Guns or Butter

by Bernstein, Irving;

  The problems were routine. At the start the cold brought frost. Later it rained heavily and one of the bivouac areas became a sea of mud. The marchers, with General Graham’s permission, slept on the highway to try to keep dry. Sixteen black women worked furiously in the kitchen at the Green Street Baptist Church in Selma to prepare hot meals of pork and beans and spaghetti which were delivered in new garbage cans in a rented Hertz truck. Professor Elwyn Allan Smith, who taught ecumenics at the Pittsburgh Theological Seminary, commanded the delivery crew. The San Francisco Theological Seminary provided portable toilets. The narrow highway through Lowndes County was negotiated without incident. There were protecting soldiers on the ground and helicopters overhead. The only incidents were minor. A guardsman spat on a priest, for which he was relieved of his post and reprimanded. A latrine truck got stuck in the mud in a bivouac area and the Army took quite a while to get it back on the road. A black driver of a “logistical support vehicle” (could that be Armyese for the Hertz truck loaded with spaghetti in garbage cans?) stopped for gas and the owner of the station punched him in the nose. The military police moved in until the local cop arrived. So it went.

  King headed the march intermittently the first three days. He seemed extremely tired and his feet blistered. He spent the nights in a mobile home. On Wednesday morning he rested and at midday took a flight to Cleveland for a fund-raising rally. Many marchers called him “De Lawd.”

  On the outskirts of Montgomery the marchers, triumphantly singing “We Have Overcome,” reached their last campsite, the Catholic City of St. Jude. As the Army figures indicate, they were joined by many others from Selma and from across the nation who had reached Montgomery. They turned the St. Jude field into churned mud. Entertainment was scheduled for 9 p.m., but was two hours late and did not end until 2 a.m. Show business descended en masse—Shelley Winters, Sammy Davis, Jr., Tony Perkins, Tony Bennett, Dick Gregory, Mike Nichols and Elaine May, Harry Belafonte, Joan Baez, and many others. Renata Adler wrote that the performance looked like a “football rally, then like a carnival and a hootenanny, and finally like something dangerously close to a hysterical mob.”

  On Thursday morning King, exhausted but triumphant, with Coretta and the Abernathys beside him and followed by many dignitaries and the marchers, led the way to the capitol. Memories were stirred when he passed the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church, where he had been the pastor at the time of the Montgomery bus boycott. The platform was on the steps of the capitol and a crowd estimated at 25,000 filled the plaza below. King delivered a powerful oration on this “shining moment in the conscience of man.”

  But the day was marred by tragedy. Viola Gregg Liuzzo, a white woman, was a housewife, the mother of five, and married to a business agent of Teamsters Local 247 in Detroit. In her early years she lived in Georgia and Tennessee. An activist and committed to civil rights, she had been deeply moved by the television coverage of the carnage at the Edmund Pettus Bridge. She took off in the family Oldsmobile and three days later was in Selma. She stayed with a black family in a public housing project and became a chauffeur, ferrying people between Selma and Montgomery. At St. Jude’s at the end of the march she said to Father Tim Deasy, “I feel it. Somebody is going to get killed.”

  After the ceremonies at the capitol she drove several marchers to Selma. She and LeRoy Moton, a young black man, then set off on Highway 80 for Montgomery. In Lowndes County a car drew alongside and its occupants opened fire. A bullet to the head killed Viola Liuzzo instantly.

  The next day President Johnson announced that four Klansmen suspected of the murder had been apprehended by the FBI. One of them, Gary Thomas Rowe, Jr., was an FBI undercover agent and had notified the Bureau. But the others went free because all-white juries refused to convict them. King, with the FBI still on his mind, sent Hoover a telegram congratulating him for the Bureau’s good work.

  After the march to Montgomery Selma became quiet. The focus of decision had now shifted to Washington.5

  Lyndon Johnson took no chances. The massive Democratic majorities in both houses and equally great public support in the North seemed to assure Senate passage of the voting rights bill. There were even inroads into the South. On March 11 Senator Russell Long of Louisiana said privately that he was for the bill and that he planned to carry the votes of 11 of the 22 southern senators with him. Nevertheless, Johnson wanted to be sure that two-thirds of the senators would vote to shut off debate if the southerners filibustered. This required Republican support. Late Sunday afternoon on March 14 he met with the congressional leadership in the Cabinet Room. Senate minority leader Everett Dirksen, whip Thomas Kuchel, and House civil rights leader William McCulloch were the Republicans present. Vice President Humphrey, Speaker McCormack, and Senate majority leader Mansfield were the Democrats. Also present were several White House aides along with Attorney General Katzenbach and his assistants. Johnson reviewed the events in Selma and the provisions of the bill. The main issue was how these matters should be presented to the Congress and the country. The leaders of both parties decided to invite the President to address a joint session of Congress at 9 p.m. the next day.

  This speech, called “The American Promise,” was said to have been viewed by an audience of 70 million and, because he spoke from the heart, may have been the finest Lyndon Johnson ever delivered. Richard Goodwin drafted it and the President himself worked it over very carefully. On Monday afternoon, Lady Bird wrote, “the tension began to mount.” By 6:00, Jack Valenti was feeding Johnson a page at a time. “He was going over it, scratching out lines. … I could very nearly hear [Jack] groan whenever Lyndon marked out a line and wrote in something else.” That evening in the House chamber the President spoke:

  At times history and fate meet at a single time in a single place to shape a turning point in man’s unending search for freedom. So it was at Lexington and Concord. So it was a century ago at Appomattox. So it was last week in Selma, Alabama.

  There, long-suffering men and women peacefully protested the denial of their rights as Americans. Many were brutally assaulted. One good man, a man of God, was killed. …

  Our lives have been marked with debate about great issues. … But rarely in any time does an issue … challenge … the values and the purposes and the meaning of our beloved Nation. …

  “All men are created equal”—“government by consent of the governed”—“give me liberty or give me death. … ”

  These words are a promise to every citizen that he shall share in the dignity of man. …

  The most basic right of all … [is] to choose your own leaders. …

  Yet the harsh fact is that in many places in this country men and women are kept from voting simply because they are Negroes. …

  So I ask you to join me in working long hours … to pass this bill. … Outside this chamber is the outraged conscience of a nation, the grave concern of many nations, and the harsh judgment of history on our acts.

  At this point the President paused and pronounced the title of the anthem of the civil rights movement: “WE SHALL OVERCOME!” There was a standing ovation. He continued,

  As a man whose roots go deeply into Southern soil I know how difficult it is to reshape the attitudes and the structure of our society.

  But a century has passed, more than a hundred years, since the Negro was freed. And he is not fully free tonight. …

  These are the enemies: poverty, ignorance, disease. They are the enemies and not our fellow man, not our neighbor. …

  In Selma as elsewhere we seek and pray for peace. We seek order. We seek unity. But we will not accept the peace of stifled rights, or the order imposed by fear, or the unity that stifles protest. For peace cannot be purchased at the cost of liberty.

  Lady Bird, good wife that she was, was both proud and critical. “It was a magnificent speech.” But it was “too long. It ran forty-two minutes and would have been better at twenty-five.”

  The country, however, did not quibble about length. The civ
il rights movement, of course, was ecstatic. The press was overwhelming in its support, even in the South.

  The President sent up the voting rights bill on March 17, 1965, and it became S. 1564 and H.R. 6400. While, as already noted, it raised difficult questions, the bill itself was short and simple. Section 2 forbade the denial of the right to vote on account of race or color. Section 3 invalidated “any test or device” employed to deny the right to vote in any federal, state, or local election in effect on November 1, 1964, in which less than 50 percent of the persons of voting age were not registered and did not vote in the presidential election. Sections 4 and 5 constituted the “triggering” mechanism. Twenty or more residents of a jurisdiction could petition the Attorney General alleging that they had been denied the right to vote on the basis of race. If he certified the complaint, the Civil Service Commission would appoint examiners to consider the applicants’ qualifications and, if qualified, would certify them to vote. No one could be denied the right to vote for failure to pay a poll tax. Under Section 9, violations of the law would be criminal acts.

  The Senate Judiciary Committee presented a modest problem. Its chairman, James Eastland of Mississippi, had allowed only one of 121 civil rights bills out of his committee and the exception had been a fluke. But in 1965 there were at least nine firm votes for the bill among the 15 members of the committee. Taking no chances, Mansfield and Dirksen jointly got the Senate by a 63 to 13 vote to instruct the committee to report no later than April 9, 1965. An outraged Eastland howled that a deadline was “unheard of.”

  The Senate committee conducted hearings between March 23 and April 5, 1965. Attorney General Katzenbach carried the entire burden, testified for three days, and performed in masterly fashion. General opposition was almost nonexistent and some of it was ridiculous. Leander H. Perez of Plaquemines Parish, Louisiana, claimed that he spoke for Governor John J. McKeithen and denounced the bill as a Communist conspiracy to establish Negro rule in the South. Dirksen, who had himself participated in drafting the bill, said this was “stupid.” McKeithin announced that he had authorized Perez only to say that he thought voter qualification should be left to the states.

  Senator Sam Ervin of North Carolina, an authority on the Constitution, argued that the bill contravened the prohibition on ex post facto laws of Article I, Section 4. S. 1564 presumed “rascality” and punished states and localities for acts that took place before the law was enacted. Katzenbach replied that there was no “punishment.” Rather, the bill sought to effectuate the Fifteenth Amendment by redressing a century of discriminatory administration.

  Ervin also contended that Congress had no power to set aside the constitutional authority of the states to establish qualifications for voting. Katzenbach responded that the Fifteenth Amendment had superseded Article I, Section 2, and that this theory had won judicial approval.

  Finally, Ervin attacked the 50 percent formulas because they picked up counties in which there was no discrimination against blacks, such as Aroostook County, Maine, several in Alaska, and, most important to him, allegedly 28 counties in eastern North Carolina. He stressed that four of those areas contained large military installations whose personnel either voted in their home states or did not bother to vote. The trouble with the argument was that only one, Onslow County with Camp Lejeune, had more than 50 percent of the voting age population registered in 1964. The chairman of the North Carolina Board of Elections stated that pending legislation in the state, if enacted, would remedy low figures in the 27 deficient counties.

  Solicitor General Archibald Cox, like Senator Ervin, was much concerned about S. 1564’s constitutionality, particularly the argument just made. He wrote Katzenbach on March 23 that the bill “goes far to demonstrate the lack of any but a coincidental relationship between racial discrimination and the facts. … One might equally well make the Act applicable to any State whose name begins with Vi or Mi or Lo or Al or Ge or So.” He proposed language to remedy this problem. In fact, the administration and Senator Dirksen agreed on three amendments to take care of this and other problems.

  Another issue was the demand by Puerto Ricans in New York City to be covered under the bill by an amendment establishing a “conclusive presumption of literacy” for anyone with a fourth-grade education without taking a test. Irma Vidal Santaella, chair of the Legion of Voters, wrote Lee White on March 9 to ask for the amendment. Puerto Ricans were “American citizens by birth” who attended federally subsidized bilingual schools. Yet they were ignored by both the New York legislature and the Congress. White submitted her letter to Clifford L. Alexander, Jr., who was close to the civil rights movement. He advised that “we ignore this letter … until our voter legislation is through the Congress.” Anything else would “only serve to muddy the waters.”

  But Mayor Robert F. Wagner, Jr., of New York City and both New York senators, Javits and Robert Kennedy, took up the Puerto Rican cause. Katzenbach and White agreed. “The real problem,” the former wrote, “is that Dirksen simply does not look kindly on adding 500,000 to 600,000 Democratic votes in New York City and, therefore, opposes this feature.” The Puerto Ricans asked to see the President. Despite the urging of White, Johnson declined to do so. If cloture came up, he would need Dirksen’s support.

  The Leadership Conference on Civil Rights, Senator Edward Kennedy, and the House Judiciary Committee urged a permanent national prohibition of the poll tax. Katzenbach thought it a bad idea. King, Larry O’Brien informed the President, “may find it necessary to demonstrate,” and James Farmer of CORE demanded a “complete ban” on the poll tax. In fact, the House added such an amendment.

  On May 21 Katzenbach sent the President a formidable argument in support of his opposition. In Breedlove v. Suttles in 1937 the Supreme Court had unanimously sustained the Virginia poll tax. This and other cases had compelled Congress to abolish the poll tax in federal elections by constitutional amendment in 1962. A flat ban would cause trouble. Vermont, for example, which did not discriminate based on race, would be forced to abandon a poll tax that exempted the poor. Vermont, certainly, would challenge the constitutionality of such a law.

  A prohibition would be an “invitation to persons not to pay these taxes.” Thus, first-time voters in the Deep South who did not pay the tax might lose the suffrage in state elections if the law was later held unconstitutional. Further, this constitutionally vulnerable part of the law could put the remainder at risk.

  Finally, Katzenbach pointed out, opposition to “the flat ban also appeared advisable as the best means of assuring the necessary votes for cloture.” He noted that Senator Dirksen “has strongly opposed the ban, questioned its constitutionality and indicated to the press that its adoption would make cloture very difficult. If we had not opposed the flat ban, I believe Senator Dirksen, Senators Aiken and Prouty of Vermont, and other Republicans would probably be lost for cloture. With only 45 Democratic votes, we could not prevail without these Republicans.”

  In the light of these arguments, Mansfield and Dirksen jointly proposed a narrower substitute. The Attorney General would be obliged to file action against any poll tax which, as a condition of voting, had the purpose or effect of abridging the right to vote in violation of the Constitution. “The Mansfield-Dirksen approach,” Katzenbach wrote the President, “is clearly constitutional.” Nevertheless, the Judiciary Committee adopted the ban on the poll tax in state and local elections by a vote of 9 to 7. The majority consisted of 6 liberal Democrats and 3 moderate Republicans.

  The Judiciary Committee reported the amended voting rights bill on April 9 by a vote of 12 to 4. The majority consisted of 7 northern Democrats and all 5 Republicans. Only the 4 conservative southern Democrats voted against S. 1564. This vote shredded the historic southern Democratic-Republican coalition. It also met the Mansfield-Dirksen requirement of a report by April 9.

  Action on the Senate floor dragged on from April 22 to May 26 because of a sharp conflict over the ban on the poll tax. In 1965, 27 states imposed
a poll tax, but only 4 used it as a qualification for voting in state and local elections—Alabama, Mississippi, Texas, and Virginia. The other southern states, led by North Carolina in the 1920s, had dropped their levies. Movements were under way in May 1965 to take similar action in Virginia and Texas.

  Despite the narrowing of the problem and the constitutional questions Katzenbach had raised, the civil rights movement and its supporters in Congress pressed for a flat ban. On May 11 Mansfield and Dirksen substituted their court test amendment. Senator Edward Kennedy immediately moved to put the ban back and lost by the close margin of 49 to 45. On May 19 two poll tax amendments were adopted. One, offered by the leaders with the Attorney General’s endorsement, declared this levy an unconstitutional infringement of the right to vote. It was adopted 69 to 20. The other, proposed by Hiram Fong, the Hawaii Republican, authorized poll watchers in counties in which federal registrars were named. It passed 56 to 20.

  On May 20 the Senate by a vote of 48 to 19 accepted the “American Flag” amendment offered by Robert Kennedy and Javits. A person who was illiterate in English could not be denied the right to vote if he had an equivalent sixth-grade education in a school located under the American flag conducted in another language. This would cover the New York City Puerto Ricans.

  On May 4, 12, and 19 Mansfield asked for unanimous consent to close debate. The South had decided to force cloture, and each time Senator Allen Ellender of Louisiana objected. There would be a reprise of the 1964 maneuver over the Civil Rights Act, but without the prolonged debate. On May 25 the Senate voted for cloture 70 to 30, a winning margin of 3. The majority consisted of 47 Democrats and 23 Republicans, the minority of 21 Democrats and 9 Republicans. The bill was passed the next day 77 to 19. The winners consisted of 47 Democrats and 30 Republicans, including 5 southern and border state Democrats.