Master of the Senate (178 page)

On April 2, “Senator Knowland thought the Democrats seemed to be dragging hard on this. They did not even want a Committee report to come out until after the Easter recess.” Senator Dirksen chimed in that there was a “problem in Committee.”

There was a problem, all right. The report of Hennings’ subcommittee had finally reached the full Judiciary Committee. The morning of April 1, in fact, Chairman Eastland would actually recognize Hennings, and allow him to make a motion: that the committee take a final vote on the measure by April 15. The reason for Eastland’s generosity then became apparent. While he had allowed Hennings to make the motion, he would not allow the committee to vote on it. It “would be patently unfair,” he said, for the committee to vote before it had studied the transcript of the subcommittee’s hearing. He had inquired of the Senate Printing Office, the chairman said, as to when that transcript would be available, and it would not be ready for two weeks. And, the chairman added, subcommittee member Ervin had notified him that he wanted to write a minority dissent to its report—and that he would not be able to begin writing until he had studied the transcript. Hennings’ motion, Eastland said, would therefore not be in order.

At the White House, on April 9, a new month was mentioned in the discussion on civil rights. “Sen. Knowland again pointed to Democratic foot-dragging and their apparent determination to keep this subject off the floor until mid-May … so that other legislation may then take priority.” That long a delay would probably kill the bill, Knowland said. “He thought the Republicans would have to put on a drive to get earlier action than that if any bill is to be forthcoming this year. If [the Republicans are] to get [a bill], they must make major drive to get [action] pre-Easter.”

That warning—that a civil rights bill could pass only if it reached the Senate floor by the Easter recess—had, of course, first been made months before. Now, on April 12, the Easter recess arrived. The bill was not on the floor. It was nowhere near the floor. Furthermore, should it ever get there, other urgent legislation was now piled up behind it, including the thirteen appropriation bills
necessary to keep the government running. The House had passed six of those bills. The Senate had passed none. “It is always true that Congress begins slowly and ends in a whirlwind,” the
New York Times
said. “But the beginnings this year have seemed even slower than usual.”

The tone of press coverage had changed, too. The civil rights bill “is in serious trouble,” the
Washington Post
said on April 28. It has “a fair chance of enactment in the House, but the once-bright prospect of Senate enactment this session appears increasingly dim.” When Clifford Case said that the tactics fatal to past civil rights bills were being repeated in 1957, and would have the same effect, Roscoe Drummond understood. “Sen. Case is quite right in warning that it is happening all over again this spring,” the columnist wrote. “Senator Johnson and Republican leader Sen. William Knowland have both said that they hoped to expedite action on the Civil Rights program so that the Senate would not have to debate it during the closing days of the session. That expediting is not yet visible.”

Some civil rights advocates still had hopes, although they were fading. “There is need for a dramatic rescue if the civil rights bill is not to be smothered to death,” Philip Graham’s
Washington Post
editorialized. For others, hope was all but gone. “Everything is waiting on something else,” Senator Norris Cotton of New Hampshire said on April 27. “The Senate is waiting for the House…. Aid for school construction is waiting on civil rights. Civil rights seems to be waiting for the millennium.”

And among those who had, seemingly, all but lost hope was Lyndon Johnson. In early January, he had predicted that a civil rights bill would pass—but shortly afterwards he had begun pulling back from the fight. Those early optimistic predictions were not repeated, were replaced by silence. From January 19 to May 29, Lyndon Johnson made not a single public statement on civil rights. And if, during these four months, his lack of words spoke loudly, so did his lack of actions. Not only was he not clearing the Senate decks for a filibuster fight, his behind-the-scenes efforts to find a compromise acceptable to both sides had become perfunctory. For a surprisingly large portion of this period, in fact, he
wasn’t
behind the scenes—or even in Washington. During this four-month period, he took a nine-day vacation in Florida and a nineteen-day vacation, over Easter, at his ranch. If one includes short trips—one to New York, one to Miami, several to Huntlands—he was away from Washington for some forty-two days out of the 130 days in this period. During these trips he was, as always, constantly on the telephone with his staff in Washington about Senate matters, but civil rights was not uppermost among them. “There was a time, there … when you would have thought he had all but given up [on civil rights],” Reedy says. “You could understand that. It looked hopeless.”

•    •    •

C
ONGRESS’S RETURN
from the Easter recess on April 30 brought only more of the same. The minutes of the first post-recess Republican Legislative Leaders’ Meeting at the White House report that “It is expected that this legislation [civil rights] will reach the House floor in about two weeks.” But somehow that happy event did not occur. (May 14—“The importance of early action on this legislation was again stressed.” May 21—“It is expected that this measure will be reported by the House Rules Committee and that the House will begin to discuss it within the next few days.”) At the first post-recess meeting of the Senate Judiciary Committee, Senator Hennings raised his hand, intending to introduce a motion setting a firm, early, date for a vote on the civil rights bill. But at the foot of the Democratic side of the committee table, another hand shot up, that of Senator Ervin, and it was Ervin whom Chairman Eastland recognized. Ervin launched into what was evidently going to be a long speech, and every time Hennings attempted to break in, Eastland would ask him not to interrupt another senator.

In the halls of government, there was still no real leadership for the cause of social justice. The President was again ducking every chance to show any, resolutely avoiding every opportunity to press for action on his Attorney General’s civil rights bill. Asked if he was “satisfied with the progress” on the bill, Eisenhower replied, “Progress in Congress is a very spotty thing.” His party’s congressional leaders, he said, had assured him that they were “making their best effort to bring these bills up and get them passed.” The House Rules Committee did indeed report the bill—H.R. 6127—out on May 22, so that a date to begin debate on the measure in the House could be set, but that action only began to increase attention on the Senate, and the
Washington Post
reported that “Senate leaders weren’t too optimistic”; Knowland forecast a “lengthy debate which some might call a filibuster.” “The South is still in control,” Senator Alexander Wiley said.

Attention was also beginning to focus on Lyndon Johnson. After his return from the ranch on April 28, he tried to avoid public statements on the issue, as an exchange on the Senate floor on May 13 showed. Responding to White House criticism of senatorial inaction on Eisenhower’s program, he listed the various bills that were shortly going to be brought to the floor, without mentioning the civil rights bill. Knowland, standing across the aisle from him, twitted him on the omission: “I notice—perhaps by inadvertence—that my distinguished friend, the Majority Leader, had not mentioned the proposed civil-right legislation…. We are now in the month of May. I was very hopeful that the distinguished Majority Leader might throw some light on the question as to when we could expect that proposed legislation on the floor.” Johnson’s angry reply (“Mr. President, my friend from California has asked me a question. I am not sure that he is really soliciting information …”) seemed to show a sympathy for the southern view that the Supreme Court had already pushed civil rights as far as could be expected, and that the country should now be allowed a respite from further action. “It is the view of the Senator from Texas,”
the Senator from Texas said, “that the Supreme Court has acted in connection with the education and transportation problem, and that all over the land the American people are doing their best to adjust themselves to the situation created by the Court’s decision and are attempting to evolve a workable solution in the light of that decision.” His reply also showed irritation with those who were “nevertheless” still agitating for civil rights. “The Majority Leader,” said the Majority Leader, “although he does not agree with all the proposals made—and, indeed, does not agree with many of them—realizes that a substantial number of members of both the House and Senate wish to vote on some so-called civil-rights legislation, because to fail to do so would permit those who have no hesitancy in exploiting this political issue to continue to do so in the months ahead.” His reply showed no sympathy for aggressive senatorial action on civil rights. To Knowland’s request for a date “when we could expect that proposed legislation on the floor,” Johnson’s only response was that he would “take no offense if … after the [Judiciary] Committee had acted or failed to act,” Hennings or Knowland himself “should make a motion to discharge the committee.” If they did, Johnson said, “I believe this question will be acted upon…. Some action will come by the early part of next month.”
Some
action. Not favorable action. And the action he was talking about was not action on a civil rights bill, but only action on a motion to put that bill on the Senate Calendar, a motion that could be filibustered—as the bill, should it ever get to the floor, would be filibustered. When Johnson finished, Hennings rose at his desk and characterized his Leader’s statement. “The same old hocus-pocus, and the same old claptrap, and the same old backing and filling,” he said. In the
New York Times
, reporter C. P. Trussell was gently sarcastic. “Senator Lyndon B. Johnson, of Texas, the Majority Leader, while letting everybody know that he was against the program, said that he would not be ‘offended’ if Mr. Knowland, or Senator Hennings … should force it to floor action.” Trussell concluded that “it does not appear that it will be passed by Congress at this session.”

And if dreams of social justice seemed, once more, all but dead, so too did Lyndon Johnson’s dreams for himself.

He knew that the realization of that goal at which he had been aiming all his life required him to “produce” on civil rights—knew that “if I failed to produce on this one … everything I had built up over the years would be completely undone.” And yet producing on civil rights seemed as hopeless a task as ever. A strong, meaningful, civil rights bill was moving, slowly but moving, through the House, but then it would come to the Senate—where, if there was any chance of its passing, it would be filibustered to death. There would be no Civil Rights Act—and no removal from Lyndon Johnson’s image of the “scent of magnolias” fatal to his presidential hopes. It seemed that spring of 1957 as if there was scarcely a newspaper or magazine that didn’t remind him of that harsh reality. In April, for example, there was an article in the
Progressive.
Entitled “The Legend of Lyndon Johnson,” it said that his contention that he stood midway between “Thurmond and Douglas, between the Southerners and
the liberals,” is “far from being the whole truth,” for while “Johnson himself is not the type of Southerner whose opposition to civil rights stems from the sincere depths of bigotry,” while “early in his life, he taught classes of Mexican-Americans,” and while “his opposition to civil rights springs not from passion but from political calculation,” that fact does not make him any less dangerous a foe of civil rights. “Johnson never strays far from his real power base in the Senate—his fellow-Southerners,” the article said. “In fact, many observers still consider him little more than a pliant instrument of Senator Russell.” And its evaluation of Johnson as a Majority Leader was devastating: “He knows everyone’s value—and knows even better his price, if he has one. He is not the leader of great causes, but the broker of little ones.”

That article was written by David C. Williams, editor of
ADA World
, the official publication of that body of “crazies” and “red-hots.” But on May 25, newspapers around the country carried an Associated Press interview with Colonel Jake Arvey, not a “crazy” (or indeed a particularly ardent civil libertarian) but one of the most pragmatic and most powerful northern political leaders, about possible 1960 Democratic presidential nominees, and he said party leaders throughout the North were “very high” on two candidates: Kennedy and Symington. He didn’t mention Lyndon Johnson, but the reporter asked about him. Senator Johnson, Arvey replied, would be hampered by “the question mark concerning his health”—and by his “Texas origins”: “Northerners,” Arvey said, “would be fearful of his position on the segregation issue.”

Though Lyndon Johnson realized the situation, however, there seemed to be nothing he could do about it. Looking back on the situation years later, George Reedy would be struck by the seeming “impossibility” of negotiating any type of compromise. The “prospect of any legislative action,” he said, “seemed more remote than a landing on the moon.”

B
UT THERE HAD BEEN EARLIER EPISODES
in Lyndon Johnson’s career in which his chances appeared hopeless—that first campaign for the House, that campaign for the Senate against the invincible Coke Stevenson, other episodes, too—and always Lyndon Johnson had reacted, after spells of depression and despair, in the same way: with a refusal to give up hope, with a willingness to fight on, and to make in the fight an effort so intense that “days meant nothing, nights meant nothing, weekdays, weekends, they meant nothing,” with that implacable determination to triumph no matter what the cost that had made Ava Johnson Cox and Estelle Harbin say about Lyndon Johnson when he was young that “he could not stand to lose, just could not
stand
it,” that “he had to win,
had to.”