Guns or Butter

by Bernstein, Irving;

  This was a remarkable statement. Kennedy offered the following explanation: Johnson thought the bill would fail and “he didn’t want to … have the sole responsibility. If I worked out the strategy, … he could always say that he did what we suggested.” Perhaps.

  Johnson seemed unable to recognize that a fundamental shift in public opinion made 1964 entirely different from 1957 and 1960. The Gallup poll in early February 1964 showed 61 percent of the American people for H.R. 7152, and a Harris poll that month came in at 68 percent. By contrast, others recognized this change. In early October 1963 President Kennedy had invited Dirksen and Katzenbach to join him on Air Force One to go out to Chicago for the Army-Air Force football game. Kennedy, because of a crisis in Vietnam, canceled out. Thus, Dirksen and Katzenbach rode together and discussed the civil rights bill. As they were about to land, Dirksen said, “Don’t worry. This bill will come to a vote in the Senate.” Since Dirksen had the power to break a filibuster and Katzenbach had “complete confidence” in Dirksen’s integrity, Katzenbach knew that the bill would pass. Manny Celler said, “The time was ripe now for civil rights.” On February 11, 1964, the day after the massive House victory, Larry O’Brien told Johnson that Dirksen had to deliver the Republicans on cloture in order to protect his own party in the upcoming elections. “Ev Dirksen didn’t have any alternative at all.”

  Johnson had another problem. He was eager to get his program through Congress before it adjourned for the Republican National Convention on July 13, 1964 (the Democratic Convention opened on August 24). There was much important legislation in the hopper, including the Big Three—the tax cut, civil rights, and poverty. Johnson sighed with relief when he signed the tax bill on February 26. But he had made a celebrated promise to launch a war against poverty and he had Sargent Shriver studying the problem and drafting a bill. The issue was extraordinarily complex and was certain to ignite controversy. Would there be enough time if the South staged a prolonged filibuster over civil rights? The President fretted and hoped to avoid or limit that battle.

  About the time Senate debate opened, Katzenbach was again in the White House. The President still thought there were not enough Senate votes. Katzenbach insisted that the promise to McCulloch made a filibuster and a cloture vote necessary. He pointed out that in 1962 filibustering liberals, led by Senator Morse, had so angered conservatives, especially Republicans, on the Communications Satellite bill that they had voted for closing debate. Thus, conservatives could no longer argue that they opposed cloture on principle. The President then demanded a list of the 67 senators who would vote to stop debate. Katzenbach ticked off the 58 he had. “Now,” Johnson asked, “where are you going to get the others?” Katzenbach said there were 14 possibles and they would have to get nine of them. They went over the names and Johnson was not optimistic. Katzenbach stressed that if the President indicated publicly that he doubted success, “we can’t possibly get cloture on this bill.” Johnson promised that he would not voice his doubts and he kept his word.

  Finally convinced that a filibuster was inevitable, the President insisted that Mansfield enforce Rule 19 fully to require that debate go on long into the night in order to wear down the southerners and westerners. Johnson had done so in 1960. Further, he knew that the average age of those who opposed cloture was 65, that Russell was ill, and that Carl Hay den of Arizona, a long-standing foe, was 87. Mansfield refused to apply Rule 19 rigorously. He was convinced that it would not work and he would not be responsible for killing Hayden.5

  Russell’s filibuster, which began on March 9, created a gigantic snarl, wrapping the Senate’s business in its coils. When Russell sat down after defeating Mansfield’s motion to schedule H.R. 7152 for floor action without debate under Rule 7, the majority leader asked unanimous consent to consider the bill. Lister Hill of Alabama objected immediately. Mansfield’s only recourse was to make the measure the Senate’s pending business, and that motion was debatable. He and Humphrey pleaded with the southerners to allow the Senate to consider this burning national issue on its merits. Their voices fell on deaf ears. The great filibuster was now on in full force. As the Whalens wrote, it continued “that afternoon, and the next, and the next, and. … Their soft melodious voices resounded beautifully throughout the Senate chamber and the word around Washington was that they planned to keep on … until doomsday, or at least until Congress adjourned for the Republican National Convention in July.” Since the legislative clock stopped at the end of the first day, it seemed as though March 9, 1964, would go on forever.

  There were small signs of life. A. Willis Robertson of Virginia waved a small Confederate flag as he droned on. When done, he presented it to Humphrey. Determined to hold his temper, Humphrey praised Robertson for his “eloquence, great knowledge of history and law, and his wonderful, gracious, gentlemanly qualities.” The flag, he said, was a symbol of “bravery and courage and conviction.” Wayne Morse, disgusted, objected to conducting committee hearings until H.R. 7152 was passed. Russell proposed that all the black people in the U.S. should be redistributed equally among the states at federal expense.

  The southerners insisted on frequent roll calls when the chamber was empty in order to kill time and to rest their vocal chords as the 100 names were called off. Russell had divided his forces into three platoons in order to get them to the floor promptly. Humphrey had six and Kuchel had a similar system for the Republicans, each connected to the other by a special telephone network.

  The Department of Justice provided Humphrey and Kuchel with massive briefing books. Each morning the floor leaders, their staffs, and Justice Department experts reviewed plans for the day. On Mondays and Thursdays they were joined by Clarence Mitchell of the NAACP and other officials of the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights. The staffs held a postmortem session at the end of each day. A mimeograph machine donated by the AFL-CIO produced the “Bipartisan Civil Rights Newsletter” each morning to cover events of the preceding day and to reprint favorable editorials and statements. It went to all senators.

  Several weeks into the filibuster the southerners voted 7 to 5 to allow Mansfield’s motion to come to the floor. It passed easily 67 to 17 on March 26. H.R. 7152 was now the business before the Senate. Russell granted that a battle had been lost, but “we shall now begin to fight the war.”

  Morse moved immediately to refer the bill to the Judiciary Committee to report back not later than April 8. An excellent lawyer, Morse anticipated correctly that the Civil Rights Act would generate a flood of litigation for which committee hearings and reports would be helpful in illuminating legislative intent. Dirksen joined him because he thought it more orderly to observe Senate tradition. Mansfield strongly disagreed, stressing the perils of Eastland and the inevitable delays. He prevailed by a vote of 50 to 34.

  Some businessmen and conservative senators complained that Title VII would impose racial quotas on employers, requiring them to hire specified numbers of black workers. Humphrey tried to set this concern to rest on March 20. “Contrary to the allegations of some opponents of this title, there is nothing in it that will give any power to the Commission or to any court to require hiring, firing, or promotion of employees to meet a racial ‘quota’ or to achieve a certain racial balance.”

  The filibuster frustrated the media. Their minds told them that H.R. 7152 was one of the most significant measures ever considered by the Congress, but their ears told them that virtually nothing was happening. How does one cover a nonevent? Fred Friendly, the head of CBS News, decided to bull his way forward. He said that the debate was extremely important, comparable to a space shot or a primary election. The fact that the Senate forbade coverage on the floor did not affect “our responsibility of reporting the debate and filibuster as completely as possible.” CBS scheduled live TV news five times daily and radio coverage four times a day. Roger Mudd was given this miserable assignment, which he feared would turn into a “gimmicky flagpole-sitting stunt.” The weather was dreadful and poor Mudd stood
in the rain, snow, and cold on the Senate steps interviewing anyone with the courage to venture outdoors.

  Immediately following the Easter recess “debate” commenced. Humphrey delivered a passionate three-and-a-half-hour address stressing the moral imperative of civil rights. Kuchel followed for an hour and three-quarters, explaining the bill title by title. For the better part of the week others joined in these preliminaries. On Monday, April 13, the start of the sixth week, the southerners resumed the filibuster.

  Meanwhile Dirksen had been taking measurements with his experienced political eye. He agreed with the entire Democratic leadership from Presidents Kennedy and Johnson on down that Dirksen was the man, that he could deliver the Republican votes needed to end the filibuster by producing the magic 67. But there was a multitude of complications, not least among them timing. Dirksen prided himself on having the wettest finger in Washington for predicting the direction and velocity of the political wind and of positioning himself accordingly. But in 1963 he had made a grievous forecast by coming out against Kennedy’s nuclear test ban treaty even before it had been signed because he was convinced that the Senate would reject it. He was horrified when it proved extremely popular and even his own Republican troops deserted their leader. Dirksen was embarrassed to have to ask his Democratic friends, Mansfield and Kennedy, to bail him out, which they happily did. At the last moment even Dirksen switched his vote. He could not afford another such mistake.

  Dirksen was 68, was beset with an array of ailments including a wretched peptic ulcer, and, despite medical advice to the contrary, puffed his way through three packs of cigarettes daily. He rose very early, worked furiously for a long day, and got to bed late. His family and friends, naturally, worried about his health.

  Now he faced the greatest opportunity of his political lifetime. He could be the hero of the hour by rescuing this immensely important piece of legislation. If he succeeded, children would read about him in their history books.

  Dirksen was a bundle of contradictions. To much of the public he was a buffoon. He could blame no one but himself because this is the image he projected. His clothes resembled an unmade bed, his hair a weed patch. He had waged guerrilla warfare against the English language, which he loved, for decades, and was known as the Wizard of Ooze. He delighted in mispronouncing words: “missile” became “mizz-el.” He was addicted to odd words like, “baleful” and “felicitous.” His speeches roamed about the terrain in “diversions and detours” because, he said, “I love to temporize.” He could be very funny. “We must screw the inscrutable.” Or, “I take my freedom straight … without ginger ale.” On a long speech: “I learned long ago that no souls are saved after the first 20 minutes.” A dedicated gardener, Dirksen recognized the arrival of spring each year with a grandiloquent speech in the Senate proposing the marigold as “the national floral emblem of our country.” He and Charlie Halleck appeared on a Republican television program that was so bad that it came to be known as “The Ev and Charlie Show.”

  The other side of Dirksen, which he nurtured with deadly seriousness, was the professional legislator. George Reedy came from Illinois, had covered Congress as a newspaperman since the days when Dirksen was in the House, and had observed him closely when Reedy worked for Johnson. He said,

  Dirksen … was a very good speaker, somewhat oleaginous, but still very, very good. What was more important, Dirksen had a very subtle mind. Dirksen was probably the most—no, not the most effective. The most effective Republican Senate leader I ever knew was Charlie McNary. But after Charlie McNary, Dirksen was certainly the most effective. …

  “Everett Dirksen,” the Whalens wrote, “was a master of the legislative process.” He knew the rules, observed the senators carefully, and spent long hours studying bills. Hubert Humphrey on the Johnson-Dirksen relationship:

  Johnson was able to take the measure of a man. … Right off the bat he sized you up. He knew with Dirksen that he had himself a match. Dirksen was clever; Dirksen was a good speaker; Dirksen was smart; Dirksen was agile; he was Machiavellian; and he was always willing to make a deal. Johnson liked that, and, even as President, Johnson worked closely with Dirksen.

  In 1963, when Kennedy had sent up the civil rights bill, Dirksen had been troubled. He was uncomfortable with public accommodations because his conservative instincts were repelled by the long arm of the federal government reaching into hotels, restaurants, and movie houses to compel the proprietors to serve customers they considered undesirable. Reflecting the view of American industry, which he served faithfully, Dirksen opposed a new regulatory system to eliminate discrimination in employment. But Titles II and VII were the most important in H.R. 7152. Somebody would have to give and he hoped to get the supporters of the bill to yield.

  In the early stage of the filibuster, as the Whalens put it, “he commandeered three lawyers from the Senate Judiciary Committee staff and assigned them to pick H.R. 7152 apart to see if it could be made more appetizing to the arch-conservatives in the GOP.” Dirksen surprised his colleagues at the regular Tuesday luncheon of the Senate Republican Policy Committee on April 7 by presenting a bundle of 40 amendments to Title VII which would have gutted it. He said that they represented his views, not those of the party, and laid over discussion until Thursday. The 33 Senate Republicans were badly divided. There were 21 conservatives, including Dirksen (he was so slippery that he could have fitted into any of the categories), five moderates, and seven liberals, including Kuchel. On Thursday the Dirksen amendments provoked an outburst from the moderates and liberals and chairman Leverett Saltonstall of Massachusetts had difficulty keeping order. Dirksen proposed erasing Howard Smith’s sex amendment. Margaret Chase Smith of Maine, the only woman Republican in the Senate, said, “I could see no reason why the Republicans should go out of their way to oppose inclusion of the word ‘sex’ and if such a move were made I would oppose it.”

  Kuchel, upset and surprised by Dirksen’s move, went straight to Humphrey’s office, where a group had gathered. He recounted what had taken place. Humphrey urged him not to oppose Dirksen, to allow the argument to unfold. “Dirksen,” Humphrey said, “told me that if he did not get support, then he would retreat.” Kuchel reckoned that “Dirksen will go through his public acting process, take a licking, and then be with us.” They were right. At a press conference Dirksen said he was willing to watch his amendments “go down the drain … My position is negotiable.”

  On April 15 Humphrey cheerfully reported that he had talked Dirksen down from 40 to 15 amendments. He was hopeful that a cloture vote would take place by May 15 or 20. The next day McCulloch walked into Dirksen’s office to stress to the minority leader that the framers of the Constitution had established a bicameral legislature. Two of the residual amendments were unacceptable: to deny the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission authority to file suits under Title VII and to allow a state law to preempt the federal statute (Dirksen wanted to protect the Illinois FEPC against a civil rights act).

  The churches, at Humphrey’s urging, now moved on Washington. Beginning in early April a prominent clergyman each day conducted a prayer service at the Lutheran Church of the Reformation on Capitol Hill. B’nai Brith Women designated April 6 as “wire for rights day.” On April 19 trios of Protestant, Catholic, and Jewish seminarians began a 24-hour vigil at the Lincoln Memorial. Theology students from 75 seminaries descended upon Washington to pray in shifts around the clock. They pledged not to stop until the Senate passed H.R. 7152. The National Council of Churches, the U.S. Catholic Conference, and the Jewish community sent clergymen and lay people daily to meet with their senators. On the evening of April 28 at Georgetown University 5000 church leaders packed McDonough Gymnasium and overflowed into Gaston Hall at a big interdenominational meeting. The speakers were Humphrey, and Kuchel, New York’s Republican senators Jacob Javits and Kenneth Keating, Archbishop Lawrence J. Shehan and Rabbi Uri Miller of Baltimore, and the star, the Protestant Reverend Eugene Carson Blake. Nobody in Wash
ington had ever witnessed this kind of lobbying. Senator Russell was appalled. The opposition was taking over the nation’s conscience.

  On April 16 Dirksen offered his Title VII amendments, now shrunk to ten, but did not call them up. He promised a “mysterious” 11th amendment, which he introduced on April 21. There were 24 others, but none was called up.

  Humphrey, as was his habit, dropped into a chair next to Dirksen’s desk on the afternoon of April 21 as the southerners rambled on. Dirksen unloaded a long monologue. The time was right. H.R. 7152 was a good bill that should and would be adopted. It was his duty to put his weight behind it. He had only one more minor amendment to Title II. Humphrey could hardly restrain himself.

  The two pros then got down to business. Dirksen tested the commitment of the Democrats. Perhaps, he said, a cloture vote would not be necessary. He sensed that the South was wearing out and he wanted to avoid the difficult job of producing the Republican votes. Humphrey was firm: there must be a vote on cloture. If for no other reason, this would take Senator Russell and his colleagues off the hook. They could explain that they had gone all out and had been beaten by much larger forces. Dirksen agreed. As this conversation was under way, the southerners talked their way past the 37-day record for a civil rights filibuster. Russell, weary and melancholy, told Clarence Mitchell off the record that “the jig is up.” He simply could not persuade Lyndon Johnson to compromise.

  On April 21, as well, the southerners momentarily changed their tactics. Herman Talmadge of Georgia introduced an amendment to Title XI, the miscellaneous provision that anyone charged with willfully disobeying a court order which required compliance in an act of antidiscrimination would be entitled to a trial by jury. He defended trial by jury as a fundamental Anglo-Saxon right dating back to Magna Carta. While everyone knew that an all-white jury in the Deep South would not vote for conviction in such a case, it put the supporters of H.R. 7152 in the embarrassing position of opposing trial by jury. But this diversion only held up the filibuster momentarily.