A handful of Senate liberals, notably Paul Douglas, Herbert Lehman and Tom Hennings, were, however, determined, that, in the case of this bill, that would not happen—that the bill would not be buried in Judiciary but brought to the floor. They had decided to try to accomplish this by refusing to give the unanimous consent required in the presiding officer’s ritual; when he asked if there were any objections, one of them, probably Douglas, would object. The bill would therefore not be referred to a committee, but instead, as a House-passed measure, would be placed directly on the Senate Calendar.
Other senators could try to stop Douglas from objecting by demanding the floor themselves so he couldn’t be recognized; Johnson could use the Leader’s first recognition prerogative for the same purpose. But this tactic would work only briefly, not for the four days remaining in the session: for a senator not to be recognized for four days would be virtually, if not totally, unprecedented. “I don’t know of any instance in history where that has happened,” says the Senate historian Richard A. Baker. “Not recognizing only works for a limited time. Eventually anyone who wants to speak will be recognized. Every other senator knows it could be him someday.”
These liberals were fully aware of the arguments against the maneuver they were planning: that, in Douglas’ own words, “The session was nearing its end,” that there was therefore no possibility of passing the bill, that their fight was a hopeless gesture foredoomed to failure. They understood that, as he would later write, “the Democratic Party would [be] revealed as badly divided on the eve of the national convention,” that African-American voters would be reminded that Eastland and other southern committee chairmen were Democrats, that the maneuver would rouse journalists to ridicule and the party’s hierarchy—including the party’s powerful and vengeful Senate Leader—to fury. But Paul Douglas believed in the Senate’s “informing function,” believed, as he was also to write, that “even if every battle was unsuccessful, constant but peaceful struggle would hasten the ultimate coming of needed reforms.” He believed that justice would prevail if only men would not stop fighting for justice. He and Lehman and other liberal senators believed also that there was an informing function not only of the Senate but about the Senate—“that the southerners’ power had to function behind the scenes” to be effective, that turning “the searchlight on” that power would eventually erode it—and that there was no better time to turn on the searchlight than a national election year. He felt keenly, as well, that while a lot of public sentiment had been mobilized that year for civil rights, not nearly as much had been mobilized as could be mobilized—that while the leaders of the liberal battalions, the officers of labor unions and Jewish organizations and big church groups, were strong for civil rights, the battalions themselves had not been mobilized, their members had not been sufficiently educated; that the support for civil rights, while vocal, was still not the mass movement that was needed—and that there was no better instrument for education and mobilization than a Senate debate. And besides, these liberals felt, why did the session have to be nearing its end anyway? Why couldn’t the Senate adjourn instead while the conventions were being held, and then return to work in the Fall? Even Reedy, in his memoir, was to write, in a statement that conflicts rather strongly with the memos he was writing to Johnson in 1956, that while “the prospect of any legislative action [still] seemed more remote than a landing on the moon,” and “their [the liberals’] only power was to make noise,” nonetheless “it was an uncomfortable noise that grated upon the ears, and, in time, the national conscience….”
Moreover, Douglas and Lehman and their colleagues felt that even if their fight on behalf of black Americans was only a gesture, didn’t those women in Montgomery who for months had been trudging long miles every day—who were still trudging that July—didn’t those women deserve a gesture? Might not a gesture be meaningful to Emmett Till’s mother, to Autherine Lucy, to the millions of black citizens whose children were still not being allowed to attend school with white children—despite an order from the country’s highest court more than a year before? Surely they deserved a gesture, needed a gesture—a gesture from Capitol Hill, a sign that someone there was making a fight, futile though it might be, on their behalf? Douglas and Lehman had no doubts about the answer to that question. One of Lehman’s aides, William Welsh, who loved the old man, tried to dissuade him from making the hopeless fight that year. He might find that only a very few senators were willing to make it with him, Welsh warned. What if it was only a very few? Welsh asked. “Even if it’s only me, I’ll make it,” Lehman said.
And there was, to these liberals, yet another consideration. America’s black citizens needed to feel that they had a political party; the Democratic Party must stand for their rights, must not supinely surrender to its southern wing. “Paul felt that in a way he was fighting for the soul of the Democratic Party,” says Douglas’ aide Frank McCulloch. And that fight had implications beyond the party. What would be the reaction of black Americans if they came to feel that even in that party no one was lifting a finger in their behalf, that there was no hope for them within the system? Wouldn’t they begin to think more seriously about redressing their wrongs by means outside the system, even by desperate means: by civil unrest, by riots? Paul Douglas was not the only liberal who felt that, as he said, “If we don’t fight, someday there will be a revolution.”
And finally, to the arguments against what they were planning, there was a further answer that was rooted in the very pragmatism that Johnson and the Democratic Party hierarchy cherished. For, these liberals felt, the party’s tough old pols might be wrong in their belief that making this hopeless fight would be disastrous in a presidential election year. They might be very wrong. After all, in 1948, one of their number, a young mayor from Minneapolis, had told the party that it must “get out of the shadow of states’ rights” and into the “sunshine of human rights,” and had inspired its national convention to defy the South and all it stood for. The result of that defiance had been a southern walkout and a States Rights party—but, for Harry Truman, the result had been victory, a victory in which a crucial factor was much larger than usual pluralities in liberal precincts, pluralities given him in part because the Democrats had not surrendered to the South but had, by letting the South leave the party, saved its soul.
Wary of Johnson, the handful of Senate liberals devised a strategy that they felt would ensure against the Leader sneaking the bill past them and into Judiciary. Instead of waiting for H.R. 627 to arrive in the Senate, Paul Douglas would, upon its passage by the House, go immediately to the House Chamber and wait for the bill to be engrossed and then printed by the Government Printing Office, even if that took several hours. He wouldn’t leave the House Chamber until the printed document had been brought to the Speaker’s dais, and then he would accompany the clerk who carried it to the Senate, so that the liberals would know its exact whereabouts at all times. And as a further safeguard, from the moment Douglas left for the House, another liberal would be stationed on the Senate floor at all times, just in case the bill was somehow sneaked past Douglas, so that if it arrived in the Senate, and the Senate’s presiding officer asked if there were any objections to referring it to Judiciary, there would indeed be an objection. But Johnson, with Rayburn’s help, was able to keep the gears running smoothly. Notified that the House had passed the bill, he put in the presiding officer’s chair Lister Hill, not because the Alabaman was an astute parliamentarian—although he was—but because he possessed another qualification more important for the task Johnson had in mind for him: while most of the southern senators talked in a deliberate drawl, Hill didn’t; he was the southerners’ fastest talker. And Johnson told Hill not to leave the chair until H.R. 627 arrived—which Johnson knew was not going to take very long. Normally, the engrossing and printing of a House bill took several hours; in the case of H.R. 627, that routine was speeded up—radically. In a seldom-used procedure known as “hand engrossing,” th
e marked-up bill was rushed from the dais down to the House Enrolling Clerk’s office on the Capitol’s Ground Floor, the floor beneath the Principal Floor on which the House and Senate Chambers are located, and there it was quickly retyped, in clean form. And then its route was changed. Instead of being sent to the Government Printing Office, as was usual, or back to the House dais for signing, the retyped bill was carried directly to the Senate, not from the House but from that Ground Floor office.
The Enrolling Office was not in the House wing but in the Capitol’s central portion, so when Joe Bartlett, the House clerk carrying H.R. 627, ran up the nearest staircase to the Principal Floor, he was already near the Rotunda, almost halfway to the Senate wing. Douglas may already have passed that point on his way to the House, or perhaps he simply passed Bartlett without being aware of who he was—or what he was carrying. Whatever the explanation, however, the bill, on its way to the Senate, somehow passed Douglas as he was heading for the House to ascertain its whereabouts. Arriving in the House, Douglas began asking clerks on the dais when H.R. 627 would be sent to the Senate—but H.R. 627 was already in the Senate.
Douglas had stationed Lehman as the liberal sentry back on the Senate floor, but Lehman naturally felt he had time to spare before the House bill could possibly arrive, and “allowed himself,” as one account puts it, “to be briefly decoyed off the floor”—no one now remembers how. He was therefore not in the Chamber when Bartlett walked in, to be greeted by the Senate employee Johnson had stationed at the door to meet him: Bobby Baker. Mike Mansfield was delivering a speech on foreign relations, but Baker quickly nodded to Hill, Hill quickly asked Mansfield to yield, and as soon as the bill was delivered to the dais, the Southern Caucus’s fastest talker read, very fast, the bill’s title, then said, very fast, “Without objection, the bill will be read the second time and referred to the appropriate committee. The Chair hears no objection,” and referred it to Judiciary.
Someone on the House dais finally informed Douglas that the bill had already been sent to the Senate. Rushing back along the corridor, banging into tourists, he burst into the Chamber, where Mansfield was speaking again. When Hill saw him, Douglas was to recall, “a half-suppressed smile swept over his face. Then I knew the worst.” When he went up to the dais, Hill told him the bill had already had its first and second readings, and had been referred to Judiciary. “Paul, my dear boy, we move in accordance with the time-honored rules and procedure of the Senate,” Hill said. Douglas noticed that “the Southern parliamentarian and the clerk looked up with the air of grave and impassive disapproval they always presented to civil-rights liberals,” that impassivity which so imperfectly masked the fact that, as the liberals were aware, they were being laughed at.
THE LIBERALS were to make one last effort to bring civil rights to the Senate floor in 1956. Noting that not one of the year’s other fourteen civil rights bills had been reported out by the Judiciary Committee, Douglas introduced a motion—actually a petition—to discharge the committee from further consideration of the fifteenth, H.R. 627, a petition that would, the liberals believed, trigger a discussion on the issue.
Leading Democratic pols—the practical politicians—were furious. “As you know, I am an old civil rights man myself,” Jim Rowe wrote Johnson. “However, on this one you are so clearly right that I myself should like to shoot Douglas.” They needn’t have worried, however. Once again, Johnson out-maneuvered the crazies—with a tactic given him by Russell. When they learned what Douglas was about to do, there was a huddle at Russell’s desk, with Russell, Johnson, and Walter George whispering and planning, hard and fast. And then Johnson put George in the chair, because what was needed now on the dais was not fast-talking but the figure who best embodied the full dignity and authority of the Senate rules. When Douglas, standing at his desk, made his motion, George told him it was out of order, reminding him that petitions could be filed only during the morning hour, except, of course, by unanimous consent. When Douglas asked for such consent, Russell said curtly, “I object.” Douglas thereupon announced that he would file his petition during the morning hour the next day, Wednesday, July 24, but Johnson had a surprise for him. As the Senate was concluding its work on Tuesday evening, instead of making his customary motion that the Senate adjourn until the next day, Johnson moved instead that it recess until the next day.
None of the liberal senators or their staff members appear to have realized the significance of the word Johnson used, but they were to learn it the next morning, when Douglas made his motion. Walter George, back on the dais, told him it was out of order because petitions could be filed only during the morning hour. Douglas said this was the morning hour. George recognized the Majority Leader. While the southerners and many Republicans, in the words of one reporter, “sat there grinning like so many happy owls,” Johnson said that of course it wasn’t: the “morning hour,” Johnson reminded Douglas, was the first hour of each new legislative day. A legislative day begins after each adjournment, not after a recess, so there would be no morning hour until the Senate adjourned, except, of course by unanimous consent. Douglas asked for such consent. Russell said, “I object.”
“So we are stopped from even considering a bill that has already been passed by the House,” Senator Lehman said. Not at all, Lyndon Johnson said, with an expression of great earnestness on his face. It was only that civil rights always engendered a long discussion, and a long discussion in the very last days of a session would keep the Senate from considering other legislation, and there was important other legislation to consider, such as the foreign aid bill and a bill to raise executive department salaries which President Eisenhower said was indispensable. It was clear to the liberals that Johnson intended to prolong the current legislative “day” until the session ended.
Douglas made a motion that the Senate adjourn for five minutes so that a new day could begin, but Johnson was ready for that, too. It was the party leadership, not individual senators, who had the right to adjourn the Senate, he said. “There will not be an adjournment based on what one senator says or two senators say!” he shouted. And when the Majority Leader finished, the Minority Leader took the floor to support him. Johnson had told Knowland that if a discussion on civil rights began, the bills considered indispensable by the President—his President—would never pass before adjournment. And he had also persuaded Knowland that Douglas, by moving to adjourn the Senate, was usurping the prerogative of party leaders—not only the Democratic Leader but the Republican Leader—and was deliberately insulting them. “It is only kidding the minority groups and the American people” to propose a bill in the last days of a session “which everyone knows as a practical matter cannot be accomplished,” Knowland said.
If the southerners were laughing at the liberals, so was the Washington press corps—for the liberals’ failure to grasp the implications of the “recess” move. “Let us consider a couple of idealists [Douglas and Lehman], who were so busy thinking good thoughts that they forgot to do their homework on such mundane matters as senatorial procedure…. The two students … failed their study course in Senate rules,” Frederick Othman wrote. There was little discussion in the press about the civil rights issue—from some articles the reader would hardly know there was an issue. Journalistic analysis concentrated on the “recess” maneuver, on tactics rather than substance. And the analysis seemed always to accept as a given the Johnson-Knowland argument that bringing up civil rights legislation in the last days of the session would result in the death of other needed legislation; the author has been unable to find a single article pointing out that that possibility could have been avoided by simply changing the session’s closing date.
Once Johnson and Knowland had made the discharge petition a “leadership matter,” with all the implications of that phrase, it would have taken a foolhardy senator, Democratic or Republican, to support Douglas. His motion to briefly adjourn the Senate was beaten, and he knew it. More important to him, the cause of civil righ
ts was beaten again. Standing at his desk, the picture of defeat, his white head bowed, his blue seersucker suit, which he had worn for two days, rumpled with wear, he said, “I say this with great sadness. The Senate has a very heavy burden on its conscience.” Because of the Senate rules, moreover, he could see no hope of the cause winning—ever. “We know as men,” he said to his colleagues, in a low, sad voice, “that the rules … have been skillfully devised to prevent any action on civil rights which is obnoxious to members from the South. I think it is now clear that it will be impossible under the rules … with the present temper of the Southern senators … and of the leadership on both sides … ever to bring a civil rights measure to a vote in this body.” And when Douglas finished, Richard Russell rose to tell him that the rules would not be changed—ever. Russell stood erect, his head tilted back with his nose in the air, his well-tailored suit newly pressed, his white shirt starched, the embodiment of victory (“I can still see him standing there, so calm, just gloating,” Frank McCulloch, the mildest-spoken of men, would say years later, hatred in his voice). “All men differ on [this] proposed legislation,” Russell said. “Some may believe it is good and salutary. Others … believe it is largely political in its inspiration … totally and completely in violation of … the Constitution, destructive of the rights of the states.” Whenever “such nefarious schemes are presented in the future,” Russell promised, “there will be members of the Senate who will… resort to every weapon at their command to prevent their being imposed upon the people of this country.”
Master of the Senate: The Years of Lyndon Johnson Page 126