The westerners agreed to pay that price. Lyndon Johnson, Russell Long was to say, “put together sort of a gentleman’s agreement where about four of us would vote for the high dam at Hells Canyon and about four of the fellows on the other side would vote with us…. Four votes shifted in favor of that high dam at Hells Canyon and then four votes shifted, or at least came down on … a completely unrelated subject: civil rights.”
Long’s memory is a little blurry as to the precise figure: the number of votes that actually shifted on that first ballot was not four but five. And the number of western liberal Democratic votes that, as a result of the Hells Canyon deal, would shift to the side of the South on later civil rights ballots would vary from ballot to ballot. Nor is the exact number of votes that shifted an accurate indication of the dimensions of the deal. Since the southerners would not want to be seen voting for the Hells Canyon Dam, Johnson would use as few of them as possible on the Hells Canyon vote. Since the liberal westerners would not want to be seen voting against civil rights, Johnson would use as few of them as possible on the civil rights vote. On each civil rights vote, he would use the minimum number of westerners necessary to accomplish his purposes, not requiring the others to vote with the South. But the fundamental nature of the deal is what Johnson said it was—in return for southern votes for Hells Canyon, “I got the western liberals to back the southerners” on civil rights. While, from vote to vote, the number of westerners would vary, whatever the number needed, the number would be there. It would be there on Part III, and on the jury trial amendment. And the South could be confident that, if it was needed, it would be there on cloture as well. And the total number of these westerners—the number that might, if necessary, be available to the South—was twelve. In a single stroke—by linking Hells Canyon and civil rights—Lyndon Johnson had brought to the side of the South not just a few senators but a substantial bloc.
And the South therefore was now willing to allow a civil rights bill to be placed on the Calendar. Its senators would still vote against the motion to put it on the Calendar, of course, so that they could tell their constituents they had opposed the motion, but they would forgo the filibuster that would, by preventing the motion from coming to a vote, have made their opposition effective. The South had previously been adamant in its opposition to allowing the bill to go on the Calendar; isolated—without allies—it had felt itself defenseless against a strong civil rights bill except for the filibuster, and therefore had not been willing to forgo any of the opportunities to use that tactic. Thanks to Lyndon Johnson, that fear had now been somewhat alleviated; the South had allies now. And the South was therefore somewhat more willing to let the bill proceed, in the hope that as it proceeded it could be watered down; it could allow the bill onto the Calendar because, should the bill thereafter still remain too strong to be tolerated, it would still have two opportunities left to filibuster: on the motion to bring the bill off the Calendar to the Senate floor; and, if that filibuster was defeated, on the motion to vote on the bill. The South had also now been assured that, should it have to make its stand in those last two trenches, it would no longer be standing alone. If, despite its new alliance with the West, it was still unable to muster enough votes to water down Part III and jury trials and it was forced to filibuster, it would have, added to the anti-cloture votes of the Republican reactionaries, some anti-cloture votes from the western liberals—so there would almost certainly be no vote on the bill itself.
SINCE LYNDON JOHNSON was making his Hells Canyon-civil rights deal in secret, the progress he was making was invisible. Working out the deal took time, too, and for some weeks in May the keystone in the South’s defense—Jim Eastland’s Judiciary Committee—remained solid.
Liberal frustrations kept spilling over on the Senate floor. Once, in late May, with Eastland slouched comfortably at his desk near the center, near the front, Hubert Humphrey, from his desk further to the side, further to the rear, noted that although Judiciary’s distinguished chairman had only three southern colleagues on his committee, few as they were, the four southerners “are like the Spartans at the Pass of Thermopylae. They certainly ‘mow ’em down.’” Humphrey made his remark with a wry smile, but Douglas, two desks further to the side, could not conceal his bitterness when he rose, and said, “This bill has been before the committee since January. Hearings were started in February. The hearings were concluded in March. It is now very nearly the end of May. If we do not get a bill on the floor very soon, we know exactly what will happen.”
It took Eastland a while to rise to respond to Douglas; one might even have thought his deliberateness verged on discourtesy. When he was on his feet at last and had turned to look up at the two liberals, he made it clear that he, too, knew exactly what was going to happen—and that that knowledge was not displeasing. Certainly, he said, he couldn’t do anything to increase the pace of the committee’s deliberations; that was in the hands of his distinguished fellow committee members. “Ah’m just the errand boy of the committee,” he said, but he doubted that any of its members would seriously want to interfere with the right of a fellow member to be heard in committee at whatever length he felt necessary.
Liberal discouragement was echoed in the Republican Legislative Leaders’ Meeting in the White House, where reality had finally sunk in fully. The civil rights bill was going to pass in the House, President Eisenhower was told at the June 4 conference. But Knowland, reporting on the Senate, was forced to warn Eisenhower that efforts to push the bill through Judiciary had better stop, for there were other things that could be done in Judiciary—to other Administration programs: What if the liberals on the committee succeeded in their demand that the committee hold uninterrupted civil rights hearings? he asked. Eastland could then simply extend these hearings, which would mean that no other measures could be taken up. “Among the measures that could” then “be tied up” in Judiciary “are changes in immigration laws, which you are anxious to get through, Mr. President.” Knowland said he would continue to do his best, “but, to be realistic, the outlook for civil rights in the Senate is not encouraging. I am afraid the bill [will] either die in the Judiciary Committee or be reported too late for favorable action on the floor, even if we could overcome a filibuster.”
Discouragement was echoed in the liberal press. “The prospects [for civil rights] in the Senate are, to put it mildly, gloomy; and they are not helped by the fact that the Majority Leader, Mr. Johnson of Texas, is also against it,” the New York Times said in a May 23 editorial.
There was as little leadership from Dwight Eisenhower as ever. On June 4, Frederic Morrow, the only black executive in the White House, sent a memo to presidential chief of staff Sherman Adams almost begging the President to grant the leaders of his race the courtesy of at least meeting with them. Noting that A. Philip Randolph and Martin Luther King had been asking “for an audience with the President” for more than a year with no response from the White House, Morrow wrote, “I can state categorically that the rank and file of Negroes in the country feel that the President has deserted them…. I feel the time is ripe for the President to see two or three outstanding Negro leaders, and to let them get off their chests the things that seem to be giving them great concern…. Their present feeling is that their acknowledged leadership is being ignored, snubbed, and belittled by the President and his staff. Even though we may be aware of what these men will say when they meet the President, it is important that they be able to meet him and say it face to face.” There was no response from the President. As late as the end of May, as late as the beginning of June, the 1957 civil rights bill seemed destined for the same fate as the 1956 civil rights bill—and of so many previous civil rights bills. Even while Lyndon Johnson was finalizing the Hells Canyon arrangement that would make it possible for the civil rights bill to come to the floor, it was almost universally assumed that the bill was dead.
No connection with civil rights was immediately drawn, therefore, when, suddenly, on
June 6, Johnson began, as one article put it, “to turn up the heat” to bring to the Senate floor “the bill authorizing construction of a federal dam in Hells Canyon.” But there was a connection: movement was simultaneously beginning on civil rights as well. Five months earlier, Johnson had decreed that the Senate would not take up Brownell’s civil rights bill until after the House had passed it, and for months that bill, labelled H.R. 6127, had been blocked by the House Rules Committee. Johnson’s ally Rayburn could have intervened, but he had not done so. Now, suddenly, he did—with an unexpected series of parliamentary rulings. On June 6, the same day the “heat” was turned up to bring the Hells Canyon bill to the Senate floor, H.R. 6127 was released by the House Rules Committee and brought to the House floor.
In mid-June, with the bill nearing passage by the House, there was movement—significant movement—in the Senate. It was initiated by Republicans. Knowland announced that he would introduce a motion to bypass the Judiciary Committee by sending the House-passed bill, the Administration bill, directly to the Senate Calendar, Nixon let it be known that he was ready to help get the motion passed—and the Republicans may have thought, as most journalists thought, that they were providing the impetus. Reporting that Nixon and Knowland are “teaming up in a drive to get Senate action,” the Washington Post said on June 16 that “Both appear to believe the [Republican presidential] nomination will be worth more to the man who gets it if they can get the Republicans credited with passing a civil rights bill.” But what was significant was that although the southerners were denouncing the measure, they did not use their most effective weapon against it. On June 18, the House, by a 286–126 vote, passed H.R. 6127, sending it to the Senate. Since Knowland’s motion was expected to touch off at least a major Senate floor fight if not a filibuster, the actual denouement came as a considerable surprise. Although the southern senators attacked the motion and their anger against it was genuine—Richard Russell actually shouted as he said, “Don’t give me that holier-than-thou talk about voting! What they are thinking about is schools!” and warned of “setting a precedent that will haunt the Senate for many years to come”—their actual resistance was not; its pro forma nature became clear when, on June 20, the South, declining to filibuster, allowed Knowland’s motion to come to a vote after only nine hours of debate. The motion passed, 45 to 39. (Johnson voted with the South, but took no part in the debate.) And the reason that the opposition was only pro forma became apparent immediately after the vote. The very next item of business that the Majority Leader introduced was a motion to call off the Calendar and bring to a vote the bill authorizing construction of a federal dam in Hells Canyon. “Mr. President,” Johnson said, “I desire to serve notice on all senators that we expect to have a vote on this bill tomorrow … early in the day tomorrow.” That schedule was met, and the next day, June 21, in what the New York Times called “a surprise vote,” the Hells Canyon bill was passed, 45 to 38. And the reason became even more apparent when the votes on these two seemingly unrelated issues were analyzed.
Among the thirty-nine votes against the motion putting a civil rights bill on the Calendar were five cast by senators whose appearance on the anti-civil rights side was startling: Morse of Oregon, Magnuson of Washington, Murray and Mansfield of Montana, and O’Mahoney of Wyoming. (Morse’s vote against the motion was particularly startling, since less than a week earlier he had enthusiastically supported it.) Those five western senators, normally liberal stalwarts, had voted with the South this time. Their five votes did not change the outcome: the South did not want the outcome changed. To protect Rule 22 and clean up Lyndon Johnson on civil rights, Richard Russell had decided that the civil rights bill should be allowed to go on the Senate Calendar. Those five votes were the signal Russell wanted that the West would stand with the South on future civil rights votes. Of the forty-five votes in favor of the Hells Canyon bill, five were cast by southerners who had voted against the identical bill in 1956. The bill had been defeated in 1956. It passed in 1957 because those five southerners switched, and voted for it. They were Russell Long, George Smathers, Sam Ervin, Jim Eastland—and Richard Russell, whose vote, since he was the leader of the South, was a signal: that since the westerners would stand with the South on its great issue, the South would stand with the West on its great issue.
TWO DAYS BEFORE the Hells Canyon vote, the freshman senator from Idaho had delivered his maiden speech—on the dam that he had made the big issue in his campaign. He had been polishing the speech for weeks, and it showed the Senate why Frank Church had been national oratorical champion. A searing attack on Idaho Power’s proposed three small dams—“small plans for small tomorrows”—he asked the Senate to declare instead for big dreams, like the public power dreams of George Norris and his idol, Borah. Assailing the concept that private interests ought to be able to monopolize and reap profit from America’s natural resources, he said the Hells Canyon bill “serves no interest, save the people’s interest.” When he finished, the older public power liberals like Morse and Douglas who had been fighting for Hells Canyon for years crowded around his desk to congratulate him. “Magnificent!” Paul Douglas said. “Truly magnificent!” An Idaho journalist dubbed him “the boy orator of the Snake.”
Following their victory two days later, the older western senators knew whom they wanted to get the credit. When a photographer summoned them out to the Vice President’s Room for a photograph, they pushed Church to the front. Douglas took one of Church’s arms and Hubert Humphrey the other, and raised them high in a victory sign. Church’s cheeks were naturally rosy, and he was blushing, so they were even redder than usual, and he gave a loud shout of triumph. His elation over the vote was understandable. “It made him,” explains his legislative assistant Ward Hower. Young and untested though he was, by “delivering” on an issue so important to his state, “he was able to convey to the people of Idaho that they had elected a winner, that he already had some clout in the Senate.”
The elation of all the twelve Hells Canyon Democrats was understandable, at least in political terms. They had been fighting for a federal dam for a long time, and they had never before had a victory in the fight. This Senate vote would not, as it turned out, be a true victory but only a temporary win in a losing battle, because Lyndon Johnson’s cynical prediction would prove correct: neither the favorable House vote nor the presidential signature needed to make the dam a reality were realistic possibilities. In the event, some years later, three smaller dams—only slightly improved versions of the ones Idaho Power had proposed—would eventually be built. But at the moment of the Senate vote, these senators saw at least a first step toward the federal dam. And in political terms, the victory truly was a victory. They had delivered on their promises to their constituents: the body of which they were members had passed the bill they had promised. How could they be blamed if the bill didn’t pass in the House? A great favor had been done for them, and they knew whom to thank for it. Church, still learning the ropes in the Senate, and perhaps understandably a bit overimpressed with the power of his oratory, had had to have the facts of Senate life explained to him. As he had been heading back to his office after his speech, still filled with emotion, he had heard footsteps behind him and, turning, saw Clinton Anderson, who had not merely congratulations but a question: had Church been consulting Lyndon Johnson on the issue? And when Church had replied in the negative, Anderson had said, “If this bill gets passed, it will be his doing, not yours.” “I understood that it was true,” the young senator would say later. “But until he said it to me, it hadn’t gelled.” Now, after the victory, as he thought about the southern senators’ switch, it gelled further—“All credit is due to your leadership,” he wrote Johnson. The older westerners understood the realities without being told. “If it hadn’t been for his [Johnson’s] leadership, we never would have passed the bill for the high dam in Hells Canyon,” Richard Neuberger was to say. “During those days, he worked ’til eleven or midnight buttonholin
g senators for us. I feared for his health….”
HARDLY HAD THE FIVE WESTERNERS VOTED against putting civil rights on the Calendar when they had to begin defending themselves—against charges that their votes had been a quid pro quo for five southern votes on the dam authorization. However ringingly unequivocal their denials—calling the charges “a vicious falsehood,” Morse said he had “never in my life made a trade” on a Senate vote; Montana’s Mansfield said, “There was no deal of any kind, sort or nature, and there were no trades on the part of any Democrat with any other Democrat for votes”—they nonetheless rang false in some ears. The skeptics included Republicans. “Civil rights yesterday had a lot do with the [dam] vote today, more than most people realize,” Arthur Watkins of Utah said. Republican National Chairman Meade Alcorn charged more flatly that the five Democrats had betrayed the cause of social justice for a dam, making “a deal to swap off civil rights for Hells Canyon,” and Charles Potter of Michigan, a fervent Republican supporter of civil rights, expressed misgivings about the deal’s future consequences. He noted that “fellows supposed to be great advocates of civil rights” had lined up with the southerners. “These Southerners are pretty shrewd,” Potter said. “I hope it doesn’t include a sellout of future civil rights votes.” And the skeptics also included Democrats—including the Democratic leader in the Senate civil rights fight.
Master of the Senate: The Years of Lyndon Johnson Page 143