The strange line of argument Mississippi Senator James Eastland had begun on March 15th, 1962 in an attempt to dismiss the anti-poll-tax proposal of his fellow Southerner, Spessard Holland – specifically by acclaiming the judgement of the Kennedy Administration on the subject of UN voting rights – only got stranger as the man invoked yet another international body that had little all to do with the subject at hand. “While I am one of those who do not feel that either the United States or any State thereof is bound legally by any decision that might be rendered by the International Court of Justice,” the Mississippian declared,
It would not be inappropriate to ask
that the decision be deferred until such time as we might have the benefit of
the decision of the International Court of Justice on the principle involved.
At least, whatever the decision is, there is a possibility that the
inconsistency inherent in the position taken by the United States in
international affairs and the urgency for this proposed constitutional
amendment in domestic affairs might be resolved if the Court held that payment
of assessments could not be required as a prerequisite for a nation voting in
the General Assembly of the United Nations. Personally, I think it would be
very appropriate for the Court to hold that a nation should be required to pay
its assessments as a prerequisite to voting, and, by the same token, I hold
that my State should have the fundamental right to continue to make such a
requirement.
The contradictions inherent to this declaration on the part of Eastland would seem to be abundantly clear even based on little more than a cursory assessment of the same.
Not only was the “the inconsistency inherent in the position taken by the United States in international affairs and the urgency for this proposed constitutional amendment in domestic affairs” not at all in need of resolution– if, indeed, such an inconsistency existed – but it was truly the height of absurdity for the Mississippian to assert that such an outcome might come at the behest of an organization which he himself avowed had no claim of authority over “either the United States or any State thereof [.]” What did it matter if the Kennedy Administration held that nonpayment of annual dues should result in a loss of voting privileges at the UN and that the poll tax was unsupportable and should be entirely done away with? In what way was this a problem in need of solving? And for that matter, what kind of solution was appealing to the ICJ? In Eastland’s own words, he did not feel that “either the United States or any State thereof is bound legally by any decision that might be rendered by the International Court of Justice [.]” So what, then, did it matter what the ICJ concluded? What sense was there in dismissing them and then invoking them in the same breath? Truly, as a piece of rhetoric, Eastland’s argument made no sense. Which is why it’s overwhelmingly likely that it was never intended to convince or to persuade anybody of anything. Eastland was not trying to make a sound rhetorical point. Rather, he was simply trying to keep people talking. And at this – if in no other sense – the Mississippian succeeded quite capably.
Being something of a stickler for detail, the otherwise canny Senator Holland in this instance opted to take Eastland’s bait and proceeded to spend a distressingly large portion of what was supposed to be a debate on his proposed poll tax amendment instead attempting to correct his fellow Southerner. “I point out to him [,]” he said of Eastland, “that I see no similarity between the situation in the United Nations to which he has referred and the situation relative to the poll tax.” In response to this, the senator from Mississippi was only too happy to dig in his heels. “I am certainly sorry the distinguished Senator from Florida does not see this [,]” he responded.
It is very similar. It is very plain.
Yes, the Charter of the United Nations provides that a nation has to keep up
its assessments in order to vote. That assessment can be onerous to a country.
It is identically the same principle contained in the State Constitution, that
one has to pay a poll tax in order to vote; but that poll tax is not onerous.
It is exactly the same principle.
By thus refusing to
budge, Eastland was not attempting to conclusively prove the validity of a
particular assertion. Rather, he was simply trying to waste the Senate’s time
in general and Senator Holland’s time in particular. Doubtless, his hope was that,
given a sufficient interval, he and his allies – Hill, Russell, and the like –
might succeed in peeling away the support that the Floridian had so far managed
to amass. So long as Holland kept responding – kept trying to show his fellow
senator that Eastland was wrong – the Mississippian accordingly had every
reason to keep insisting that he was right.
Holland thereafter continued to play
directly into Eastland’s hands. “I am afraid that my distinguished friend has
not studied the question very carefully,” he said, “because if he had I think
he would find the situation there is not similar to this.” The Floridian spoke of
the Soviets, and special assessments, and bond issues, and the Congo, none of
which had anything to do with the poll tax or its elimination. But he kept
talking all the same, kept trying to prove Senator Eastland wrong. Indeed, he
might have gone on doing so indefinitely – in the midst of Eastland’s periodic
but steadfast denials – had a previously uninvolved senator not unexpectedly
taken the floor. Thruston Ballard Morton (1907-1982), a moderate Republican
from Kentucky, asked if his fellow Southerner would yield for a brief comment
and had the following to say. “I think the Senator from Mississippi [,]” he
said, “has made an interesting point. I trust that someone speaking for the
administration, if not this evening, at least tomorrow, will answer as to
whether or not the President of the United States is against the poll tax.” So
it was that Senator Morton did what Senator Holland should have done himself.
The debate then under way was supposed to be about an amendment to
eliminate the poll tax at the federal level. Eastland had tried – and for the
moment, at least, succeeded – in making it about voting privileges in the
United Nations. And Holland had followed suit, losing sight of his stated
objective almost entirely. So Morton, for whatever reason, felt compelled to
intervene. Eastland’s point, he observed, was an interesting one, if the
senator was indeed correct. But it naturally fell to the Executive Branch to speak
for itself on such matters. The Mississippian, as noted previously, thought
that the Kennedy Administration more or less supported the poll tax by default.
But what would President Kennedy himself say on the matter if prompted?
Doubtless sensing that he was about
to lose his opponent’s attention, Eastland attempted – somewhat clumsily – to
cut off this avenue of escape. “There is no answer to it [,]” he flatly
replied.
That is the proposal. We have the
testimony of the Secretary of State. We have the testimony of the Ambassador to
the United Nations. They say, “You cannot vote unless you pay your assessment”;
and it can be an onerous assessment.
What this more or
less amounted to, on Eastland’s part, was an assertion that actually asking
the Kennedy Administration about the poll tax was pointless. By their recent
statements about the UN, they’d made their feelings quite clear. Interestingly
enough, this was Holland’s response as well. “Replying to the suggestion made
by my distinguished friend from Kentucky,” he said, paying due compliment to
Morton for his well-timed attempt at rescue,
I invite his attention to the fact
that the record of the hearings in this particular matter shows that the
Assistant Attorney General, Mr. Katzenbach, who appeared to testify on various
pending constitutional amendments, made it very clear that on this particular
amendment he was authorized to speak for the President in these words, as shown
on page 388:
I am authorized on this to
speak for the administration and for the President.
That comes after the time he said:
The Justice Department supports the
proposed amendment as a realistic technique which seeks the early demise of the
poll tax.
Those statements appear in several
other forms during the course of the statement, that the President had given
specific support to this and to this alone, of the various proceedings.
Again, the intended
meaning was clear: “Don’t bother asking, we already know what’s going to be
said.”
On the cusp of losing his grip on the situation – Holland was now turning one of his own tactics against him – Eastland defaulted to a tried-and-true strategy. “Will the Senator tell us from what he is quoting?” he asked. And as he had done previously, Holland parried this attack with ease. “From the printed record of hearings before the Subcommittee on Constitutional Amendments of the Committee on the Judiciary of the U.S. Senate [,]” he replied plainly. “The Senator from Mississippi is, of course, the chairman of the full Committee on the Judiciary.” As had been the case previously, Eastland had no choice but to respond in the affirmative. “This is a print from one of the subcommittees of his committee [,] the Floridian continued. “There is no question about it.” Having now found himself dancing to Senator Holland’s tune rather than his own, Eastland accordingly grasped for a different angle of attack. “Does the Senator not know that the Attorney General testified today in favor of abolishing the poll tax by legislation?” he said. Evidently, the Mississippian was eager to turn the committee assignment Holland had just invoked back to his own advantage. But it was too late. Holland – with the aid of Senator Morton – had successfully regained the initiative. “I had not heard that,” he freely admitted, “but I know what the President wants; and that is not in accord with his wishes [.]”
Again, Senator Eastland tried to make best use of his available resources. As Chairman of the Judiciary Committee, who could speak to its proceedings better than he? “I believe the testimony today was on the literacy test, by legislation, but of course that involves the same principle [,]” he said accordingly. But while this comment did finally give Holland some pause, it simply wasn’t enough to arrest his accumulated momentum. “For some reason unknown to me [,]” he granted,
The Justice Department has taken the
position that the literacy test is in a different category from the poll tax
question. I do not know why. I certainly do not give the rubber stamp of
complete approval to everything coming from the Justice Department, but I say
that the Justice Department and the President are both clearly on record before
the subcommittee on Constitutional Amendments of the Senator's own committee as
supporting the amendment which is proposed, and the feeling that that is the
practical and constitutional way to go after the poll tax.
This was – or
should have been – something of a knockout blow. Not only had it been made
exceptionally clear that both the President of the United States and the United
States Department of Justice were in favor of abolishing the poll tax by way of
an amendment to the Constitution, but explicit proof of this exact sentiment
was to be found in the records of the proceedings of the Senate Judiciary
Committee. As the long-serving Chairman of that same august body, Eastland
could not deny this simple fact without either flatly lying to his fellow
senator – something which even he was loathe to do – or appearing to be
dangerously out of touch. Rather than admit defeat, however – and surely, his
primary aim had been defeated – the Mississippian began rather
embarrassingly to flounder.
“There is no question that they so
testified,” Eastland thereafter admitted of the aforementioned Deputy Attorney
General,
But what does that have to do with
what I said? Of course they testified to that, but what I said is that the
policy of the U.S. Government has endorsed the principle of the poll tax in
international affairs, because we say that no nation shall vote in the United
Nations unless it pays its assessments, even though they be onerous.
So it was – at his
own hands, no less – that the motives of the Senator from Mississippi were made
completely transparent. Since he could no longer even subtly imply that the
Kennedy Administration was actually in favor of the poll tax – for the very
simple reason that it had been conclusively shown not to be true – Eastland
instead opted to declare that this had never been his objective to begin with.
All that he was arguing – all that he had ever been arguing, he claimed
– was that “the policy of the U.S. Government has endorsed the principle of the
poll tax in international affairs [.]” Was this a particularly relevant
assertion to the discussion at hand? Decidedly not. But it was one that
Eastland would stand by regardless any attempt by his colleagues to convince
him otherwise. Would they make the attempt? He seemed to hope so. Why else was
he being so obstinate about something that was so fundamentally unimportant?
Why else, but to provoke a response? Why else, but to drag things out further?
For his part, Senator Holland seemed
to sense that his opponent was nearly spent. And while his response to
Eastland’s strategic collapse was not as cruelly dismissive as it might have
been, his comments, moving forward, were appropriately matter of fact. “The
reason for that statement [,]” he said, referring to the original declaration
of the Kennedy Administration on the subject of UN voting rights, “is that the
charter, to which we are bound by treaty, so provides.” Eastland’s half-hearted,
if characteristic reply, was that, “The State constitutions so provide.”
Holland then answered with what might as well have been the thesis statement of
his whole anti-poll-tax initiative. “The Federal Constitution does not so
provide,” he noted,
And the Federal Constitution is
changeable, and changeable in the method we are seeking to follow. The
submission to the jury of the States is a method which existed before the
Senator's State and mine came into the Union.
By adhering to such
plain logic all along, Senator Holland might surely have saved himself a great
deal of trouble. Because there was nothing that Senator Russell had said, that
Senator Hill had said, or that Senator Eastland had said that in any way refuted
the simple fact that Holland could do exactly what he intended to do
without in any way violating any standing statutes or constitutional
provisions. Perhaps out of sympathy, perhaps out of a sense of collegiality, he
chose to indulge his fellow Southerners, let them talk, engaged with their
arguments. But this basic truth – that Holland not only had the right to
propose an anti-poll-tax amendment but also the necessary support among his
colleagues to see it off – had always been the only thing that really mattered.
It could not be argued away, it could not be refuted: the poll tax could be
banned by way of constitutional amendment. And so, as the debate of March 15th
finally wound down to its inevitable conclusion, this is where Holland
naturally chose to leave off.
Senator Eastland, for whatever
reason, chose to flail for a little longer. He asserted, one last time, “that
the U.S. Government in international affairs has adopted the principle of the
poll tax. The Senator cannot explain it away. The Senator cannot laugh it away.
The Senator cannot brush it away. It is there.” But if Holland had been willing
to indulge his Southern colleague earlier in the day, now he seemed far more
inclined to be dismissive. “I am laughing it away,” he said,
Because I see no possible comparison
between the two. The United States and the other governments are able to pay
their assessments. The thing we protest against is the fact that people
oppressed by penury and poverty are not always able to pay them, and have not paid
them.
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