting off personal obligations. But inasmuch as it is the theoretical aim of every democratic society to encourage voter turnout – so that the officials accordingly elected represent the will of their constituents as accurately as possible – most democratic governments tend to put in place such procedures and policies as to render the process of voting as easy and as painless as is possible.

The United States, in this regard, is– and was – no different. Absentee ballots cost nothing to apply for and come with prepaid return envelopes. Polling stations are generally allocated so as to keep wait times to a minimum. Registration is often a one-time necessity and requires relatively little paperwork. These measures are certainly not foolproof or infallible – people have still waited in long lines, still encountered problems with their absentee ballots – but they have done a great deal, collectively, to eliminate the most common barriers to voting. But whereas the inconveniences Hill noted represent either the unavoidable failure of otherwise sound policy or else the inevitable consequence of attempting to solve complicated logistical problems, the poll tax that he was defending served no purpose other than to act as a barrier to voting. Granted, the revenue generated was often put to use funding public schools. Indeed, Hill made a point of noting exactly that. But a tax on whiskey, say, or cigarettes could have served the same purpose without compromising the ability of the economically disadvantaged to cast a ballot. Far from being a necessary prerequisite to voting, therefore – that is, something unpleasant but functionally unavoidable – the poll tax represented a deliberate attempt to make voting more difficult for those most in need.

None of this, of course, made any never mind to the likes of Senator Hill. Like Senator Russell had been before him, he was less interested in the facts on the ground in states where poll taxes remained on the books than in defending the right of any given state to levy such taxes as it pleased. Nor, for that matter, did it at all rankle the sensitivities of Senator James O. Eastland (1904-1986), the Mississippi Democrat who next asked to take the floor. Quite the opposite, in fact. Far from seeking to counter Hill’s assertions, Eastland sought instead to continue his colleague’s exploration of the supposed harmlessness of the poll tax. “Does the Senator know whether the poll tax in Alabama disqualifies anybody from voting?” he asked. “I do not think the poll tax in Alabama disqualifies anybody from voting [,]” Hill responded. “I do not know of anyone in Alabama who does not have a dollar and a half that he cannot contribute to the education of the youth in Alabama in order to vote.” Eastland pressed on. “Does not the Senator think that that is true in all the States which have the poll tax?” he said. “I think that is true in all those States [,]” answered Hill. “I think the Senator would say the same thing about his own State of Mississippi.” The Alabaman then went on to add – as if his point had not sufficiently been made – that “The poll tax does not prevent anyone from voting. Can it be that a citizen of a State does not have enough interest in the welfare and progress of his State to make the little contribution of a dollar or a dollar and a half to the education of the youth of his State, so that the citizen may vote?”

It was, on balance, a substantially pointless exchange. Both men represented states where poll taxes were still being collected. And so neither man had any reason to call into question the validity of the same. On the contrary, they had every reason to make those who did not pay the poll tax appear miserly, foolish, or otherwise “un-American.” “Can it be that a citizen of a State does not have enough interest in the welfare and progress of his State to make the little contribution of a dollar or a dollar and a half to the education of the youth of his State [?]” Hill asked. Another senator, thus engaged with Hill in this same line of questioning, might have responded by telling him that some Americans who wanted to vote simply couldn’t spare a dollar to do so. They might even have asked him, as a corollary, whether requiring people to pay a sum of money in order to vote regardless of their economic circumstances effectively amounted to voter suppression. But Eastland didn’t request the floor so that he could actually engage in a debate with his colleague from Alabama. On the contrary, as someone who had a vested interest in keeping the government of his own state from looking needlessly cruel, he was simply seeking to offer his support to someone who shared this same position.

After next going on to compare the poll tax to the dues required to be paid by the member-nations of the UN – non-payment of which the Kennedy Administration had lately stated should disqualify member nations from voting, leading Eastland to conclude that the US Government “endorsed the principle of the poll tax” – the pair were thankfully interrupted by the previously-silent Senator Holland. The chief architect of the anti-poll tax amendment had evidently had enough, and at this moment chose to initiate his own line of questioning. First, Holland asked Hill if it was required, in Alabama, for a citizen of voting age to pay the poll tax in order to cast a ballot. Hill said that it was, though he emphasized that the minimum cost was one dollar and fifty cents and that the accumulated cost – for consecutive years of non-payment – could amount to no more than three dollars. When Holland then seized upon this figure of three dollars – “is it not true that a citizen between the ages of 22 and 45 must pay $3 or 2 years' poll tax in order to be qualified to vote?” – Hill again attempted to minimize the significance of any such payment. “If a person lets a year or more go by,” he said, “or, as I said, if he lets as many as 15 years go by, or if he lets as many as 20 years go by, he never has to pay more than $3.” Undeterred, Holland sought to clarify: “But he does have to pay $3?” Hill’s answer was characteristically dismissive. “If he has not kept up his poll tax,” he said, “the little tax of $1.50—every cent of which, as I have said, is devoted to the public schools of Alabama—if he has not kept that tax current and paid each year, the most he would have to pay would be $3.”

Senator Eastland then stepped in again by way of a diversion. “Does not the Senator think that the $3 that a person must pay is quite puny and does not discommode anyone?” he said. Hill’s response might as well have been rehearsed. “I thoroughly agree with the Senator from Mississippi [,]” he said. “Certainly it does not discommode anybody. After all, what citizen is there, who has a proper interest in his State […] who is not perfectly willing to pay this small amount of $1.50?” The phrasing that Hill employed here is particularly worth noting. He did not ask whether they were any citizens who were not perfectly able to pay the poll tax. Rather, he asked whether they were any citizens not perfectly willing. Evidently, the senator from Alabama was particularly keen on insinuating that non-payment of the poll tax was a choice, that no one was in a position where they literally could not afford to pay it, and that those who chose not to do so lacked “a proper interest” in the general welfare of their state. When one also takes into account the racial component of the discussion at hand, the impression that Senator Hill was trying to cultivate becomes clearer still. What was the Alabaman saying about those who failed to pay the poll tax? That they were uninterested either in voting or in contributing to the general welfare. And who, by design, were generally unable to pay the tax? The economically disadvantaged members of the nation’s Black community. So what, then, was Hill trying to say without simply coming out with the words? That the nation’s Black community didn’t care about voting, that they didn’t care about supporting schools, and that it could accordingly be said that they lacked “a proper interest” in public affairs. This was, of course, a very old canard – that Black people are lazy, or unmotivated, or generally quiescent – but one which many a Southerner would still have cleaved to in the early 1960s. And it was for this reason, no doubt, that Senator Hill sought to deploy it. Lacking in proof or not, it conformed to what many of his colleagues already believed in their hearts.       

Holland, for his part, remained unmoved by this relatively subtle bit of race-baiting. And so, as was his wont, he attempted to steer things back on track. “A man and his wife would have to pay $6 in order for both of them to be qualified to vote in a primary election or in a general election in Alabama […] would they not?” he asked Hill. The Alabama Democrat seemed to bristle. “No [,]” he said. “The only time when they would have to pay $6 would be when they were in default. If they were current in the payment of that tax, they would have to pay only $1.50 a piece.” Eastland – as though he and Senator Hill were members of a Vaudeville-era comedy team – then jumped in yet again. “The answer to the question of the Senator from Florida is that in the vast majority of cases he is wrong, is he not?” he said. “Yes [,]” said Hill. “In 99 percent of the cases he is wrong, is he not?” said Eastland. “Yes [,]” repeated Hill. “He is undertaking to cite the most extreme case. He must be thinking about the people of his own State, not the people of Alabama.” Neither man, to be sure, offered any evidence to back their claim. In ninety-nine percent of cases, they said, people paid the poll tax and were thus free to cast a ballot when the time came. From where did they source this figure? Was the underlying data up to date? Neither of them seemed inclined to say, if indeed it was possible for them to do so. Practically speaking, then, the claim that they were making was entirely lacking any basis in fact.

            Senator Holland, as ever, remained unphased. “So far as the people of Florida are concerned,” he replied to Hill’s parting jibe, “they have not had to pay a poll tax since 1937—which I think is a sound thing.”  Again, the fact that the elimination of the poll tax was tied to his own history as a public servant was never all that far from the conversation at hand. He then continued: “Does not the Senator from Alabama know that the amendment which I and 66 other Senators propose does not prohibit the imposition of a poll tax as a prerequisite to voting in State and local elections, but relates only to the election of President, Vice President, and Members of Congress?” Hill’s response, unsurprisingly, was to shift his angle of attack yet again. He had implied that eliminating the poll tax went against the intentions of the Framers. He had argued that the poll tax was but one of many requirements Americans were required to fulfil in order to vote. And he had declared, unequivocally, that the individual cost of the poll tax was so low as to be inconsiderable to any individual who actually desired to vote. Now, faced with Holland’s avowal that an anti-poll tax amendment would only apply to federal elections, Senator Hill of Alabama decried the chaos which was bound to result. “Can the Senator from Florida think of anything which would be more confusing [,]” he said

Or would require more bookkeeping, redtape, and all that sort of thing, than to require the payment of a poll tax […] if one wishes to vote in elections for State and local officers, but then say, “But so far as national elections are concerned, the payment of a poll tax will not be required.” I cannot think of anything that would be more divisive or confusing or would come nearer to undermining the system of obtaining, by means of the payment of this small amount of money, funds to be used for the education of our youth.

Before Holland had a chance to respond, Eastland again jumped in. “Why should not a man pay a poll tax in order to be able to vote in an election for Members of Congress?” he said. “I know of no reason why he should not [,]” said Hill. “What is the difference between paying a poll tax in order to be able to vote in an election for Members of Congress and paying a poll tax in order to be able to vote in an election for the Governor of the State?” asked Eastland. “There is no difference [,]” said Hill, “and certainly there is no reason why a poll tax should not be paid in order to qualify to vote in all elections.” It was a strange argument the two were making, if it could indeed be called an argument. “There is no reason why a poll tax should not be paid in order to qualify to vote in all elections [,]” said Hill, as if that was the beginning and the end of the matter. Neither man argued why this should be the case – why any citizen of the United States should have been made to pay a fee in order to exercise one of the fundamental rights to which they were entitled. Rather, they simply acted as though the underlying reasoning was self-evident. “Why should not a man pay a poll tax in order to be able to vote in an election for Members of Congress?” said Eastland. “I know of no reason why he should not [,]” said Hill. The brazen disregard for basic democratic norms which these two United States Senators thus gleefully displayed would almost be impressive were it not so deeply disquieting.   

Holland – doubtless growing tired of this senseless back-and-forth – responded to this fairly nauseating display by offering what he doubtless hoped would be a substantial blow to Hill’s earlier argument. Was it not true, he said, irrespective of what the senator from Alabama had just declared,

That on the present registration rolls in the State of Alabama, places have to be left for exemptions for those who are veterans and for exemptions for those who are over a certain age, and for exemptions for other reasons; and is it not true that it has not proven to be difficult at all to have little stamped showings of exemptions appear on the same registration roll?

It was, by and large, a perfectly cogent point on Holland’s part. Hill’s complaint had been that creating a system in which people were required to pay the poll tax in some circumstances but not in others would simply be too confusing to even contemplate. But it was already true that certain people in Alabama weren’t required to pay the poll tax because they qualified for an exception. People over the age of forty-five weren’t required to pay; nor were veterans; nor were certain others. As every year went by and more people turned forty-five, and more people were discharged from the military, and more people were able to qualify for whatever other exceptions were on offer, didn’t this create a great deal of complexity on its own? And hadn’t the government of the State of Alabama managed to sort things out just fine? So what, then, was so complicated about creating another species of exception? What was so hard about creating “little stamped showings of exemptions [to] appear on the same registration roll?”

Naturally – given that they were most assuredly less interested in engaging in an exchange of ideas than simply saying the things they felt obligated to say – neither Hill nor Eastland were given pause by this inquiry, or else felt at all compelled to provide Holland with an answer. On the contrary, their response was to further hammer on their core talking point. “Does not the Senator from Alabama think the distinguished Senator from Florida has just now destroyed his own argument?” Eastland began. “In Alabama, one who is 45 years of age is exempt, is he not?” Hill answered with a simple, “That is correct.” “And veterans are also exempt, are they not?” Eastland continued. “That is correct [,]” Hill repeated. “When the Senator from Florida refers to a requirement to pay $3,” said Eastland, “he is picking out a few, little, puny cases here and there, is he not? “Yes [,]” Hill responded. “The requirement to pay $3 itself does not disenfranchise anyone, does it?” Eastland asked. “That is correct [,]” Hill concluded, “there are only a few, little, puny cases.” Again, one is struck by the apparent similarity between this pair of Southern senators and an early 20^th century comedy duo. They had not at all demonstrated how it was that Senator Holland has supposedly “destroyed his own argument,” but their patter was nothing if not snappy and to-the-point.  

Hill and Eastland’s primary strategy, such as it was, was decidedly one of minimization. They did not seek to dispute the fact that the existence of the poll tax prevented some people from being able to cast a ballot. On the contrary, they were of the opinion that this was only right and proper. When the cause being funded was the education of the next generation of American citizens, what kind of person could possibly object to being parted from a dollar or two? Well, whoever they were – miserly, selfish, quite lacking in civic spirit – they were very few in number. “A few, little, puny cases [,]” the pair agreed. Insignificant. Not worth considering. In light of the fact that these two men represented Southern states in which the segregationist Jim Crow regime remained largely intact, their characterization of the number of people in Alabama disenfranchised by the poll tax as “few,” “little,” and “puny” would seem once more to warrant a certain amount of scrutiny. Being both of them products of a society – that is, the white, middle-class South of the early 20^th century – wherein “separate but equal” was the unquestioned rule, Black people were functionally regarded as something less than full citizens, and lynchings occurred with startling regularity, it would not be at all difficult to imagine Hill and Eastland alike considering the disenfranchisement of several million Black Americans as being inconsiderable in the grand scheme.

The disenfranchisement of the region’s Black community, after all, had been one of the central goals of Southern lawmakers, executive officials, and judges since the ratification of the 15^th Amendment in the winter of 1870. And the entire purpose of the poll tax was to help achieve this exact objective. So why, then, should Hill and Eastland have been anything other than dismissive? Indeed, it would be fair to say that there was no reason to expect otherwise. From their perspective – along with that of many of their fellow Southerners in Congress – the disenfranchisement of the South’s Black inhabitants really was a trifling thing. The entire purpose of the law, to them, was the continual entrenchment of white control. And no matter how often or how convincingly anyone might argue to the contrary – or even suggest that certain customary practices ultimately did more harm than good – they were not prepared to change their minds. The Jim Crow regime had been plodding along for the better part of a century, and in that time had ground down generations of Black Americans to a state of legal helplessness and spiritual indignity under the sheer weight of its manifold mechanisms of oppression. The white, Democratic South, in that time, had managed not only to prevent the fundamental upending of the established racial power structure which the Reconstruction had seemed to presage, but they had further succeeded in solidifying their grip on local political power to the point that Sothern society became governed, in effect, by a kind of ethno-political oligarchy. In consequence, from the perspective of men like J. Lister Hill and James Eastland – beneficiaries of this culture, to be sure – there really was no reason to admit that anything was amiss. Institutionalized racial oppression had worked out just fine for the South, and any evidence to the contrary could be safely and entirely dismissed.  

The Purpose and Powers of the Senate, Part LXVI: “So Anomalous, Such a Strange Development in Our National Life”

    Foiled in his attempt to mire the anti-poll tax amendment debate that took place on March 14^th, 1962 in a sentimental digression about the American Civil War, Georgia Senator Richard Russell instead chose to respond to the amendment’s primary sponsor, Florida Senator Spessard Holland, by defaulting once more to rank condescension. “The Senator from Florida [,]” he said,

Is at least to be commended for seeking this objective through the process of amendment to the Constitution, instead of a statute. His process is consistent with the constitutional system. I think that the objective is inconsistent with the philosophy of the rights of the States. That is where my friend and I differ.

It was a slight insult, to be sure, but an insult, nonetheless. Here was Richard Russell, attempting, in his own words, to defend the rights of the states against unwarranted federal intrusion. And whom did he find himself opposing in this instance? Not only a fellow Democrat, but a fellow Southerner. It was enough to make a person question the depth of Senator Holland’s convictions. Senator Russell cared deeply about the constitutional protections afforded to the states. Indeed, he would go on to quote certain of them to the letter over the course of the oration that was to follow. Was it the case, then, that Holland didn’t care about these things? Were his claims to support state sovereignty a misrepresentation of his true beliefs? For his part, Senator Russell did not dwell on these implied questions for very long. Before Holland had a chance to answer the charge that he was acting in a manner “inconsistent with the philosophy of the rights of the states [,]” the Georgian moved swiftly into yet another acid-tongued assertion that the poll tax wasn’t really a problem.

    “A great many of those who depend for their election year after year on the votes of minority groups within their States [,]” Russell began,

Have tried to make it appear there was some question of imposition on colored people, or some question of rights of Negroes as contradistinguished from rights of whites, involved in the question of the poll tax. It has nothing whatever to do with it. The States which require a poll tax today apply this levy equally to all voters and to all prospective voters without regard to race, creed, or color. We all know that if that were not the case, and if the States were not doing so now, the pressure groups would have had the Supreme Court strike down these State poll tax laws a long, long time ago.

Russell’s barely concealed bitterness at the state of contemporary American political culture is particularly evident in this passage. Previously, he had lamented what he saw as a mounting trend toward political conformity among the American people and their elected representatives. America, he said, “grew faster, built a better system of government, and developed […] a way of life that has been the envy of mankind all over the world” precisely because the various states “did not conform or have to conform [.]” And now, to the same end, he was complaining specifically about the Supreme Court.

    “We all know [,]” said Russell, that if poll taxes did not apply to all Americans of voting age regardless of race, color, or creed, “the pressure groups would have had the Supreme Court strike down these State poll tax laws a long, long time ago.” Plainly, this was in reference to Brown v. Board of Education (1954) and the series of pro-civil rights decisions that followed it over the course of the late 50s and early 60s. Brown, of course, mandated the desegregation of American public schools, the primary response to which, across the American South, was shock, anger, and ardent resentment on the part of local citizens groups and political power brokers alike. But while Southern legislators serving in Congress gave voice to their displeasure in the form of the Southern Manifesto (1956) – the purpose of which was to essentially inform the Supreme Court that further anti-segregation rulings would meet with the utmost resistance – further such rulings were handed down all the same. In Cooper v. Aaron (1958), for example, the Court quashed an attempt by the Little Rock, Arkansas school district to postpone its desegregation program in deference to the pro-segregationist actions of the state’s governor and legislators. “State support of segregated schools through any arrangement, management, funds or property cannot be squared with the command of the Fourteenth Amendment that no State shall deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws [,]” all nine justices unanimously agreed. Two years later, in Gomillion v. Lightfoot (1960), the Court responded to a lawsuit filed by Tuskegee Institute professor Charles G. Gomillion (1900-1995) against the city of Tuskegee, Alabama claiming the existence of a discriminatory gerrymander by declaring that “Even the broad power of a State to fix the boundaries of its municipalities is limited by the Fifteenth Amendment, which forbids a State to deprive any citizen of the right to vote because of his race.” That same year, the Court also found – in Boynton v. Virginia – that the practice of racial discrimination on interstate bus lines represented a violation of the Interstate Commerce Act (1887), the immediate result of which was the Freedom Rider movement of 1961.

    Naturally – given his status as a Southern, segregationist, states’ rights Democrat – Richard Russell was not at all pleased by the increasingly activist bent of the Warren Court represented by cases like these. He himself had co-authored the aforementioned Southern Manifesto, and it must have been both personally and ideologically galling to have his own concerted efforts to warn the Court away from such behavior so completely and publicly ignored. Throughout most of the 19^th century, the Supreme Court had been a bastion of judicial conservatism and a bulwark against the expansion of the practical authority of the federal government. Decisions like Dredd Scott v. Sanford (1857) and Plessy v. Ferguson (1896) – which respectively asserted the inability of Black Americans to claim citizenship and established the doctrine of “separate but equal” – were the inevitable result, leading many a Southern segregationist to quite naturally conclude that the federal courts were one of the most powerful tools at their disposal for the protection and expansion of the Jim Crow regime in particular and white supremacy in general.

    The replacement of the cautious Southerner Fred Vinson (1890-1953) as Chief Justice in 1954 with the unapologetically progressive Earl Warren (1891-1974) quickly and completely upended this assumption, however, leading to an equally understandable reaction on the part of ardent segregationists like Richard Russell. Where once – in his opinion – the Court had been a dependable guardian of unchallenged state sovereignty, now it was reduced to little more than the obedient lapdog of liberal pressure groups like the NAACP and the ACLU. The discussion at hand was not about the Supreme Court, of course, any more than it was about the Civil War or the 14^th and 15^th Amendments. But all of these things, to a greater or lesser extent, did orbit around the center of gravity that was – and is – race relations in the United States. The Court had recently refashioned itself as dependable guardian of minority rights and an opponent of Jim Crow, principally by seizing on a more liberal interpretation of the 14^th and 15^th Amendments than had previously been the norm. It was understandable, then, why someone like Russell might take the opportunity to cast aspersions upon what he perceived to be an overly activist Supreme Court in the midst of a discussion about amending the Constitution for the purpose of banning poll taxes. In his mind – and in many others’ – it all came from the same place.

    Russell next proceeded, as aforementioned, to quote from the text of the Constitution in support of the right of the states to determine the parameters of the electoral franchise – see Article I, Section 2 – before then resorting to a species of outright gaslighting in an attempt to once more shrug off the very idea that the poll tax was actually a problem. “We hear much about the differences in the State laws [,]” he observed.

That is one of the great things about this country of ours. If a man does not like the laws in one State he can move to another State […] If he finds that the majority of the people in the State in which he lives are irrevocably committed to a law or to a system of law in which he does not believe, we have great interstate highways, great railway systems, extensive methods of transportation to enable the man to move to a State in which he does find laws to his liking [.]

A more willfully ignorant view of the burdens imposed by the poll tax, one would fairly struggle to imagine. To Russell’s thinking, it would seem, freedom of movement within the United States was guarantee enough against being forced to either pay an undesirable tax or suffer the consequences of non-payment. Don’t like the electoral laws in Alabama? Simply pick up and move to Georgia. The highways are there, the railways are there, and there’s really no excuse for failing to use them. There are, of course, at least two things fundamentally faulty with this perspective.

     On the one hand, speaking practically, it simply wouldn’t have been possible – or if possible, would have been exceedingly burdensome – for those most effected by the poll tax to simply pick up and move to a different state. These were people, after all, who couldn’t spare a dollar a year to be able to register to vote. It was not in the least bit reasonable to expect them to leave behind their lives and livelihoods in order to escape an unjust law. Many of them did not own automobiles, or couldn’t afford train tickets, or simply couldn’t afford to be out of work for more than a few days at a time. Americans have moved to different states – and continue to move to different states – in order to escape the effects of laws that they consider to be burdensome, of course. But one should never conclude from this unfortunate fact that such movement ought to be thought of as anything other than a last resort. The uprooting of people’s lives, the effective exiling of entire families; these things should never be spoken of in a casual, offhand manner, or held up as evidence of an effective system of government. At the same time, speaking morally, it simply isn’t right to create and maintain a system of fundamental rights that is less than comprehensively applied. If the ability of a given person to exercise all of their rights is conditional on where they live and how much money they can spare, then the things they are seeking to exercise are not really rights at all. Privileges may be purchased; privileges may be granted unevenly. But rights are applied universally, unconditionally, and without favor. That Richard Russell would argue against this in his position as a United States Senator is truly a disheartening thing. But in light of his being a Southerner, a Democrat, and an avowed white supremacist, it is perhaps not an unexpected thing.

    Nor is the fact that, as he continued his diatribe against Senator Holland’s anti-poll tax amendment, he next shifted his tone to a kind of breathless alarmism. “In my opinion,” he declared,

This issue should not divert the attention of the Senate in this very critical period of our history […] I do not think that a constitutional amendment, standing by itself […] would be so harmful. But I resent efforts from any source to take away and circumscribe the few rights and powers that the States have left. When we finally destroy the Federal system by making the States impotent and constituting mere geographical areas that are designated from Washington […] we shall have destroyed this great system that has made our country what it is.

Evidently, far from constituting simply the final and unequivocal removal of an unjustifiable barrier to the exercise of one of the fundamental rights of American citizenship, an anti-poll tax amendment of the kind favored by Senator Spessard Holland of Florida represented the beginning of the end of the federal system of government. So completely had the national government thus far robbed the states of the rights and powers to which they were otherwise due that simply prohibiting them from levying a dollar per year per person to register to vote would bring about their utter disintegration into “mere geographical areas that are designated from Washington [.]”

    Clearly, though Senator Russell was guilty of a great many things, he was at the very least innocent of doing anything less than his utmost to defeat the anti-pol tax amendment then being offered by Senator Holland. He employed misdirection, appeals to emotion, condescension, and finally hyperbole, all while maintaining the tenor of civility and collegial respect required by the rules and traditions of the United States Senate. Indeed, were it not so misguided, it would have made for a truly impressive rhetorical display. In reality, of course, it was the people whose vote was being held hostage by an unjustifiable tax whose fate was then in the hands of the assembled members of the United States Senate. And though they numbered in the millions, their disenfranchisement ensured that their ability to in any way shape the character or the actions of the governments to whose authority they were beholden was functionally non-existent. As described by Russell, however, the actual situation was almost entirely the reverse. The people who were daily suffering under the effects of the poll tax were not the victims their advocates claimed them to be. On the contrary, Russell avowed, it was the states who were suffering. The states whose rights had been stripped away piece by piece. The states whose authority over their own citizens was being diluted to nothingness. And the states, if this trend continued, who were doomed to dissolution. To every American who loved their home state just as much as they loved their country, this was doubtless an alarming outcome to be forced to consider. There was no truth to it, to be sure – the states were not in any fundamental danger, least of all from the banning of the poll tax – but that mattered little under the circumstances. If Richard Russell could convince enough of his colleagues that the states were on the verge of total disintegration, they would react with the same urgency as if the sky itself was falling.    

    Fortunately, both for Senator Russell and for the captive audience that were his Senate colleagues – the man needed to rest his voice, just as they needed a rest from it – the Georgian next opted to cede the floor rather than continue on at greater length. Thus it was that New York Republican Jacob Javits (1904-1986) finally joined the discussion. Javits, for his part, had supported Senator Holland’s previous effort to introduce a constitutional amendment eliminating the poll tax in 1960. But in this instance, some two years later, he found fault with the Floridian’s method. Not only was he troubled by the fact that the proposal in question was coming at the expense of a previously-scheduled bill for the purpose of declaring the home of Alexander Hamilton’s to be a national monument – something which, as a New Yorker, he was more or less bound to support. But he also felt that Holland’s insistence on specifically pursuing a constitutional amendment to be fundamentally misguided. The poll tax, he firmly asserted, was “so anomalous, such a strange development in our national life, that we ought to take the first and the earliest opportunity to be rid of it.” Indeed, he further affirmed, “both as a lawyer and as a Senator, […] this is an anomaly, an encumbrance upon the rights of the citizens, not of any State, but of the United States.” But was a constitutional amendment either the best way or the most expedient way to eliminate it for all time? Senator Javits had his doubts.

    The United States Civil Rights Commission, in its report following the Election of 1960, had made twenty-seven recommendations to Congress with the aim of protecting and promoting the civil rights of the American people. Of those, Javits observed, only a handful had been acted upon in any substantial way in the two years following the report’s release. One of the recommendations had been the elimination of electoral literacy tests, another the elimination of poll taxes. But while the Senate was in the process of addressing both of these issues, Javits openly wondered at the sincerity of certain members of the same. A draft bill banning literacy tests had only recently been sent to committee, the result of which, Javits was sure, would be a full hearing on the Senate floor. But if the assembled senators, in the meantime, endorsed the banning of poll taxes by amendment, would that not set a binding precedent for the banning of literacy tests as well? Would it not render invalid the legislative approach to civil rights reform? And was this not, perhaps, the aim of certain senators, to raise the threshold of support that civil rights reforms were required to clear? Indeed, Javits further wondered, was this all part of the plan of the opponents of civil rights? Was it not quite likely the case “that the most ardent segregationist, if he could settle for these two matters, literacy tests and poll taxes, and know that that is all there would be, would probably support these measures himself [?]”

    The surest way to combat such plots – if, indeed, such plots were in motion – was to pursue what Senator Javits called “the statutory route.” That is, rather than seek a constitutional amendment – which would require supermajority support in both houses of Congress and the ratification of two-thirds of the various state legislatures – the opponents of the poll tax should instead simply seek to propose a law with the effect of banning the same. “We have the right and we have the duty,” the New Yorker accordingly asserted,

When that question arises, to take the path which in good conscience will most directly and immediately lead to the desired result. That very clearly is the path of a statute. I will be prepared to argue that that path is entirely constitutional and entirely appropriate under the amendments to the Constitution as well as under the Constitution itself, and also under the decided cases of the United States Supreme Court.

The notion that an amendment to the Constitution might not even have been necessary in order to ban the levying of poll taxes is compelling enough on its own, of course. Javits was effectively calling into question that last several years of Senator Holland’s career. Had he actually been wasting his time? Could he have achieved his stated goal long ago? The New Yorker seemed to think so. It was his opinion, as a legislator and as a lawyer, that the Constitution already gave Congress the right to regulate the electoral policies of the various states. Recalling the text of Article I, Section 4, one does find potential cause for agreement.

    “The Times, Places and Manner of holding Elections for Senators and Representatives, shall be prescribed in each State by the Legislature thereof [.]” the clause begins, “but the Congress may at any time by Law make or alter such Regulations, except as to the Places of chusing Senators.” Granting that “the manner of holding elections” is rather a vague concept within the context of the law, one might nevertheless reasonably argue that it encompasses the delimitation of qualified electors. Presumably, this is the first step in determining who is registered and who is not. Are they a citizen? Are they of age? Have they committed a felony? Are they otherwise disqualified? In five states, as of 1962, non-payment of a poll tax would register as an alternative disqualification. Presumably, then, under the banner of prescribing “the manner of holding elections” in the various states, Congress might have passed a law which simply declared that failing to pay a poll tax could not be considered a valid bar against casting a ballot in a federal election. The effected states would cry foul and file suit, of course, leaving the legislation in question in legal limbo for some time. But if only these five states stood in opposition to the relevant bill – thus making a successful filibuster in the Senate effectively impossible – then it still might have been faster to go the statutory route. That is to say, depending on how long it took the matter to be resolved in the federal courts, an anti-poll tax bill could potentially become law in less time than it would take for an anti-poll tax amendment to be successfully ratified by the states.

    More interesting, however, in terms of Javits’s argument to his fellow senators, was his open speculation that there was more than there seemed to the discussion at hand. “The most ardent segregationist,” he said, “if he could settle for these two matters, literacy tests and poll taxes, and know that that is all there would be, would probably support these measures himself.” And was that not what was happening? Of the recommendations put forward by the aforementioned Civil Rights Commission, the only two that had received anything like widespread support in Congress were the banning of literacy tests and the banning of poll taxes. Not everyone was in favor of either or both of these measures, to be sure. Southern Democrats in particular offered their share of resistance. But a bill meant to eliminate literacy tests had made it to committee in the Senate. And a proposed amendment eliminating the poll tax had some sixty co-sponsors. How was it, after decades of obfuscation and obstruction, that the segregationists serving in Congress had suddenly decided to give way? Not on everything, mind you; the Commission had made a great number of recommendations, of which the assembled lawmakers had determined to address but a fraction. But even so, agreeing to allow any of the Jim Crow regime to be dismantled by federal fiat was more than a little remarkable. Had the segregationists finally seen the writing on the wall? Had the aforementioned activism of the Warren Court finally forced them to admit that the era of segregation was coming to a close? This may have been all that it was, of course. The segregationists in Congress may simply have realized that they were fighting a losing battle and were moving slowly toward full integration only to salve their wounded pride. But Jacob Javits suspected otherwise.

    Without going into all of the reasons the New Yorker might have had to distrust the apparent quiescence of his Southern Democratic colleagues, the fact that Spessard Holland was the principal supporter of the anti-poll tax crusade was arguably cause enough for suspicion. True, Holland had been one of the legislators responsible for seeing Florida’s own poll tax repealed in the late 1930s. And it was also true that he’d pursued a national ban on the same in every session of Congress since he first joined the Senate in the late 1940s. But so much had changed since those deeply troubled days. The United States was no longer in the throes of a devastating economic crisis and its accompanying political realignment. In the late 1930s, it had made perfect sense for a Florida Democrat looking to shore up support for his party while also making a name for himself to support a populist measure like eliminating the poll tax in order to extend the franchise to the increasingly impoverished working classes. It also arguably made sense to carry on this same effort at the federal level in the late 1940s, if for no other reason than to ensure that no veteran returning to an uncertain job market would be forced to swallow disenfranchisement as a reward for their service. But by 1962, the political calculus of American public life had fundamentally shifted. The New Deal Coalition was decidedly fraying, alleviating the plight of the working poor was no longer the national priority it once was, and the events of the 1950s had lent new impetus to the movement for civil rights.

    For Spessard Holland, in this altered context, to nonetheless continue seeking a national ban on poll taxes would accordingly have seemed to many an observer to be more than a little inexplicable. The man was, after all, an avowed segregationist. He’d come out vehemently in opposition to Brown v. Board of Education in 1954. He’d signed the Southern Manifesto in 1956. He’d voted against the Civil Rights Act of 1957. There was no question as to his bona fides as a Southern, states’ rights Democrat. And yet, into the 1960s, he was still pushing for a ban on poll taxes, one of the cornerstones of the Southern Jim Crow regime. Could he not see that the political landscape had shifted under his feet? Did he not understand that in the years since his tenure as a state senator in Florida, the idea of eliminating poll taxes had taken on a liberal reformist connotation? Evidently, he did not, for which reason people on both sides of the issue were given to question his motives. His fellow Southerners, like Richard Russell, thought he’d grown soft on segregation, or else believed that he was foolishly trying to appease those calling for reform. Oddly enough, Senator Javits seemed to agree with the latter assessment. Perhaps Holland was of the opinion that eliminating the poll tax by constitutional amendment would placate the foes of segregation by granting them an impressive enough victory to stave off further demands for reform, both men observed. Russell had defied this impression explicitly when he earlier chided Holland on the subject, of course. Far from quieting down the mounting furor, he said, “the adoption of this amendment would be like feeding a couple of peanuts to a hungry bear: It would only whet his appetite for more [.]” But did all segregationists feel this way? Did some of them – perhaps even most of them – secretly hope that Holland’s effort would succeed, thus staving off further intervention by the federal government into state affairs? Jacob Javits, once again, very much seemed to think so, the fact of which further highlights how strange was the situation at hand. That an anti-poll tax amendment was on the verge of being approved by the Senate in the spring of 1962, given the circumstances, was not all that odd. But that it was being championed by Florida Democrat who otherwise favored segregation? That was odd. Decidedly so.                           

The Purpose and Powers of the Senate, Part LXV: “The Prime of Life and Capable of Earning Their Livelihood”

    Naturally, Spessard Holland was not about to ignore the condescension visited upon him by Richard Russell, a man who claimed him as a friend. Thus began, as the Senate session of March 14^th, 1962 wore on, a lengthy exchange between the two during which various other senators chimed in. To begin, Holland attempted to clarify with Russell that the former had approached the latter previously on the subject of a poll tax amendment and been met with signs of support. Russell avowed that while this was partially the case – Holland had approached him in 1949 in quest of support – he had never plainly stated that he was in favor of the measure in question. On the contrary, he went on to say, he had explained to Holland during their most recent conversation on the topic that he felt any anti-poll tax measures enacted at the federal level – in addition to flying in the face of the sovereignty of the individual states – was fundamentally wrongheaded in the era of the civil rights movement. “If there were any idea that the adoption of such an amendment would appease the so-called champions of the civil-rights program in the United States,” said Russell, the Senator from Florida “was entirely mistaken, but that, on the contrary, the adoption of this amendment would be like feeding a couple of peanuts to a hungry bear: It would only whet his appetite for more—in this case, for further legislation.”

    Holland, to his credit, did not rise to the bait which Russell’s invocation of the ongoing domestic struggle over civil rights plainly represented. The Georgian had just accused the Floridian of attempting to appease the liberal proponents of reform, the implication of which – from the perspective of a conservative Southerner – was arguably that the latter was somehow weak, overly fearful, or lacking in determination. But Holland’s response was only to declare that,

I [am] not interested in appeasement in any way […] In my opinion every citizen should, as a matter of right, be entitled to vote for President, Vice President, and Senators and Representatives; and that is all that is involved in this case. I do not like to think of the fact that in the part of Alabama just across the boundary line from the State of Florida […] there are citizens who cannot vote for President or Vice President unless they pay this tax, whereas directly across the boundary line, in Florida, the citizens who live there are not limited by such a requirement. I do not like to think of the fact that the citizens in our sister State, which we love so much, are confronted with that necessity.

In truth, Holland’s willful disregard for the fact that any conversation about the poll tax was bound, in 1962, to become a conversation about the civil rights movement didn’t do him any favors. The energy he spent repeatedly denying that his overall aim was in any way connected to the contemporary struggle on the part of the nation’s Black community for the full recognition of their political rights was undeniably energy which would have been better spent elsewhere. Nevertheless, one can almost admire his stubbornness. His objection to the poll tax, in his own words, was also admirably straightforward and clear. “Every citizen should, as a matter of right,” he said, “be entitled to vote for President, Vice President, and Senators and Representatives [.]” Being able to boil down his position to such a simple, arguably self-evident statement doubtless went a long way towards allaying many potential objections.

    Russell, unsurprisingly, chose this moment to pivot once again to a discussion of the supposedly meagre material cost of the poll tax rather than risk admitting that the thing was not morally justifiable. It made for a rather lengthy diatribe under the circumstances, but one still worth citing at length. The Georgia senator’s habit of dilatory exposition in an attempt to obscure the issue at hand was a classic example of the kind of rhetorical obstructionism regularly employed by Southern lawmakers in the 1950s and 1960s in an attempt to stave off the passage of civil rights legislation. “I have always taken the position that this tax does not really prevent anyone from voting [,]” Russell accordingly began,

And I am not impressed by the arguments of those who today weep because of “the great burden of this tax” on voting […] in my own State this tax was not levied on women—women could vote without paying the tax; and it was not levied on veterans or on persons beyond age 55, as I recall. So the tax then applied only to a relatively small group of voters—those supposed to be in the prime of life and capable of earning their livelihood. Furthermore, every dollar received from the poll tax went into the school funds. It is said that the poll tax is a very onerous burden. However […] every one of the original States had voting restrictions much more onerous than the $1 poll tax […] Indeed, up to the time when there were some 25 or 30 States. there were very rigid property-ownership requirements or restrictions in connection with voting for instance, that one who wished to vote had to show that he had paid taxes on approximately $500 worth of property—and that was at a time when the dollar was really worth a dollar—long before the great inflation which has occurred since those days […] He had to own real estate or be a freeholder before he could vote. I had occasion to check into it and see just what proportion of the taxes paid in the United States today is involved in this horrendous, heavy, burdensome levy on the poor people to keep them from voting. It gets down to where one can hardly write the figure out. It is less than thirty-seven millionths of 1 percent of the total tax bill of the American people. If that is reduced to figures, one must put down a decimal, a 0, a 0, a 0, a 0, a 3, and a 7—thirty-seven millionths of 1 percent of the tax bill that the American people pay represents this crushing burden that is denying the people suffrage in the United States.

It is worth exploring the various components of this argument piecemeal, if for no other reason than to cultivate a more thorough understanding of precisely how the opponents of these kinds of reform measures attempted to sway their fellow senators against them. To that end, let us first consider this “relatively small group of voters” to which, Russell asserted, the poll tax in Georgia once applied.

    In the Peach State, the senator avowed, before its poll tax was repealed in 1945, said tax applied only to men who were not veterans and who were under the age of fifty-five. And in the decade between 1940 and 1950, Georgia’s population lay somewhere between about three and three and a half million. In consequence of these facts, even if these aforementioned exclusions ensured that as many as two million people were exempt from having to pay a tax in order to vote, that still left potentially one million Georgians subject to said monetary restriction. Russell’s claim, of course, was that these million or so people were “supposed to be in the prime of life and capable of earning their livelihood [,]” but this is fairly obviously an oversimplification. Not only did Russell have no way of knowing exactly what proportion of this supposedly able-bodied cohort was actually capable of regularly earning a living – that is, how many were free from chronic injury, chronic illness, or were considered broadly “employable” – but he entirely failed to account for the plainly observable fact that working even a fulltime job was not – and indeed is not – any kind of guarantee that the individual so employed will have access to discretionary spending. To this day, millions of people in the United States who work fulltime jobs live below the poverty line and cannot afford to spend even a single dollar on something other than their own survival. This state of affairs was doubly true in the relatively underdeveloped regions of the rural American South of the 1940s, and it was – and, indeed, is – triply true for those who belonged to the region’s Black community. Institutional discrimination within the economic sphere severely limited the job prospects of millions of Black Georgians – not to mention Black Americans across the nation – and effectively ensured that seemingly non-essential expenses like poll taxes were beyond their ability to pay.      

    Russell’s second point also represented something of an oversimplification. Or, if not that, exactly, then a kind of rhetorical bait-and-switch. It was very much the case, of course, that until the 1820s and 1830s, most states placed property qualifications on the ability of their citizens to vote. In New York, for example, until 1821, residents were required to own the equivalent of at least forty pounds of either private property or land in order to register as voters. This was also the case in Massachusetts – forty shillings in land or forty pounds in personal property – until 1820 and in Virginia – fifty acres of vacant land, twenty-fives acres of cultivated land, or a town lot and a house twelve feet by twelve – until as late as 1850. Compared to these kinds of restrictions – the purpose of which was to purposely disenfranchise the “lesser sort” within American society – being required to pay a single dollar every year would indeed appear to be hardly any kind of burden at all. A great accomplishment, one might call it, this shift towards universal suffrage. A triumph of American democracy. What such naval gazing fails to acknowledge, however – and that from which Russell doubtless hoped to distract his fellow senators considering – was that the elimination of onerous franchise qualifications was really only worth commemorating once every single American citizen of the proper age could vote. It was undeniable that the United States, circa 1962, had made great strides since its founding in terms of who qualified for citizenship and who among its citizens had access to the ballot. But the mere fact of these strides in no way excused the continued disenfranchisement of certain communities of American citizens. A far larger proportion of the American population could vote in 1962 than was the case in the 1790s, to be sure, but many millions were still barred from doing so by way of exclusionary measures like poll taxes. This was simply the fact of the matter.      

    Finally, Russell sought to conclude the cited diatribe with a bit of old-fashioned statistical obfuscation. What he had done, he explained, was “check into it and see just what proportion of the taxes paid in the United States today is involved in this horrendous, heavy, burdensome levy on the poor people to keep them from voting.” And the figure that he discovered – or purportedly discovered; he cited no sources whatsoever – was what one might charitably call vanishingly miniscule. “Less than thirty-seven millionths of 1 percent of the total tax bill of the American people [,]” he said, a number that “gets down to where one can hardly write [it] out.” But while thirty-seven millionths of 1 percent might sound like such a small amount of anything as to be practically insignificant, it was nevertheless provably the case that this relatively tiny component of the American republic’s overall tax bill still accounted for the disenfranchisement of millions of American citizens across the five states where poll taxes were still actively collected. What Russell was counting on, of course, was that his fellow senators would decline to consider the real numbers behind the calculations he presented. That, and the simple fact that many of them remained woefully uninformed as to the circumstances under which the poorest Americans were forced to live.

    Being senators, Russell and his colleagues naturally travelled in rather exalted circles, rubbing shoulders with business leaders, foreign potentates, and their fellow statesmen far more often than with the least fortunate among their constituents. And even among those who evidenced a more populist bent to their politics – who possessed strong connections with the labor movement, say, or kept generous hours at the constituency offices – the fact that economic disparities, as a rule, most strongly impact communities of color would still more or less ensure that most of the senators serving in the 87^th Congress in 1962 – an overwhelmingly white cohort of public servants – had never encountered someone who literally couldn’t afford to pay a poll tax. Russell’s argument, therefore, struck at two fronts. First, by discussing the impact of the poll tax in terms of percentages rather than real numbers, it gave the assembled senators an easy excuse to disregard out of hand the notion that said tax was in any way onerous or burdensome. And second, it played upon the almost certain inability of any senator to recall a specific example of one of their constituents being disenfranchised by the same. The poll tax, as aforementioned, remained active in only five states, all of which were in the American South and all of which were dominated by the segregationist wing of the Democratic Party. Not only were the representatives of these states in the Senate exceptionally unlikely to volunteer any concrete examples of voters having been disenfranchised by the poll tax in direct defiance of Russell’s assertion, but even if they wanted to, it was very nearly a certainty that none of them had ever had so much as a civil conversation with a member of one of the communities in their state most likely to be so affected.

    Unfortunately, before Senator Holland could offer his own analysis of the obvious flaws in Richard Russell’s arguments, another of his fellow Democrats inadvertently dragged the conversation into something of a discursive cul-de-sac. It was assuredly a well-intentioned interjection on the part of Illinois Democrat Paul Douglas (1892-1976), but one which sadly played directly into Senator Russell’s hands: did the Senator from Georgia likewise disapprove of the 19^th Amendment? In light of the Georgian’s stated antipathy towards any measure that infringed upon the sovereignty of the states, it was not necessarily an unreasonable question. After first making a joke of the fact that the amendment in question – that which removed any restrictions upon the ability of women to vote – has been approved several years before he even began his career in politics, Russell then stated that if he had been a member of the Senate in 1919, he probably would have voted against it. Not a surprising admission, in fairness, and certainly in keeping with the Georgian’s stated position. But when Douglas then asked Russell whether or not he likewise disapproved of the 15^th Amendment, the conversation took a turn form which it would recover only at length.

    What Russell proceeded to engage in, across several exchanges with his fellow Senators, is what was known in the context of late 19^th century American politics as “waving the bloody shirt.” Rather than engage in any kind of substantive examination of his feelings on the subject of the 15^th Amendment and the changes that it had wrought upon the basic fabric of American social and political life, the Georgian instead continually sought to recall the horrible loss of life which the Civil War had extracted from the South as though that selfsame bloodshed had earned Southerners perpetual immunity from being questioned on matters pertaining to the Reconstruction and its legacy. “That amendment [,]” he began accordingly, referring to the aforementioned 15^th,

Was written in the blood of the Civil War, and was inevitable after Appomattox, and the South is reconciled to it. We were not happy about it, but it was written in blood, by the bayonets of the soldiers of our friend from Illinois and other States who overpowered us in the most calamitous and fratricidal strife this Nation has ever seen. We paid a terrific price for our idea that we could depart in peace or that one Southerner could lick four Yankees. We were not able to show the latter. We found out one could lick three. We were confronted with that fact as a practical proposition. We were faced with that advantage, and I think we have very little to be ashamed of. But the 15th amendment was written in the blood that was so grievously shed in the Civil War and was a natural concomitant of Appomattox.

The question that Russell was asked – whether he favored the 15^th Amendment or not – was obviously meant to get at the degree to which his stated belief in the right of the states to determine the parameters of the franchise would extend to endorsing a position which, in 1962, was publicly unsupportable for all but the most rabid white supremacists. That is, it was meant to force Russell to admit that he would prefer it if any state that so desired could deny the vote to any of its citizens based on the color of their skin. But while he might have felt that such an end really was desirable, Russell could not publicly say so lest he turn the ongoing debate – in a way that he had just warned Senator Holland against – into a conversation about civil rights. Thus did he attempt a diversionary invocation of the American Civil War.

    A seemingly successful invocation, as it turned out. The debate then ongoing in the Senate almost immediately ceased to be about whether Russell favored absolute state control over the franchise – which, again, he very likely did – and instead devolved into a kind of memorialization of the suffering that the South had been forced to endure over the course of the first half of the 1860s. Russell’s position, in effect, was that he could not speak to the suffering being daily inflicted upon the nation’s Black community in the form of the poll tax because he was himself too distraught over the suffering of his Southern kinsman of a century past. In this mode, he thus continued.  “No, I cannot say,” he avowed,

Considering the sorrow and the great losses that were inflicted on the people of my blood and of my kin, that we rejoiced in the outcome of the Civil War, but I would not repeal the 15th amendment. I would not deny to a man of color or any other race the right to vote; nor would I deny it if I had the power to do so. But I am not enthusiastic about the amendment.

Regrettably, this was not the end of the conversation. Though he had gotten around to more or less answering Douglas’s question, Russell apparently still had some things to say on the subject of the Civil War. To that end, when further asked by his colleague from Illinois, Senator Douglas, about his thoughts on some of the provisions of the aforesaid 15^th Amendment, the Georgian first responded by asserting that he did not agree with certain interpretations of the same only to once more evoke the memory of the War Between the States. “If the Senator is going to try to get me to apologize for the Civil War at this late date [,] Russell declared,

Or to get on my knees any further than was necessary at Appomattox, I shall not do it. I am proud of our part in it, though it was one of the greatest tragedies this country was confronted with. I am proud of the record the people of my blood made in it, and men of my clan shed their blood on battlefields from Gettysburg to Brice’s Cross Roads.

Central to Russell’s plan, no doubt, was to appeal to the emotions of his fellow senators. In spite of the fact that it had taken place a century prior, the Civil War remained a deeply relevant cultural touchstone in contemporary American political and popular culture. More than a few Senators and Representatives could claim fathers or grandfathers who served on one side or the other, and the Southern political elite in particular continued to attach a great deal of importance to the events of the conflict and its aftermath. It would not have been difficult, therefore, to elicit a chorus of reactions in the Senate – even as late as 1962 – by invoking the Civil War and the suffering endured by its various participants. As each member of the Senate so roused took their turn speaking fervently of the contributions of their kin, the intended topic of conversation – an anti-poll tax amendment – would simply fade into the background. And for a moment, at least, this is what started to happen. New Mexico Democrat Dennis Chavez (1888-1962) asked for Russell to yield the floor and then proceeded to enumerate the various contributions of his own forebearers to that same conflict. His grandfather fought the Confederates during their campaign in New Mexico, he said. They did what was right, just as Chavez himself endeavored to do. Russell must have been overjoyed. Naturally, he thanked Senator Chavez for his and his forebear’s contribution. And then, in keeping with his latest obfuscatory strategy, he continued with his commemoration of the Civil War and its Southern participants. But while the Georgian’s next declaration on this particular topic thankfully turned out to be his last, it was also, arguably, the most distressing of the lot.

“The story of the Civil War [,]” said Russell,

Is a sad and tragic one, but I have no apologies to make for the South […] The southerners were mistaken in a great many instances, but they paid in blood for their mistakes. There is no higher coin in which payments can be made. I wish to say further that any man of southern descent has a right to be proud of the record made by those men who wore the gray, and history does not record a more indomitable or longer drawn out fight against overwhelming odds than was made by the Confederacy. Their valor was so great that it is a part of the common heritage of every part of this Union, and every good American should appreciate it as a part of the history of his country.

His attempt at distraction notwithstanding – his remarks were less about the Civil War than they were about anything other than the poll tax – there was something deeply troubling about the sentiment that Senator Russell seemed to be expressing. “The southerners were mistaken in a great many instances,” he said, “but they paid in blood for their mistakes. There is no higher coin in which payments can be made.” In what “instances” might the Southerners have conceivably been mistaken to a greater extent than their defense of the institution of slavery and their willingness to kill to uphold it? A grave error, that, and one that it would not seem wise to forget. And yet Richard Russell seemed to be claiming that recompense had been made. The people of the South, he said, “paid in blood for their mistakes [,]” as if that blood could wash away the essential fact of their grave error. As if the fact that they lost the war wholly absolved the Confederacy and its supporters of the crime that was – and is – slavery.

    What did any of this have to do with Senator Holland’s anti-pol tax amendment? Very little, looked at one way; a great deal, looked at another. The purpose of the poll tax – as enacted in the various Southern states over the course of the late 19^th and early 20^th centuries – was to essentially negate the effects of the 15^th Amendment by legally denying to most members of the region’s Black community their constitutionally-guaranteed right to the electoral franchise. It was a direct – if delayed – reaction to the outcome of the Civil War and very much carried the stamp of Southern bitterness concerning the same. By bending the conversation towards a memorialization of the conflict – specifically by invoking the mix of sorrow and pride with which Southerners tended to view it in retrospect – Russell was thus arguably serving to remind his fellow Senators of where the poll tax came from and what purpose it was intended to serve. That is, from his perceptive, the righting of a great historical wrong. At the same time, of course, Russell’s remarks could also fairly be construed as little more than a strategic distraction. As stated previously, the suffering that the senator was endeavoring to call to mind took place a century prior and was experienced primarily by soldiers who volunteered to fight in service of a group of pro-slavery insurrectionists. Their bloodshed was not meaningless, to be sure – their losses, and those of their families, were most definitely real and significant. But this fact obscured the vital reality that an anti-poll tax amendment was intended to address. While thousands of Southerners may have suffered for having supported and fought for the Confederacy over the course of the American Civil War, many millions more were suffering in the states of Arkansas, Mississippi, Texas, Virginia, and Alabama at the very moment Senator Russell was speaking. Nothing more could be done for the Civil War dead that hadn’t been done already. But something most certainly could be done for those whose right to the franchise was being actively denied because they could not afford to pay a tax.

    Senator Holland, to his credit, was savvy enough to keep this fact squarely in mind. He was a Southerner himself, of course, and the son and grandson of Confederate veterans. But while he was willing, to an extent, to add his voice to that of Senator Chavez in celebrating the contributions of his forebears to the course of American history, he did not allow himself to be distracted from his ultimate goal. “I commend the distinguished Senator for speaking with such fervor about the service and the sacrifice of the men of the South,” he said,

And it would also be true to say the same of the women. It happens that both my grandfathers and my father bore to their dying day upon their bodies wounds they had suffered in various battles, and all of them on the southern side. The reason for my rising, however, is to avert what I fear might occur as the result of the questions of my distinguished friend, the Senator from Illinois, which might indicate that the 15th amendment was the only field in which the poll tax operated.

Notwithstanding the fact that he was among the intended targets of Senator Russell’s emotional diversion into the 1860s, Holland was adamant that the conversation remain firmly planted in the 1960s. That is to say, it was the poll tax that concerned him and it was the poll tax that the was prepared to discuss. When Russell responded that he did not think “the 15th amendment touches the poll tax in any place or in any shape, form or fashion, in my own view [,]” Holland seized upon the opening and began to steer things back on course.

“I agree with the Senator [,]” the Floridian said.

The point I make is that the poll tax amendment I shall offer later, when the appropriate time comes […] will operate in favor of colored people and of white people, in favor of people of all colors, religions, and creeds. It was shown in my own State, when we repealed the poll tax in 1937—and I had a modest part in doing that, as a member of the State senate at the time—that at the next election, in 1940, at which time the colored people were not voting in my State, there was an immense increase in participation in voting by the white people. This resulted from the fact that many people, because of penury or because of carelessness or because of a dislike of what they saw happening in some counties as a result of the poll tax, had not participated in the elections. These people came in to participate […] I think the Senator is correct in stating that the proposal does not come under the ordinary classification of the ordinary civil rights legislation. It applies to majorities, to minorities, and to every person of every color. It attempts to give to people who otherwise qualify the right to cast their votes for elected Federal officials. The Senator well knows that is the case. I merely wished to make the record clear.

Once again, Holland’s stubbornness arguably rises to the point of being admirable. Not everything that he said could necessarily be characterized as praiseworthy, of course. In specifically citing the role he played in his home state’s repeal of its own poll tax in the late 1930s, the Floridian gave evidence of the extent to which his efforts in favor of a federal ban on such franchise restrictions were bound up with his sense of personal and professional pride. Likewise, Holland’s offhand remark that, circa 1940, “the colored people were not voting in my State” completely – and doubtless purposely – elided the extent to which the government of the Sunshine State continued to engage in vote suppression even after its poll tax was repealed. But while Senator Holland’s motives might not have been entirely unimpeachable – moved as he was, it seemed, by pride more than any particular concern for the community that that poll taxes were designed to disenfranchise – his determination was nevertheless more than a little impressive. While Senator Russell cycled through one rhetorical approach after another in an attempt to either discredit the Floridian’s position or else divert the conversation entirely, Holland remained steadfast, resolute, unphased. He had labored for almost fifteen years to reach this pivotal moment, and the purposefully tangential ramblings of a crafty Georgian simply weren’t going to get in his way.