22—
Civil Rights
At a time when Knowland was considering a future run for president and dealing with the crisis in the Middle East, he was also at the forefront of the first civil rights legislation to pass the Senate since 1875. Although he initially opposed any such legislation, in deference to President Eisenhower he agreed to support the bill, which ultimately became a watered-down version of what the president had originally sought. By the time the legislation was enacted into law, Knowland had come around to believing that perhaps passage of a civil rights bill was the right thing to do—and also that it might help him in the race for the governor's seat, given California's high number of black voters.
The civil rights bill originated three days after Christmas 1955, when Attorney General Herbert Brownell told the Justice Department to draw up general civil rights legislation, but to make it a bill that would only be acted on well after Eisenhower's reelection. The proposed bill reached the White House in mid-March 1956, but Eisenhower was not willing to send it on to Congress. Although this was legislation that the president favored, Knowland's strong opposition led him to withhold it at first. Knowland had read about the bill in the New York Times , and he didn't like what he read.
More than a month of negotiations between the Justice Department and Eisenhower's cabinet led to amended legislation that seemed likely to attract enough support to be considered by Congress. The revised version called for creation of a bipartisan commission to investigate violations of civil rights, creation of a civil rights division within the Justice
Department, new laws to aid the enforcement of voting rights, and permission for the government to seek preventive relief from courts in civil rights cases.
Even with this version, Knowland saw little chance for success. He said that the commission and the civil rights division might be approved, but this was "as far as you can go this session."[1]
But Lyndon Johnson recognized an opportunity to embarrass the Republicans and grab some glory for himself. He and others in the Democratic leadership accepted the president's proposal, thereby undercutting any effort by the Republicans to oppose it. All that remained to fight the bill were the southern Democrats, a powerful group that planned to use delay to defeat it. They threatened filibusters that would effectively prevent the Senate from taking any action on the bill.
To forestall this tactic, early in the 1957 session of Congress Senator Clinton Anderson (D-N.M.) introduced his proposal to change Senate rules governing cloture, or limitation, of debate. Under Senate rules, to end a prolonged filibuster by a minority member that is designed to wear down the majority, the Senate must gain a two-thirds vote of the entire membership to limit debate. Getting 64 votes of the 96 members had been next to impossible. Since 1917, there had been twenty-two attempts to impose cloture, but only four cases had been successful, none of them on civil rights. Anderson and his liberal supporters believed that unless the Senate could block filibusters, civil rights legislation had little chance of passing.
Changing rules in a tradition-bound Senate would be far from easy. The conservative southern Democrats would never go along with an effort to change the only weapon they had to combat any civil rights movement. At least eighteen southern senators were expected to filibuster against the legislation. The Senate rules were drafted for just that reason, designed to prevent action unacceptable to a sectional minority. Some conservative Republicans, Knowland among them, and northern Democrats were also openly averse to any changes in the rules. In fact, they seemed to fear such change in procedures more than any extension of civil rights. Many senators didn't like changing the rules governing a continuing body, one that reelects only a third of its members at a time.
Anderson wanted the filibuster rule changed before the Senate's official work began. "If you want to change the rules, do it now," Anderson told his colleagues. Knowland worried that any delays would force the Senate to work with no rules, causing the Senate to be "plunged into a jungle." Anderson replied, "The House [which adopts new rules
each session] walked through this jungle yesterday and in 30 seconds emerged intact."[2]
When the time came for a vote, the civil rights backers lost, 55-38, although 17 Republicans joined 21 Democrats in voting in their favor. Bill Knowland voted against any change. Anderson believed that Knowland "couldn't care less whether the [civil rights] bill passed or failed. Knowland after all, had lined up with the southerners to protect the filibuster. He seemed thoroughly willing to let the southerners filibuster the bill to death—an event which would permit him to blame the Democrats for its defeat and permit the Republicans, in future elections, to pose as defenders of the American Negro."[3]
Senator Joseph S. Clark of Pennsylvania expressed surprise over the number of senators he had thought were proponents of civil rights who voted against changing the rules. "It was some little time before I learned how the Establishment (i.e., those who really run the Senate) operated," he said.[4] By the time the House had passed its version of the legislation and sent it on to the Senate, it was mid-June 1957. Senate Majority Leader Lyndon Johnson predicted that debate would last well into September. And with the southerners' strongest weapon against the civil rights bill intact, few would say he was wrong.
Although Knowland had voted against changing the rules on cloture, it was not because he was against the civil rights bill. Knowland was to say thirteen years later that he and his colleagues in the Senate "generally agreed that something should be done [about civil rights], and of course in the Senate it's always the art of the possible, what can be done."[5] Indeed, the California senator was to take a gigantic step to ensure the chances of the bill being passed by the Senate.
The House version of the bill was destined for the Senate Judiciary Committee, which surely would have been its graveyard. The committee was loaded with southerners, including Chairman James O. Eastland (D-Miss.), Harry F. Byrd (D-Va.), and Strom Thurmond (D-S.C.). They would never allow the bill to leave the committee. The Senate Judiciary Committee already had a Senate version of the civil rights bill before it and was moving very slowly.
"We don't intend to wait until the closing days of the session for Senate action on the bill," Knowland said.[6] His strategy was to place the House bill on the Senate calendar, where it could be called up for consideration by a majority vote at any time, rather than wait for the Senate bill to emerge from committee. He had formed an unusual alliance in this attempt: liberal Democrats Hubert Humphrey of Minnesota and Paul Douglas of Illinois stood side by side with him in the
move. Richard Nixon also helped uphold Knowland's position. As the Senate's presiding officer, Nixon ruled that the bill did not have to be referred to committee.
Knowland vowed at one point to keep the Senate in session all winter if necessary to secure passage of a civil rights bill. That led Majority Leader Johnson to take a shot at Knowland. Johnson warned Knowland against threats and insisted that an effective bill could be passed by appealing to the best in men. On July 5, noting that the southerners were working behind the scenes on a compromise, Eisenhower said some amendments would be acceptable. Three days later Knowland said he intended to bring the bill to the floor of the Senate.
The southerners were effectively using the threat of a filibuster to water down any civil rights bill; in fact, they had no desire to actually undertake that stalling tactic. They feared that if they used the filibuster, liberal senators again would try to change the rules on cloture, a change they very much wanted to avoid. In addition, if they did filibuster, they could unite the rest of the Senate against them and wind up being forced to accept an even stronger bill.
Knowland continued to keep the House bill on the Senate calendar and keep it away from the Judiciary Committee, where the Senate bill already was being held hostage. The southerners tried to force the bill into the committee but the floor vote was defeated, 45-39. Knowland later told an interviewer, "It's my personal opinion . . . that we would not have had a civil rights bill passed that year had this gone to the committee."[7] Although the southerners lost on this point, they still had the opportunity to filibuster, both when the bill was called up from the calendar for consideration and when the bill was debated or amended on the Senate floor; they continued to use that threat to negotiate changes in the bill.
Eight days of debate began, and sixty-six senators rose to speak. Finally, Johnson and Knowland joined forces to end the debate: the Senate agreed on July 17 by a 71-18 vote to consider the bill passed by the House. At that point, the two men leaned across the aisle and shook hands. The response of Democrat Richard Russell of Georgia was that the southern opposition forces were prepared to expend the greatest effort in history to prevent passage of the bill.
The Senate then found itself locked in twenty-four more days of debate. Southerners avoided filibusters, choosing instead to focus on passing an amendment that called for a jury trial for anyone cited for contempt of court in a civil rights case. Because virtually all juries in the
South were made up solely of whites, it would be almost impossible to get a conviction in such cases.
Knowland sponsored two bill amendments. One, cosponsored with Humphrey, would repeal an 1866 statue that gave the president power to use troops to enforce civil rights legislation. It passed by a 90-0 vote. The second amendment was to establish rules for the operation of the Civil Rights Commission. Oregon Democrat Richard Neuberger criticized the amendments for weakening the "extremely modest" civil rights bill and blamed President Eisenhower. He accused the president of spending too much time on the golf course rather than pushing for a stronger bill.
It was not Eisenhower's style to pressure Congress on issues. His philosophy was that the president proposed and the Congress disposed. At a news conference at the height of the civil rights debate, Eisenhower backed the rights of legislators to vote their consciences. "If [a member of Congress] is doing what he should, he is voting for what he thinks is right," Eisenhower said. "And I repeat, if these programs I suggest are not right for the United States then they [Congress] should oppose them. . . . I, as you know, never employ threats. I never try to hold up clubs of any kind. I just say, 'This is what I believe to be best for the United States,' and I try to convince the people of the logic of my position."[8]
In a strong show of party loyalty, Knowland defended Eisenhower against Neuberger's attack. "I do not believe any useful purpose is served by attempting at this time either to gain a partisan political advantage or to obtain a negative partisan political advantage by attacks upon the Office of the President of the United States," he said. "It is not his legislative responsibility. The details of the bill belong to this body and to the other body of Congress and then, finally, the bringing together of the points of view of the two houses of Congress." Eisenhower did appeal to Republicans to oppose the amendment concerning juries. Knowland said on the Senate floor that a vote for a jury trial "will be a vote to kill for this session . . . an effective voting rights bill." He pointed out that the bill would have to go to a conference committee of the House and Senate to work out differences in the two versions of the bill, and that "from that place . . . it will not likely emerge at this session, and perhaps not at the next. I appeal to Republicans . . . to support [Eisenhower]."[9]
When the Senate passed the amendment 51-42, some, including Richard Nixon, thought there was no hope for the legislation for that
year. Eisenhower called the amendment one of the worst political losses of his career; even the normally unemotional Bill Knowland had tears of frustration after it appeared the bill was dead. Yet Knowland and Johnson were able to pull their troops back together, and within a week the entire bill came up for a vote.[10] It wasn't as bad as the Republican leadership had thought. In the end the Senate passed it by a 72-18 vote and returned the bill to the House for concurrence on amendments made in the Senate.
For the first time in eighty-two years, the Senate had passed a civil rights bill, which was called "incomparably the most significant domestic action of any Congress in this Century."[11] Lyndon Johnson's role should not be underemphasized. The Senate majority leader helped secure the bill's passage by telling liberals it was a strong bill and southern Democrats that it was as weak as possible.[12] The major provisions of the bill created a commission on civil rights, created a new assistant attorney general in a civil rights division of the Justice Department, repealed presidential authority to use troops to enforce civil rights laws, prohibited intimidation of people from voting, and required jury trials for criminal contempt cases. The jury trial amendment, Knowland believed, greatly weakened the bill but didn't destroy it. After Republican and Democratic leaders of both houses managed to work out a compromise on this issue, the bill had to go back to each house for ratification.
The battle still wasn't over. The Senate then had to withstand a marathon speech of twenty-four hours and eighteen minutes, the longest in Senate history, by Strom Thurmond. To show why federal voting laws were unnecessary, he read aloud the election statutes of every state, the Declaration of Independence, the Bill of Rights, and Washington's Farewell Address. The speech was labeled a "talkathon" rather than a filibuster. Because the southerners were worried about the reaction across the country to such tactics, many were angry with Thurmond.
At 6:30 in the morning, Knowland came onto the Senate floor to urge the South Carolina Democrat to drop his fight. The Senate was going to pass a civil rights bill before adjourning, he told him. The "talkathon" continued until 9:12 P.M. on August 29, when Thurmond finally gave up. Two hours later, the Senate approved the compromise bill, 60-15, and sent it to Eisenhower for his signature. He signed the bill on September 9, 1957, while vacationing in Newport, Rhode Island. Attorney General Brownell praised Knowland for his work on the bill. Knowland, he said, "was very helpful in getting the [civil rights] legis-
lation passed. I think he carried a number of conservative Republican votes with him. So it was more a matter of individual voting than it was a bloc."[13] Eisenhower also was indebted to Knowland, praising him for his "courage, energy and idealism" and saying that his leadership in the fight "will be remembered gratefully by the American people long after the names of the opponents of the measure have been lost to memory.
Toward the end of this legislative struggle, the president added in the same letter to Knowland that his "great respect for your deep sense of responsibility, your integrity and your forcefulness in upholding your clear convictions was never higher than it is at this moment."[14]