A House Judiciary Subcommittee had held hearings between March 18 and April 1, 1965, and reported an amended H.R. 6400 by a vote of 10 to 1 (the latter not identified) on April 9. Several amendments were important: a flat ban on the poll tax in state and local elections; a new Title I of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 to cover state and local elections; a sixth-grade education in English as a “rebuttable presumption” of literacy; and a congressional finding that payment of a poll tax violated the Fourteenth and Fifteenth amendments.
The Judiciary Committee split three ways on June 1, 1965. The majority, consisting of the northern Democrats and three liberal Republicans, approved the bill with the amendments just noted. The other eight Republicans called the bill “hastily contrived, [a] patchwork response to the nation’s demand for social justice.” They offered a substitute bill. The three southern Democrats denounced the bill and the substitute as unconstitutional.
Emanuel Celler, the chairman, was in command. The committee bill sailed through the House on July 9 by a vote of 333 to 85. The majority consisted of 221 Democrats and 112 Republicans, among them 33 Democrats and 3 Republicans from the South. The opposition was made up of 61 Democrats and 24 Republicans, all but 9 from the South.
The conference faced two central issues—the ban on the poll tax and the Puerto Ricans. The civil rights organizations, concerned about the long delay, reversed themselves and urged the House conferees to give up on the poll tax. Katzenbach suggested compromise language resembling the Senate version. The key negotiators, Dirksen and Celler, both professionals, quickly reached agreement on new language for the ban and on inclusion of the Kennedy-Javits American flag provision.
The House adopted the conference report on August 3 by a vote of 328 to 74, and the Senate followed the next day 79 to 18. In the House the favorable vote included all 180 northern Democrats, 37 southern Democrats, and 111 Republicans; the opponents consisted of 54 southern Democrats and 20 Republicans. Those in favor in the Senate were 43 Democrats from the North, 6 from the South, and 30 Republicans. The opponents were 1 northern Democrat, 16 southerners, and 1 Republican.
President Johnson on August 6 held a televised ceremony for the signing of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 in the Capitol rotunda. He then moved to the President’s Room off the Senate chamber for the actual signing, the room President Lincoln had used on August 6, 1861, to sign a bill freeing slaves who had been pressed into service by the Confederacy. “Today,” Johnson said, “what is perhaps the last of the legal barriers is tumbling.”6
The implementation of the Voting Rights Act required the cooperation of the Department of Justice, the Civil Service Commission, and the Bureau of the Census. Planning began in June 1965, two months before the act was passed, and everything was in place when it was signed.
The role of Census was rudimentary. The Attorney General would suspend literacy tests in counties in which less than 50 percent of persons of voting age were registered on November 1, 1964, and less than 50 percent voted in the presidential election in November. Since the Bureau already had these data in its files, it could supply them quickly and at no cost. Prior to August 6, the Attorney General formally asked the Director of the Census to specify the states with literacy tests used to prevent the registration of blacks, and the director provided the voting age and election statistics by county. This allowed the machinery to move immediately on August 6.
In fact, by July 14 the agencies had identified the tough counties—eight each in Alabama, Mississippi, and Louisiana, along with four in Georgia, plus two urban counties in each of these states. These counties were listed in the Federal Register when the law was signed.
The problems with Civil Service were complex and required extended meetings. The Commission insisted that its examiners should make no policy decisions; they would “exercise a ministerial function only.” Civil Service needed to know where examiners would be located, how many were needed, the grounds for challenging the examiner’s decision, and whether to employ blacks as examiners. They also needed forms and insurance of safety in rural counties with a reputation for violence. All these questions were answered.
At the outset Civil Service supplied and trained 68 of its own employees drawn from the affected areas wherever possible to serve as examiners. While a number of blacks were invited to participate, only two agreed to become examiners. Supervision operated out of regional Civil Service offices in Atlanta and Dallas. The local offices opened on August 10 and were available six days a week from 9 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. A citizen interested in registering would go to an office, obtain a form, and fill it out. The examiner would assist him when needed. If the applicant was unable to read or write, the examiner would record the information on the form. If the applicant met the requirements, the examiner would give him a certificate of eligibility to vote and put his name on lists submitted to state and local election officials. In states that still imposed a poll tax, the examiner would receive the payment and provide a receipt.
Aside from placing notices on post office billboards, the government could assume no responsibility for bringing people to the examiners. That burden rested on the civil rights organizations and they were not enthusiastic about carrying it. It was a thankless task and they complained of lack of money and the difficulty of recruiting volunteers, particularly in bad weather. This created an undercurrent of criticism. After viewing an NBC broadcast, Harry McPherson wrote the President that “there still seems to be among Negro leaders more interest in discovering fresh fields for conquest than in making use of the franchise.”
Nevertheless, the impact of the program was dramatic. It went into operation quickly, smoothly, and with almost no controversy. In Alabama, Mississippi, and Louisiana 17 offices had opened by early November, and the program had been extended to two counties in South Carolina.
John Macy, the chairman of the commission, made an inspection of his operation in late October and passed on his observations to the President. The examiners were performing with “skill and efficiency” and had won the respect and cooperation of community leaders, black and white. Excepting Montgomery, the number of applicants had dropped to a “very low level.” The reasons seemed to be the cotton picking season, the loss of students who had returned to college, apathy, and fear. Legal uncertainty was a problem—challenges to the constitutionality of the statute and, in Montgomery, to the legality under Alabama law of registering illiterates. A significant portion of those registered were illiterate; in Greenwood and Belzoni, Mississippi, for example, between a fifth and a third. In rural areas those who registered were relatively old because young people had migrated. While there was fear in tough rural counties and charges of intimidation, none had been substantiated.
By the end of January 1966 the program had listed 93,778 new voters, 91,212 Negro and 2,566 white, in the four states. Of the 310,641 potential black voters, 30 percent had been registered. The numbers grew slowly thereafter. By March 31, 1968, the total registered in these states plus a few counties in Georgia reached 159,378, of whom 152,046 were nonwhite. In Dallas County, Alabama, where the crisis had arisen in Selma, only 320 blacks had been registered in 1964. By 1969 federal examiners had added 8,992, more than half of the total number of voting age. In neighboring Lowndes County no blacks were registered in 1964; in 1968 there were 2,792.
The gains under the statute were accompanied by a sharp increase in voluntary compliance by local officials. The Department of Justice reported that more than a quarter of a million Negroes were registered this way by June 1966.
The progress under the Voting Rights Act was due in substantial part to what Katzenbach called “the magnificent cooperation between the Department of Justice and the Civil Service Commission. I think this joint program was … an excellent example of how the total … can be greater than the sum of the parts.” But Justice also had to confront the constitutionality of the statute and of the poll tax. On August 6, 1965, the day the President signed the law, Katzenbach determined that
South Carolina had maintained a literacy test on November 1, 1964, and the Director of Census held that fewer than 50 percent of the persons in the state had registered and had voted in the 1964 presidential election. The law was invoked against South Carolina. On September 29 the state asked the U.S. Supreme Court for leave to file an original action against the Attorney General challenging the constitutionality of the Voting Rights Act. The court accepted the case. The other states affected filed briefs amid curiae.
On March 7, 1966, Chief Justice Warren for a unanimous court, excepting a partial dissent by Justice Black, held the central provisions of the Voting Rights Act constitutional. The Congress enjoyed a broad power under the Fifteenth Amendment to enact laws to prevent denial of the right to vote based on race. It might prohibit a literacy test, otherwise constitutional, when it was used to discriminate on account of race. While the 50 percent rule was subject to abuse, none had yet occurred and the administration of the law thus far had been fair and reasonable. “We here hold,” Warren wrote, “that the portions of the Voting Rights Act properly before us are a valid means for carrying out the commands of the Fifteenth Amendment. Hopefully, millions of non-white Americans will now be able to participate for the first time on an equal basis in the government under which they live.”
The American Flag provision of the law, unrelated to the Fifteenth Amendment, was not reached by the South Carolina decision. The Morgans, a husband and wife who were registered voters in Kings County (New York City), brought suit to enjoin enforcement. Puerto Ricans who were literate in Spanish but not in English, they argued, could not vote meaningfully because most political information was published in English. If they were given the franchise, the votes of the Morgans and others like them would be diluted. A three-judge district court held the provision unconstitutional on the ground that the qualifications for voting were reserved to the states and Congress had no power to act for New York. The Supreme Court reversed in 1966 in an opinion for the court by Justice Brennan with Justice Harlan dissenting. It was decided entirely under the equal protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. The American Flag provision, Brennan wrote, is “appropriate legislation to enforce the Equal Protection Clause.”
The Department of Justice filed suits against Texas and Alabama and a brief amicus curiae against Virginia to invalidate their poll taxes. Three-judge district courts set aside the Texas and Alabama levies and the Supreme Court joined them in the Virginia case.7
The Voting Rights Act of 1965 closed the gap that the Civil Rights Act of 1964 had left open. The voting law, Lee White said, “may well prove to be one of the most significant pieces of civil rights legislation ever put on the books.” Now under both laws the rights of blacks, along with those of others discriminated against because of their race, creed, color, or national origin, were legally protected by federal law over a wide range of day-to-day activities, including political participation. This was an extremely important advance. But it did not mean that blacks had won full integration into American society.
Several years later Burke Marshall was asked whether he still believed that laws can change men’s minds. He replied,
I said that, and it was correct. … That remark … [was] directed at eliminating the official legal caste system in the South. Now the official legal caste system, segregation in schools and all of that business, has basically been eliminated. I don’t mean it doesn’t still exist, but it doesn’t exist officially, and … it’s no longer … a viable constitutionally-protected system of state government. … We changed that and I think that change has basically been accepted. And that just doesn’t happen to be very much of the problem any more.
In identifying those primarily responsible for the passage of the Voting Rights Act one must start with the civil rights movement, particularly the Southern Christian Leadership Conference and its formidable leader, Martin Luther King, Jr. They launched the voting rights drive in Selma and carried it through with determination and courage in the face of ruthless opposition. And there were the martyrs—Jimmie Lee Jackson, James J. Reeb, and Viola Liuzzo—who gave their lives for this cause.
Lyndon Johnson made the decisive political commitment to pass a voting rights law in 1965 and he pushed it through Congress. This sprang from moral conviction. Like President Kennedy in 1963, he knew that civil rights legislation would exact a heavy price from the Democratic party. The Solid South would be smashed. Henceforth a white backlash, already evident in 1964, would provide a base for Republican control of the South, primarily in presidential elections. Nevertheless, Johnson believed that giving blacks the vote was his most important achievement.
Nicholas Katzenbach and his colleagues in the Department of Justice performed in masterful fashion. They drafted the bill, they guided it through the Congress, they established an efficient administrative system, and they brought and argued the cases that confirmed the law’s constitutionality.8
Flanked by his wife and Jacqueline Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson being sworn in as President by Judge Sarah T. Hughes on Air Force One, November 22, 1963, the day of the Kennedy assassination. Cecil Stoughton, LBJ Library Collection.
LBJ proclaiming the Great Society at the University of Michigan, May 22, 1964. Cecil Stoughton, LBJ Library Collection.
Delivering the Warren Commission report on the Kennedy assassination to the President, September 24, 1964. From left: John McCloy, Lee Ran kin (counsel), Richard Russell, Gerald Ford, Earl Warren, LBJ, Allen Dulles, John Sherman Cooper. The other member of the commission, Hale Boggs, seems not to have been present. UPI/Bettmann.
LBJ campaigning for President in 1964. Cecil Stoughton, LBJ Library Collection.
LBJ inauguration, January 20, 7965. Cecil Stoughton, LBJ Library Collection.
Senate Majority Leader Mike Mansfield, who steered the Great Society bills through the Senate and strongly opposed the Vietnam War. August 23, 1968. Yoichi R. Okamoto, LBJ Library Collection.
Two old pros and close friends—Senate Minority Leader Everett Dirksen and LBJ. January 20, 1965. Yoichi R. Okamoto, LBJ Library Collection.
Clark Clifford, LBJ’s trusted adviser and Secretary of Defense. Yoichi R. Okamoto, LBJ Library Collection.
Maverick Senator Wayne Morse, who supported LBJ on education and labor and opposed him on Vietnam. Yoichi R. Okamoto, LBJ Library Collection.
LBJ’s mentor and dear friend, the leader of the southern bloc, Senator Richard Russell. Yoichi R, Okamoto, LBJ Library Collection.
LBI with John Gardner, Secretary of Health, Education, and Welfare, who was deeply concerned about educational reform. Yoichi R. Okamoto, LBJ Library Collection.
Larry O’Brien, the political expert who handled congressional relations for the White House. Yoichi R. Okamoto, LBJ Library Collection.
Wilbur Cohen of HEW nursed Medicare through Congress. Yoichi R. Okamoto, LBJ Library Collection.
Labor Secretary Wtllard Wirtz and Interior Secretary Stewart Udall. Yoichi R. Okamoto, LBJ Library Collection.
LBJ with the chairmen of his Council of Economic Advisers. Above: Walter Heller. Below, Gardner Ackley, with Joe Califano listening. Both Yoichi R. Okamoto, LBJ Library Collection.
Treasury Secretary Henry fowler. Yoichi R. Okamoto, LBJ Library Collection.
Sargent Shriver, director of the poverty program. Yoichi R. Okamoto, LBJ Library (Collection.
Secretary of State Dean Rusk, LBJ, and Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara. Rusk accepted and McNamara urged Johnson’s decision to go to war in Vietnam. Yoichi R. Okamoto, LB] Library Collection.
National Security Adviser McGeorge Bundy also strongly recommended that Johnson go into Vietnam. Yoichi R. Okamoto, LBJ Library Collection.
Undersecretary of State George Ball strongly opposed the Vietnam War. Yoichi R. Okamoto, LBJ Library Collection.
Wilbur Mills, chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, was the key to passage of Medicare but later became an enemy of the Great Society. Frank Wolfe, LBJ Library Collection.
&
nbsp; Martin Luther King, Jr., with LBJ, a troubled relationship. Yoichi R. Okamoto, LBJ Library Collection.
King leads the civil rights march across the Pettus Bridge over the Alabama River in Selma on the way to Montgomery. March 21, 1965. UPI/ UPIBettmann,
Three-year-old Thomas Allen stands in the ruins of his home that burned down in the great Detroit not in July 1967. UPI/Bettmann.
The National Guard restores order on “Charcoal Alley,” 103d Street in Watts, during the great not of August 1965. John Malmin, Los Angeles Times.
9
Immigration: Righting the National Origins Wrong
IMMIGRANTS, like blacks, were the victims of ethnic prejudice. At the end of the nineteenth century the great majority of Americans was descended from people from the British Isles, including Ireland, or from Germany, Holland, or Scandinavia. The large wave of “new” immigrants who arrived between 1890 and 1914 was primarily from southern and eastern Europe. Many of northwestern European stock did not know Italians, Greeks, Slavs, or Jews, to say nothing of the Chinese and Japanese, and found their languages, religions, customs, and cuisines alien and, sometimes, offensive.
More serious, in the early twentieth century racism acquired a façade of scientific validation from the eugenics movement. Francis Galton, the cousin of Charles Darwin and a noted scientist himself, coined the word “eugenics” in 1883 from Greek, meaning “noble in heredity.” He sought to establish a science that would improve the human stock by giving “the more suitable races or strains of blood a better chance of prevailing speedily over the less suitable.” He would better the “race” by having gifted mates produce children who would inherit their intelligence. A eugenics movement (some called it a cult) blossomed in England and soon emigrated to the United States. Charles B. Davenport, a distinguished biologist at the University of Chicago, was a notable convert. He persuaded the new Carnegie Institution to fund an experiment station at Cold Spring Harbor on Long Island. Davenport believed that “race,” which he equated with nationality, determined behavior. Thus, Poles, Italians, the Irish, and Jews were biologically different from the English and the Scots, as well as from each other. None was “superior” or “inferior.” In 1910 Davenport induced the widow of E. H. Harriman, the railroad magnate, to support a Eugenics Record Office on her land near the experiment station. It would collect data on those imprisoned and disabled. Dr. Harry H. Laughlin became the superintendent of the Eugenics Record Office.
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