The Purpose and Powers of the Senate, Part LXX: “The Men Who Sat in the Convention”

        Being unable – or rather unwilling – to offer a counterpoint to Senator Hill’s and Senator Eastland’s claims of ignorance as to the damage being daily wrought by the existence of poll taxes in their states, Spessard Holland accordingly remained silent and allowed the two of them to maintain the floor as the Senate debate of March 15^th wore onward into the evening. The result was an extended monologue on the part of the ever-persistent Hill that stretches across several pages of the aforementioned Congressional Record. The substance of this monologue is substantially unimportant. The Alabaman was not really trying to use his words to make a particular point. Rather, he was trying to use them simply to take up space. It was a filibuster, in essence, if rather a short one that was doomed to failure. Holland, as noted previously, already had the sixty votes he needed. All that his opponents could really do, in consequence, was try to draw the thing out in the hope of possibly changing a few minds. Holland could have stopped him, of course, by invoking cloture and proceeding to a vote. But for whatever reason, he didn’t. And so Hill spoke, at length, about the history of poll taxes, and about property qualifications, and about how voting was not really a right. And then he segued, somewhat awkwardly, into a needlessly precise recounting of the Philadelphia Convention (1787). The words “sovereign” and “sovereignty” were very much in evidence. He began recounting specific motions. He quoted liberally from various debates. He flashed forward to the 1860s, and the 1910s, and the 1940s.  He went on, and on, and on, and on. And in spite of speaking at such great length, he ultimately ended up saying very little.

        This should not be taken to mean that certain of the things Hill did say were not revealing in themselves. For example, his invocation, at one stage, of “a right which is the most sacred right, perhaps, possessed by any American citizen-the right to the ballot” rather seemed to fly in the face of his earlier assertion – along with Eastland – that “voting [is] a privilege and not a right, and a privilege which can be restricted or denied [.]” How was it that a right considered to be “the most sacred” could also be restricted or denied? Were the words “right” and privilege” interchangeable in Hill’s mind? In effect, they seemed to be, to the extent that it sometimes suited his purposes to use one to the exclusion of the other. When attempting to justify the levying of poll taxes, voting was privilege that could be granted conditionally or even withheld. And when discussing the sovereign authority which the states supposedly held over the limits and parameters of the franchise, voting was a right of greater value than any an American could claim to possess. Doubtless, this inconsistency was not by design. That is to say, Hill did not intend to draw attention to his erratic use of terminology. Rather, he was simply making a series of discreet rhetorical choices. The effect he sought to achieve dictated the particular word he would ultimately deploy. Evidence, one might argue, of a somewhat less than coherent vision based more on self-interest and persuasion than upholding a particular principle.     

        What also becomes quite clear as one sifts through Hill’s avalanche of quotations and encomiums is that he, like so many American statesmen before and after him, tended to think about the Founding Generation as though they were infallible demigods whose every word and deed possessed the weight and significance of scripture. It’s a common enough affliction, to be sure, but one which never ceases to be of concern when it makes itself known in those possessed of significant institutional power. In his mind, it seemed, the Framers were not just very wise, or very thoughtful, or very intelligent, or very decisive. On the contrary, they were the most “distinguished lawyers and students of government” and the most “capable political draftsmen” that could have been found “at that time in all the world” or “today or at any other time in all the world [.]” “Where could a more brilliant galaxy of stars in the field of statesmanship be found [,]” he went on to say, “than these great lawyers, students of the philosophy of government, students of human nature, men of commonsense and wisdom […] ?” For someone whose job it is to ensure that the government of which they are an officer continues to function in a way that is responsive to the changing needs and intentions of its constituents, such fawning admiration for the authors of the same would seem liable to result in the formation of a dangerously proscriptive attitude.

        At the time that Senator Hill spoke these words, almost two hundred years had transpired since the outbreak of the Revolutionary War and the initial formation of the United States of America. It would be fair to say, in consequence, that the country which existed under that name in 1962 bore only a partial resemblance to that which first coalesced in the 1770s and 1780s. War, economic depression, internal and external migration, and at least two industrial revolutions – among other things – had served to transform nearly every aspect of American society, the priorities of the average citizen far from the least among them. And the government of the United States had remained substantially responsive all the while. Laws changed, the role of government changed, even the Constitution changed. Or rather, they were changed. Generations of American statesmen, in keeping with the needs and desires of their many and various constituents, steadily altered and expanded the essential functions and definitions of the federal government and the state governments. And so it was that even the vaunted Constitution – that most venerable and unchanging of the world’s fundamental governing charters – had been altered, as of the early 1960s, a fully twenty-three times. Was this fact symbolic of some failing on the part of the Framers? Were the men and women responsible guilty of abandoning the wisdom of their forebears? Of course not. People change, both as individuals and as a community, and the governments that serve them must also change in step. This is good and this is natural. This is the way it’s supposed to work.

        This is also why the attitude displayed by Senator Hill during his aforementioned monologue was such a fundamentally distressing one. Whether he truly believed it or not – and one can reasonably conclude from his general approach to debate that he tended to believe whatever suited him in the moment – what the Alabaman was essentially saying was that the Framers were not to be questioned, under any circumstances, ever. Might they have come to some potentially uninformed conclusions during the drafting the United States Constitution? Was it possible that certain of their theories had not been borne out by experience? Could the passage of nearly two centuries have simply rendered some of their ideas obsolete? Hill’s answer to these questions, seemingly, was “no,” “no,” and “never.” As far as he was concerned – at least at this moment in time – the framework of government hashed out by the Framers simply wouldn’t tolerate scrutiny. They were perfect, it was perfect, and those who said or thought anything to the contrary were guilty of an unforgiveable betrayal.

        It was a patently ridiculous attitude, of course, and one which flew in the face of logic as well as experience. Not only do the powers and dimensions of government need to change periodically in order to prevent them from becoming needlessly and self-destructively restrictive, but the United States government had been changed many times over the course of its lengthy history. The authority of its various branches had waxed and waned in response to the particular needs of the moment while its basic parameters and scope had undertaken a process of slow but steady evolution. Hill had witnessed this himself over the course of his life and career. At the time of his birth in 1894, there were no income taxes at the federal level, no direct election of senators, no federal suffrage for women, and no Electoral Votes for the District of Columbia. The federal government was much less involved in the daily lives of the American people and the office of President of the United States was in something of a trough in terms of its relative power and prestige. But through war and economic uncertainty, generation after generation, he’d seen the United States transformed. Since joining the Senate in the late 1930s, he’d even been a part of its transformation himself. And yet, despite the evidence of his own senses and his own experiences, J. Lister Hill could find it in himself to claim that the Framers had got it right the first time. That change, fundamentally, was bad.

        This mindset even seemed to extend, unfortunately, to opinions rendered by certain of the Framers while in the process of accomplishing great deeds. That is to say, it wasn’t just the Constitution as originally drafted to which Hill believed his countrymen ought to bind themselves, but also the various remarks that were made by its authors in the act of drafting. He quoted Oliver Ellsworth (1745-1807), for example – a delegate from the State of Connecticut – as having avowed during the Philadelphia Convention, that “The states are the best judges of the circumstances and temper of their own people.” As far as Hill was concerned, this simple phrase in itself was the very soul of wisdom. “Note that language [,]” he pointedly remarked.

The States - the people back home, the people who gather in the State capitals, the people who go to the ballot boxes back in the hamlets, the communities, and the crossroads - “are the best judges of the circumstances and temper of their own people.” Would anyone dispute that today?

Within the larger context of Hill’s obvious regard for the Framers, that final question seemed posed as though it was some kind of dare. In effect, he was defying anyone among his colleagues in the Senate to rise and speak against the wisdom of one of the hallowed Framers of the Constitution. Ellsworth’s word, in itself, was not law, of course. He was certainly a wise man, for his time, and a talented lawyer and jurist, so much so that he eventually became Chief Justice of the Supreme Court. But he was just a man. Among his fellow delegates to the Philadelphia Convention, he spoke his opinion, his vote was counted, and the result was what it was. His words were not special any more than were those of his colleagues. Oliver Ellsworth said one thing, Maryland’s Luther Martin (1748-1826) said another, and Pennsylvania’s James Wilson (1742-1798) yet a third. What if these men – or indeed any group among the Framers – disagreed with one another on some fundamental point? Whose word is sacrosanct? All of them? None of them? Or just the one that seems most agreeable?

        The inability of anyone to answer these questions in a way that doesn’t quickly devolve into an ideological litmus test is precisely the reason that Hill’s treatment of the Framers makes so little sense. It is one thing to hold to the letter of the Constitution. It is, whatever its flaws, the nation’s fundamental governing charter and the supreme law of the land. And as the product of generations of collective contemplation and debate, its various clauses should be implemented attentively and alterations to the same considered carefully. But the words of the Framers, even when spoken during the process of framing said document, should not – cannot – be treated with the same strict approbation. Not only do the words of an individual Framer not represent the collective wisdom of the whole cohort – least of all those who actively disagreed with him – but they were also never intended to take on a force and power of their own. The Virginia delegate James Madison (1751-1836) endeavored to record the Convention debates, not for the purpose of creating a supplementary set of strictures to which subsequent generations would hold themselves to account, but for the purpose of allowing those not present to understand how and why the Constitution ultimately took the shape that it did. They were supposed to be illuminating, to provide insight, to broaden perspective. They were not supposed to be thrown around as though they had the weight of law.

        That Senator Hill felt otherwise is made quite clear from the substance of his lengthy oration of March 15^th, the result of which is a series of assertions that are internally inconsistent and even nonsensical. At one point, for example, he avowed that,

The men who sat in the Convention, who engaged in the debates in the Convention, who engaged in the actual drafting of the Constitution, knew best of all, knew far better than any who should come after them, what their intent and purposes were in writing the Constitution.

A reasonable enough contention in itself, even excepting the existence of Madison’s aforementioned Notes of Debates in the Federal Convention. But then, later in the same speech, Hill went on to say – speaking about the various state ratifying conventions – that,

The meaning of section 2 of article I was so clear that the question was not even raised in the conventions of Rhode Island, New Jersey, Delaware, and Georgia; and, so far as the reports show, in New Hampshire, Connecticut, and Maryland no question was raised about the section. It was so clear that even a fourth grade school child on reading it would know what it meant.

So which was it, then? Did the Framers know “best of all […] far better than any who should come after them, what their intent and purposes were in writing the Constitution” or was the meaning of the Constitution so obvious that “even a fourth grade school child on reading it would know what it meant [?]” Was the Constitution inscribed in the firmament itself by a race of demigods whose motivations were patently divine and also inscrutable to mere mortals, or was it possible for a schoolchild to understand its purpose at a glance? Hill did not intend for anyone listening to try to answer this question, of course. He was not trying to pose questions. He was trying to establish the veracity of a feeling. That being, in essence, that the Framers and their works were fundamentally perfect. 

        By way of a parting word on the subject of Hill’s pseudo-filibuster of March 15^th – the discussion of which, though it has admittedly been rather lengthy, still pales in comparison to the duration of the speech itself – consider the following assertion as a kind of case in point as to Hill’s position. Speaking, once again, on the subject of the Framers’ supposed intentions, Hill asked his fellow senators,

What would it have availed the people to break the tyranny of the British Crown, had they, themselves, set up here in Washington a government with central arbitrary power? They were determined, after all the sacrifices they had made, and all their bitter sufferings, to reserve the power in their own hands. I repeat that in order to do this, they knew they had to maintain the sovereignty of the States, because within the States - and within the States alone - are the citadels of governmental power.

It should be fairly obvious where this assertion as to the intentions of the Framers falls down. If the sum total of what that group of statesmen intended to do was “reserve the power in their own hands” and “maintain the sovereignty of the States [,]” why is it that their most famous collective achievement was the creation of an empowered national government? The states, in the 1780s, were already fully sovereign. The Articles of Confederation bound them together only loosely, the result being a government quite incapable of asserting what limited authority it could claim to possess on paper. This being the case – and the maintenance of state sovereignty being, according to Senator Hill, the primary objective of the Framers – one is accordingly forced to ask why it was that the Philadelphia Convention took place at all if not for the purpose of achieving some other objective?

        The reason that Hill’s statement on the matter doesn’t seem to make sense, of course, is that the senator from Alabama was not arguing about the intentions of the Framers in good faith. The Framers became “framers” by coming together and putting quill to parchment. They understood – if not always in the same way – that there were some things which their individual states simply could not accomplish and which their existing national government simply could not achieve. It was for this reason that they gathered, for this reason that they debated, and for this reason that they ultimately submitted the product of the efforts to the scrutiny of their fellow Americans. Were it otherwise – were they truly of the opinion that “they had to maintain the sovereignty of the States” – they might have saved themselves a great deal of trouble and simply stayed home. The fact that they didn’t – the fact that they met, and debated, and ultimately produced a new government charter – arguably points to what it was Hill was trying to achieve.  He was, after all, a conservative. And as a conservative, it behooved him to try to paint a conservative picture of the Framers and the Constitution.

Americans of every generation and every political stripe imaginable have tried to claim that their own political position possesses the sanction of the Founders. They seek to impute the existence of precedent for their own beliefs and to imply that disagreement with the same entails a rejection of what is most sacred. Such is the nature of the nation’s founding mythology. It can be extremely powerful when invoked in the right way. And so it is that everyone wants a piece of it for themselves. J. Lister Hill was no different. He believed – for good reasons or bad – that within the frame of government described by the Constitution, the individual states remained the primary receptacles of sovereign power. Indeed, the states, to his thinking, created the Constitution, and certainly would not have done so if it meant weakening their own authority in the areas of law and policy that mattered most. Like any good American, Hill sought proof of this conviction. And like any good American, he turned to the words and deeds of the Framers. These men, it’d been well recorded, were often deeply suspicious of excessive centralization. Their loyalties lay with their home states more often than with the nation itself, and their attempt to craft a new frame of government for the latter very much carried the stamp of this somewhat parochial turn of mind. So it was that Hill believed he was entirely justified in his various assertions. The Framers had been eager to protect the sovereignty of the various states they called home, both out of a sense of loyalty and as a check against the power of the central government they were seeking to create. They’d also made a point of delimiting the specific powers to be possessed by each, and ensured – if somewhat belatedly – that those not specified fell to the states. Did this not make them, in effect, conservative? Were they not seeking, fundamentally, to preserve the essential sovereignty claimed by each of the states since they’d been founded as colonies under charter from the Crown? Hill, one can be sure, would have answered vehemently in the affirmative.

The problem with this stance, of course, is that it ignores a great deal of contradictory evidence. To be sure, the Framers were deeply suspicious of central authority as a group. But they also met in Philadelphia for the purpose of creating a central government. None of them – with the possible exception of Alexander Hamilton – was desirous of seeing the authority of their home state gradually outpaced by a national government. But they also firmly believed that a national government possessed of some power was increasingly necessary to prevent the gains of the late Revolution from being lost. They were certainly conservative in some aspects of their thinking, and some among them were most certainly more conservative than others. But they were also, without a doubt, some of the most radical thinkers of their age. Many of them had served in the Continental Congress, or the Continental Army, or gone abroad as American diplomats. They’d shed their blood, and risked their lives, and gambled the loss of all they held dear. And in consequence, not only could it be said that they had successfully stared down one of the most powerful empires in the history of the world, but they also dared to imagine a world in which some of the most entrenched precedents imaginable simply no longer applied. They’d all been born, to a man, in a world in which “God Save the King” was the only acceptable toast. And by 1787, they were sitting together to forge a government that recognized no greater authority than that of the people themselves.

This is all to say, in essence, that the Framers defy being easily instrumentalized. Not only were they a diverse group from one individual to another, but there were ambiguities aplenty to be found within the beliefs and experiences of any one of them. And so, in turning their words and deeds into precedent for one’s own beliefs, one must ultimately discard or ignore a great deal of who and what they really were. Human beings, that is to say. More intelligent than most, perhaps. Blessed with insight and imagination. Men of vision, to be sure, but men all the same. In attempting to turn them into something more than this, Senator Hill was ultimately guilty of making them into something less. He was not the first, and he would not be the last, but his attempt was just as foolish and as wrongheaded as all the rest. Because while the Framers, as a group, could agree on very little – a fact which reading the Philadelphia Convention debates should make quite clear – one of the few things that united them was a common belief in the right of human beings to govern themselves. People could be reasonable or unreasonable, compassionate or cruel, insightful or foolish. Every one of them, indeed, had the capacity to save themselves or doom themselves. But nothing, for all their flaws, made them fitter to be subjects than citizens.

The Founding Generation came to embrace this essential conviction over the course of the events that led to the Revolution and spent the decades that immediately followed building a nation upon the same. Power, they believed, could not justify obedience. Only power wrought by consensus was worthy of submission. That this idea rightly underpinned the Founder’s rejection of British authority, the likes of Senator Hill would surely have acknowledged without question. But by unthinkingly raising the Framers to the level of deification, he was essentially spitting in the face of the men he so claimed to revere. The Framers told their fellow Americans not to bow to any power that could not be justified by reason. And what was J. Lister Hill doing but asking his fellow senators to do just that? What were the Framers, as characterized by Hill, but a cohort of ancient tyrants whose words were not to be questioned?

The senator himself, to be sure, would never have asked himself this question. He would almost certainly never have realized that by rigidly invoking the example of the Framers he was showing his ignorance of their greatest lesson. And this is because he was a conservative, a man steeped in tradition and precedent. His world, like that of many conservatives, fitted him like a glove, and he not about to indulge in speculation that this might not ultimately be for the best. Things were as they were because that is how they were meant to be. The Framers had seen to that, he was convinced, and there was simply no cause to think otherwise. Further on in his extended oration, he quoted Andrew Jackson to this same effect. “The destruction of our State governments [,]” said Old Hickory, “or the annihilation of their control over the local concerns of the people would lead directly to revolution and anarchy and finally to despotism and military domination.” This from the man who famously threatened to deploy the United States military against the government of South Carolina in an effort to enforce the collection of a series of taxes. But such – as has been demonstrated – was Hill’s approach all over. He cited what suited him, ignored what didn’t, and dared his fellow senators to raise their voice in opposition. And in the end, no one did.

Eastland, predictably enough, chimed in with encouragement now and then. Hill’s speech, if the senator from Mississippi was to be believed, was “the most logical, most profound, and most statesmanlike [..] ever heard on this question. He has gone to the very vitals of the issue, and […] he has made the best argument on this question that has ever been delivered on the floor of the Senate.” Hill, equally predictably, then finished on a note of sanctimonious triumphalism. “Let us stand united, strong, and resolute in our unity [,]” he declared,

Let us support squarely the rights of the people of the United States and the rights of the States of the United States, that our Government may be preserved. Let us stand squarely upon the Constitution of the United States - rock of freedom, ageless and enduring foundation of our rights, our hopes, and our democratic faith.

It was at this point – to the relief of many, no doubt – that the subject of the poll tax was temporarily dropped. Debate on the matter ceased for a time as the Senate moved on to consider other business. As the persistence displayed by both Spessard Holland and J. Lister Hill should make clear, however, the issue could not be described as having been conclusively settled. Not only did both men have more to say on the topic of poll taxes, but they’d say a great deal more just on the 15^th of March alone.         

The Purpose and Powers of the Senate, Part LXIX: “The Decent People of This Country”

    So straightforward was Senator Spessard Holland’s approach to seeking an amendment banning the poll tax – his argument might as well have been, “I want to change something I find disheartening and the Constitution gives me the power to do it” – that his opponents during the Senate session of March 15^th, 1962 were fairly quickly driven to cast about for some means of merely slowing him down. Senator James Eastland, to that end, began flatly demanding proof. “The Senator has said that the people have been deprived of the privilege of voting [,]” he observed.

I defy him to name one human being who has been denied the right to vote because of the poll tax. I defy him to find one […] there is no proof that any more people will vote if the poll tax is removed. Does the poll tax disqualify them from voting?

Senator Holland answered quickly enough. “I have had some experience in this question [,]” he said.

In my State, as soon as the Poll tax was removed, at first the white people, and later the colored people, after the court threw out the white primaries, voted in greater numbers. I call attention to the list of States shown at page 475 of the printed hearings, which shows the following facts: In Mississippi the number participating—

Most indecorously for a United States Senator, James Eastland actually cut Spessard Holland off. “Will the Senator state the authorities?” he demanded. “He said the printed hearings. Who said that?” Holland responded calmly in spite of this flagrant violation of the rules of debate, stating that “The information is furnished by the American Heritage Foundation, the same figures were also found in the report of the Civil Rights Commission.” This response, unfortunately, was like waving a red flag at a bull.

    The Civil Rights Commission, for the record, is a bipartisan investigative and advisory body created by the Civil Rights Act of 1957 largely in response to a recommendation by the earlier Committee on Civil Rights formed by President Eisenhower in the aftermath of the Brown v. Board decision. But while its purpose, in the words of then-Senate Majority Leader Lyndon Johnson, is to “gather facts instead of charges [..] sift out the truth from the fancies [and] return with recommendations which will be of assistance to reasonable men [,]” the responses to its various inquiries have not always been particularly “reasonable.” By way of a representative example – particularly of the era that preceded the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 – consider the first major project undertaken by the Commission. Tasked with investigating the state of elections and voter registration in the city of Montgomery, Alabama, the Commission was first forced to conduct its business out of borrowed facilities on the grounds of Maxwell Air Force Base because all of the city’s hotels were segregated and so would not allow local members of the Black community to enter in order to testify. Then, when agents of the Commission sought access to the relevant voter registration records, Circuit Judge George C. Wallace (1919-1998) – later to become governor on an explicitly white supremacist platform – had them impounded. “They are not going to get the records,” he stated flatly. “And if any agent of the Civil Rights Commission comes down to get them, they will be locked up […] I repeat, I will jail any Civil Rights Commission agent who attempts to get the records.” Subsequent attempts by the Commission at seeking cooperation from Southern Democrats did not go much better.

    For Senator Holland to even speak the name of the Civil Rights Commission in a less than disparaging manner – as he did on March 15^th, 1962 – might accordingly be described as nails on a chalkboard to men like J. Lister Hill and James Eastland. The Commission, as far as they and their like were concerned, was nothing more or less than the spearhead of an intrusive federal government intent on undermining the sovereignty of the states, and their response was appropriately dismissive. “The Senator is going very far when he takes the report of the Civil Rights Commission [,]” said Eastland. “If there ever was something loaded against decent people of this country, it is the Civil Rights Commission.” Holland’s first attempt at a response was then pre-empted by Senator Hill. “I did not think the Senator would deny us our rights based on such a report [,]” said the latter. “The Senator from Florida has now become a working ally of the Civil Rights Commission.” Somewhat uncharacteristically under the circumstances, Holland appeared to make a point of reassuring his fellow Southerners. “The Senator from Florida [,]” he said, “has taken the same position with respect to the creation of the Civil Rights Commission as the Senators from Alabama and Mississippi.” Before the dust had time to settle, however, the Floridian went back on the offensive.

    “I know the Senators do not want these facts in the RECORD [,]” said Holland, referring to the Congressional Record from which this entire exchange has been quoted. The Southerners’ reply to this accusation was characteristically belligerent. “We are going to let the Senator put them in the RECORD,” said Eastland, “but we want the foundation for them.” “We want the RECORD to be a true RECORD [,]” Hill agreed. At this point, Eastland seemed to recall what it was that Holland had just said. “The distinguished Senator has opposed the creation of that Commission [,]” he said. “He has been against it. I would say the facts alleged by this Commission are absolutely unreliable, and I do not believe my friend would say they are reliable.” If this was meant as a “gotcha,” Holland was well prepared. “I stated these figures came originally from the American Heritage Foundation,” he reiterated,

But they were the same facts as set forth by the Civil Rights Commission. If the Senators will take time to read page 475 of the hearings, they will see the sources are stated to be the American Heritage Foundation, the State election officials, and the U.S. Census Bureau. I do not know where the committee could have gone for more authoritative information than those three sources.

Hill and Eastland remained as unimpressed as ever. “But the Senator stated people were disqualified from voting [,]” said the latter by way of a setup. “There is nothing in there to show that people have been disqualified from voting because of the poll tax [,]” said the former by way of a punchline. The Floridian disagreed. “The Senator from Florida thinks the people of Alabama and Mississippi are just as patriotic as are any other people [,]” he began.

He thinks they would vote if there were not something in their way. When he sees these two great States, whose people are friendly to ours and ours are friendly to them, stand at the very bottom of the list of voter participation, the Senator from Florida regrets it and wishes to correct that condition. That is what he is trying to do.

    Evidently, Senator Holland was not prepared to be swayed from his purpose. His fellow Southerners were on the verge of saying some very uncharitable things, having already called him an ally of the Civil Rights Commission, which they actively despised. But while someone else might have faltered, become self-conscious, or given vent to frustration, Holland resolutely plugged away at the same, simple, morally unambiguous assertion. He believed that the citizens of the five relevant states needed help, and he was furthermore convinced that it was his duty to help them. So disarming was this approach – and so stubborn was Holland in carrying it forward – that his opponents seemingly had no choice but to resort to increasingly aggressive, unsociable responses. “We do not need any help from the Senator from Florida [,]” said Hill accordingly. “Now that he is a working ally of the Civil Rights Commission, I would say the people of Alabama would certainly wish no help from the Senator from Florida.” No longer was the senator from Alabama capable of mustering even a superficially reasonable retort, it appeared. Now, it was simply his conviction that the Cotton State didn’t need help from anyone who would voluntarily associate themselves with a particular federal investigative body.

    Yet again, Senator Holland responded with calm deliberation, an approach of which his colleagues were increasingly willing to take advantage.  “I think the Senator [,]” he said,

Has not heard the Senator from Florida state that the three sources for this information, as compiled and reported by the committee which is headed by my distinguished friend, the Senator from Mississippi, are the American Heritage Foundation, the State election officials, and the U.S. Census Bureau—

For the second time in seemingly as many minutes, Holland was cut off before he could finish. “Wait a minute [,]” Eastland demanded. “Let us be fair […] The Senator from Florida is trying to impute that the Senator from Mississippi had something to do with these figures. It was testimony before the subcommittee. Why does not the Senator give the facts about it?” Holland’s response was characteristically straightforward. “The Senator from Florida is trying to [,]” he said simply. But this did not please the likes of Mississippi’s James Eastland. “No [,]” he said. “The Senator is trying to impute that the chairman of the committee had something to do with the authenticity of those figures.”

    The Floridian’s answer to this further accusation was about as heated as Spessard Holland seemed willing to permit himself to get.  “I know perfectly well the Senator from Mississippi had nothing to do with those figures [,]” he said.

I know that for 14 years I have been trying to get this amendment out of the committee which has been headed, at least for the last 6 or 8 years, by the Senator from Mississippi. I know we have been able to get it out of the subcommittee. I think I know why we have not been able to get it out of the full committee. I certainly will not ascribe to my friend from Mississippi any interest in the production of this list or the production of these figures. I want the RECORD to show that.

Here, without saying as much, Holland finally admitted to a degree of irritation. Not only did he pointedly mention the fourteen years it had taken him to get an amendment banning the poll tax onto the floor of the Senate, but he also made reference – albeit obliquely – to his fellow Southerner James Eastland as a partial cause of this drawn-out process. The result was something of a counteraccusation. Whereas Eastland had just expressed annoyance at having been associated with the production of the figures Holland was attempting to quote, Holland was in turn expressing annoyance at Eastland’s role – “at least for the last 6 or 8 years” – in keeping him from submitting his proposed amendment to the Senate at large. “I certainly will not ascribe to my friend from Mississippi any interest in the production of this list or the production of these figures [,]” he concluded by saying. One cannot help, under the circumstances, but read a degree of sarcasm into this promise.

    The degree to which Senator Eastland took umbrage at even the thought of being responsible for the aforementioned figures is noteworthy in itself, of course. These figures had been produced by bodies with which the Mississippian should have had no issue – the American Heritage Foundation, State election officials, and the U.S. Census Bureau – but the fact that they’d been later cited by the Commission on Civil Rights evidently made them more or less radioactive. Such was the nature of the relationship between most Southern Democrats and the contemporary movement for civil rights. These men – Hill, Eastland, Russell, and the like – had been elected by the (white) people of the various Southern states ofttimes for the express purpose of opposing what they perceived to be the intrusive policies of a post-New Deal federal government intent on protecting the essential rights of the poorest and least privileged Americans. And the (white) inhabitants of these states – as made explicit by Senator Hill – did not want any help from those whom they perceived to be outsiders unfamiliar with, or disrespectful of, local conditions, history, and traditions. Being of these people and speaking for these people, it was accordingly only natural for the likes of Hill and Eastland to maintain a keen awareness of anything that might carry the whiff of “federal overreach.” After all, not only did their jobs as public servants functionally depend upon their eagerness in attacking any such reformist or centralizing measures, but it was also essential that they take pains to distance themselves from being even vaguely associated with anything that seemed even remotely to threaten the essential sovereignty of the various states.

    Hill’s response to Holland’s veiled barb would seem to be very much a case in point. “Since the Senator from Florida has proposed his amendment,” he began,

So far as the recollection of the Senator from Alabama serves him, the Senator from Alabama has never had one single word, not one single line, not one single communication, by word of mouth or otherwise, about the proposal of the Senator from Florida. Knowing the people of Alabama and their desire to maintain their rights without outside interference, I know there is not one of them who today would wish the Senator from Florida to deny him his rights, which rights the people have had since the day the Constitution was founded.

Senator Hill, it would seem, was as keen to assure his Senate colleagues – and any members of the press who might have been present – that he had never even heard about Holland’s intention to introduce yet another anti-poll tax amendment as he was to assure Holland that his constituents in Alabama wanted nothing to do with the same. “I know there is not one of them [,]” he said, “who today would wish the Senator from Florida to deny him his rights [.]” Hill was fighting the good fight, or at the least wanted to be perceived as such. Spessard Holland was threatening to deny the people of Alabama their rights, and naturally, their elected senator would not stand for any such thing.

    Not one to let such an opportunity to demonstrate political loyalty go unseized, Senator Eastland then attempted to keep this line of conversation going. “If the distinguished citizens of the State of Alabama thought there was the great problem which the proponents of these measures claim,” he asked his Southern colleague, “would not the Senator from Alabama have received many communications from his own State?” Hill responded plainly in the affirmative. “Certainly [,]” he said.

A Senator always knows that if people are hurting he will hear from them. So far as the Senator from Alabama can recall, in all of the years during which the Senator from Florida has been proposing his amendment, the Senator from Alabama has not received one word, by word of mouth, by line, or by communication in any shape, fashion, or form from a single Alabaman on behalf of the proposed amendment. On the other hand, knowing the people of Alabama as I do, I know they are against the proposed amendment. I would say they even resent the proposed amendment.

Eastland then quickly seconded his colleague’s assertion. “I say the same thing for the State of Mississippi [,]” he declared. “I have not received a single protest about the tax. In fact, every piece of mail I have received from Mississippi in this regard has been in opposition to this proposal.” Evidently, Senator Holland’s concerns were entirely unwarranted. At least, so far as the states of Alabama and Mississippi were concerned.

    Of course – and as previously discussed – this was patently untrue. It may indeed have been the case that Senator J. Lister Hill received very few, if any, complaints from his constituents concerning the undue burdens imposed upon them by the poll tax. But this did not mean that thousands, or tens of thousands, or even hundreds of thousands of people weren’t the victims of disenfranchisement as a direct result of that selfsame policy. Hill represented a state still very much in the grip of the Jim Crow regime of institutionalized racial discrimination. Specific measures had been put in place for the purpose of ensuring that a significant portion of the overall population simply didn’t have a voice in the economic, social, or political life of Alabama, one result of which, among others, was that men like Hill were only made aware of the concerns of part of the community that they claimed to speak for in the halls of power. Consider, to that end, the following figures. In 1960, the Black population of Alabama stood at something like nine hundred and eighty thousand out of a total population of about three and a quarter million. Now, granting that not every Black person otherwise eligible to vote in Alabama would have been automatically disqualified by an inability to pay the poll tax – which is to say that some of them could afford to spare the added expense – the degree to which Black people in the contemporary United States were also subject to severe economic discrimination as well as social and political discrimination more or less ensured that the vast majority of these nearly one million Black Alabamans were disenfranchised by the poll tax on account of being unable to pay.

    And what were they to do about it? What was supposed to be their recourse? They could conceivably have sent letters to either Hill or John Sparkman (1899-1985), his fellow senator from Alabama. And they could have called their constituency offices, and called their offices in Washington, and sent telegrams, and appeared in person, and organized petitions of some form. These are the things good citizens are supposed to do when they have a grievance, after all. And maybe, in spite of the various hardships involved, some of them did do just that. In spite of the time and effort it would take, and the cost of postage, and telegrams, and phone calls, and bus fare, Black Alabamans perhaps tried to make their voices heard. But was there any possibility, once either man found out that the petitioners in question were Black, that their complaints were heard and considered? Would Black people even be allowed to set foot in their offices? Would letters from addresses known to be located in Black neighborhoods even be opened and read rather than summarily discarded? There would seem to be no other reasonable answer to these questions but a flat denial. Of course Senator Hill hadn’t heard any complaints about the poll tax. The was the whole point of Jim Crow. The people who would complain, who had cause to complain, had been systematically suppressed and sidelined so as to be out of sight and out of mind of polite – i.e., white – society. Hill’s assertion, therefore, that he’d, “not received one word, by word of mouth, by line, or by communication in any shape, fashion, or form from a single Alabaman on behalf of the proposed amendment” was entirely meaningless as a point in his favor. He and his fellow Southerners had worked for generations to achieve exactly that specific result. Its existence was not proof that no one in Alabama had a problem with the poll tax. It was proof that those who did have a problem had successfully been silenced.

    Senator Holland, of course, wasn’t about to point this out. Though it had repealed its poll tax in the late 1930s, Florida was at that point as much a Jim Crow state as Alabama or Mississippi. And in any case, Holland’s argument against the poll tax had never been about race. It was a question, he always insisted, of economic discrimination. A person’s ability to cast a ballot should not have been based upon their income, but rather ought to have been extended to all Americans without favor. Such an assertion, to be sure, very conveniently elided the intended purpose of the tax, which was unequivocally to disenfranchise the Black inhabitants of the American South. It was also clearly meant to sidestep any accusations that Holland was in any way associated with the contemporary movement for civil rights. This didn’t work, of course, as the flow of the debate herein cited should make quite clear. His assertions to the contrary notwithstanding, certain of Holland’s fellow Southerners were determined to draw a line between his effort to secure a national ban on poll taxes and the ongoing struggle for the full recognition of Black citizenship. The result was that Holland was at times left in a rather awkward spot. He could not effectively counter Hill’s assertion that no Alabamans had been complaining about the poll tax, for instance, without delving into a subject which he’d made a specific point of avoiding. The very existence of the poll tax was explicitly the result of the racial politics of the post-Civil War South, but the resulting status quo was not something Holland was at all eager to call into question. In consequence, he was forced to occasionally cede ground to the bad faith arguments of his opponents, to the detriment of his stated goal of securing a constitutional amendment.

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.