Master of the Senate (197 page)

For senators more interested in the support of the brotherhoods than of the NAACP, for senators from states in which the right of jury trial was at least as prized as civil rights for Negroes—for midwestern senators, in other words—these were compelling reasons to reverse their position and support the jury trial amendment. And the memo gave other reasons, too, and while the political analysis had been couched in conventional, if incisive, terms, and cushioned with civility and ostensible sympathy, in the memo’s discussion of these other reasons, the cushioning grew very thin, as if, with time almost run out, the velvet glove of senatorial courtesy was being stripped off the iron fist of senatorial power. In giving the other reasons, this memo, written by Reedy but embodying the thinking of Lyndon Johnson, comes close, in these last desperate days of a great battle, to putting in writing some realities of life in the Senate, where projects vital to a senator’s future are at the mercy of leaders and chairmen with long memories.

“Another factor which must be considered,” the memo said, “is the future relationships which Senators will have with their fellow Senators.
This frequently affects the type of legislation they can pass in the Senate
[italics in text]. Those who feel they are better off legislatively cooperating with Douglas, McNamara, Javits and Clifford Case will naturally have a tendency to vote against the jury trial amendment. Those who feel they are better off cooperating with Russell, Mansfield, Pastore, Young, etc…. may have a tendency to vote” for the amendment.

W
ERE THE GLOVES
almost off in the memo? In the face-to-face discussions that Johnson held with Anderson and lobbyists for the other brotherhoods, the gloves may have been removed completely, as not merely “future relationships” but present realities were laid bare. That 15 percent increase in retirement benefits that the brotherhoods wanted so badly? That bill was before the Senate Labor Committee, Lister Hill chairman—and southerner. Another bill giving the brotherhoods a generous tax exemption on retirement contributions was before the House Ways and Means Committee, Jere Cooper chairman—and southerner. And there were other unions with bills they wanted passed—and with their lobbyists, too, with time almost run out now, the gloves were off. There was a bill that would grant a pay raise to postal workers. The senatorial facts of life about that bill were laid out to representatives of the postal workers—not by Lyndon Johnson but by others, possibly by the chairman of the Senate’s Post Office and Civil Service Committee, Olin Johnston. The facts were evidently laid out clearly enough so that they were understood. Suddenly, that Wednesday, outside the east door to the Senate Chamber, in that ornate,
chandeliered reception room, there was a crowd of lobbyists, “the swarming representatives,” as
Newsweek
put it, “of a dozen railroad brotherhoods and fifteen different postal workers unions….”

“These lobbyists felt that if they urged the jury-trial amendment upon doubtful Republicans, they could reasonably expect a certain amount of gratitude on the part of Southern legislators,”
Newsweek
reported. “And so they went to work, buttonholing one Republican after another” as the senators emerged from the Chamber to go to the dining room or the bathroom, sending notes in to senators who tried to avoid them by not emerging, and then, when in response to the notes these senators emerged, circling them in packs. That Wednesday afternoon, Knowland telephoned President Eisenhower to tell him, Ann Whitman’s notes state, that “the lines were holding and that the Senate was in pretty good shape—that they had all the votes necessary.” Actually, however, the lines were not holding, and late that afternoon there began to be word of “dramatic shifts” in Republican votes. It seems impossible, after the passage of so many decades, to determine exactly what factors motivated various Republican senators to change their stance on the jury trial amendment that day. In most cases, it was probably a combination of factors, and their relative weight can’t be determined. In the case of one midwestern Republican, Schoeppel of Kansas, a key reason, according to contemporary news accounts, was a promise that Eastland’s Judiciary Committee would at last report out the bill authorizing an additional federal judgeship for Kansas. But among the senators of whom Nixon and Knowland had been confident but who, according to news reports, changed their stance that day were not only Schoeppel but two other midwestern conservatives, Capehart and Curtis. And Republicans were not the only senators highly sensitive to union feelings. Thanks to John L. Lewis’ telegram, as Evans and Novak were to write, “Wobbly Democratic liberals who, until then, had refused to join Johnson and the jury trial amendment, out of fear of alienating their liberal constituencies, now had a soft cushion to fall back on: support from an important segment of organized labor.” At least one Democratic liberal, John Pastore, was swayed to the amendment’s side that Wednesday. Under intense pressure from Nixon and Knowland, one or perhaps two Republicans who had been leaning toward the amendment leaned back that day, and the exact count shown on that smudged tally sheet in Lyndon Johnson’s hands is not known, but if he had started the day with forty-three votes, he had more now, and if Knowland had started the day with fifty-one, he had fewer now.

The margin was down to two or three—or less.

I
T WAS ALMOST TIME
for the curtain to rise—for the drama that Lyndon Johnson was staging for the Church Addendum to begin—and Johnson had it all arranged. He had assembled an all-star cast of orators—fiery old O’Mahoney,
fiery young Church, fiery little Pastore—and even the minor roles had been filled with care: a slow-talking, fast-thinking southerner with great presence, Herman Talmadge, was playing “the presiding officer.” Johnson had given all of them their cues, and Church could hardly wait for his moment, but it was dinnertime, and many senators had left the floor to eat. Johnson told him to wait a little longer. He wanted a full house, and at about eight o’clock, when most senators had finished dinner, he asked for a quorum call. And when the floor was again full of senators—almost every desk occupied—the curtain went up.

O’Mahoney had the opening lines—two or three eloquent minutes: “Mr. President, it is my purpose tonight … to explain to the Senate, and to those who may be listening in the galleries, the reasons why I believe, from the depth of my soul, that the trial-by-jury amendment” should pass. Defeating it won’t help Negroes to vote, O’Mahoney said. “Denial of trial by jury will not hasten a wise and permanent solution of the grave social problem of racial discrimination that is before us…. It will only make matters worse than they are, for trial by jury for criminal offenses is itself a civil right guaranteed to every citizen.” And then, recalls Bethine Church, who was seated in the gallery, “Frank looked up at me, and I knew it was going to come.”

Standing up at his desk in the back row, Church shouted, “Mr. President, will the Senator yield?” and O’Mahoney acted surprised at the interruption, and pretended reluctance. “I yield only with the understanding that I shall not lose the right to the floor,” he said. Johnson, playing himself as Majority Leader, delivered his line in the charade. “Mr. President,” he said, “I ask unanimous consent that the Senator from Wyoming may yield for not to exceed two minutes, with the understanding that he shall not lose the floor.” Presiding Officer Talmadge intoned, “Without objection, so ordered,” and Church introduced his amendment, saying it “is designed to eliminate whatever basis there may be for the charge that the efficacy of trial by jury in the Federal courts is weakened by the fact that, in some areas, colored citizens, because of the operation of State laws, are prevented from serving as jurors.” Standing tall and straight among the freshmen in the back row, he said, “We believe the amendment constitutes a great step forward in the field of civil rights. We believe also that it can contribute significantly in forwarding the cause to which most of us are dedicated—the cause of enacting a civil rights bill in this session of the Congress.” Then, as if he was unsure of the answer, he asked if O’Mahoney “would be agreeable to modifying [his] amendment to include the addendum I have before me.” It turned out that O’Mahoney was indeed agreeable. “It was perfectly appropriate for the Senator from Idaho to offer this amendment, which I [am] so happy to accept,” O’Mahoney assured him with a straight face. Ardent Johnson supporter that he was, Richard Neuberger could barely contain himself. In a reference to a hokey stage melodrama of the nineteenth century, he muttered: “What’s next week?
East Lynne?”

Stilted though it may have been, the opening scene captured the critics. Daughter of a governor, niece of a senator, born to politics, Bethine Clark Church glanced automatically over at the Press Gallery when O’Mahoney agreed to accept the amendment, and what she saw was rows of reporters jumping up “like a wave” and running up the stairs to the telephones in the Press Room.

Then the rest of Johnson’s scenario unfolded. The Rhode Island bantam with the nimble mind asked for recognition from the chair. No one—not even Johnson’s staff—knew “what John Pastore was going to do,” says Solis Horwitz, who had been invited to sit, on a folding chair, next to Johnson to watch the show. “[Lyndon] did, because he said, ‘Now you just watch the little Italian dancing master and see what happens here.’”

Johnson had cast Pastore in a demanding role: that of a skeptic and doubter who, by giving voice to his doubts, convinces himself that they are groundless and is converted into a true believer. The subject of his doubts, of course, was the jury trial amendment; Johnson had arranged with Pastore to, in Mann’s words, “feign skepticism” of the amendment, to raise the questions about it that many senators were asking, and then to think through the answers to the questions out loud—and finally, seeing the validity of the answers, to be convinced by them, to “almost imperceptibly dissolve his skepticism into outright support” for the amendment. The Rhode Islander began to ask questions of O’Mahoney—the questions that many senators, uncertain about the amendment, were asking themselves: Would the amendment, for example, permit a southern registrar who had been jailed by a judge for civil contempt and then freed when he promised to register Negroes then be able to violate his promise and be in effect immune from punishment because that violation would be criminal contempt, and he would therefore be eligible for trial before a sympathetic jury that would not convict him? When O’Mahoney replied that there was no danger of this, because the judge would have ordered the registrar to register Negroes, and any violation of this order would still be civil, not criminal, contempt, Pastore said, “I think the Senator from Wyoming is moving a little too quickly. I think I know what he means, but I do not believe the
Record
is abundantly clear”—and led O’Mahoney through the reasoning again step by step until the densest senator could grasp it. And with each question that he asked, Pastore reiterated that he was asking it only to try to resolve his own doubts, that he still had “an open mind…. I have not as yet definitely resolved the matter in my own mind.” As he assured himself on point after point—after saying, on point after point, “I have not been able to make up my mind”—his “misgivings” about the amendment faded, to be replaced by support.

“All of this had been preplanned,” Horwitz was to realize, “and [Pastore] did one of the most effective jobs that was ever done.” His colloquy with O’Mahoney riveted the attention of both sides of the aisle. There were senators—Republican conservatives from the Midwest, most of them—who
still had sincere questions about the amendment. From far across the floor, Thye of Minnesota, hater of Democrats, interrupted to ask a question of a Democrat. “The Senator from Rhode Island was making a very impressive statement,” Thye said. “He asked a question. I am as vitally concerned with the answer to that question as [he] is…. If he [O’Mahoney] has the answer, I hope he will give it.” And while O’Mahoney was giving it—during the entire long colloquy, in fact—the Chamber was so still that although the two Democrats’ desks, both in the third row, were somewhat far to the side of the Chamber, and only three desks apart, no one in the Chamber had any difficulty hearing them. By the time Pastore finished “resolving” his doubts—in favor of the jury trial amendment—and said earnestly, “I cannot subscribe to the argument” that the amendment “would be emasculating the bill … I cannot go along with that argument,” he had convinced others. The show Johnson had staged produced the result he wanted. “The impact of Pastore’s performance was profound,” Mann writes. “He played the role of an earnest, undecided senator. But he had actually led his colleagues through a crafty, subtle argument for the amendment.” All through Senate history, there had been speeches that made senators rethink their views. This was one of them. It “actually changed some votes,” George Reedy says. And the next morning—Thursday, August 1—brought to Lyndon Johnson’s office the telegram he had been waiting for: a statement signed by the presidents of the twelve railroad brotherhoods. It was much shorter than John L. Lewis’ and quite straightforward: “
WE FAVOR THE ENACTMENT OF AN AMENDMENT TO THE CIVIL-RIGHTS BILL THAT WOULD PRESERVE OR EXTEND THE RIGHT TO TRIAL BY JURY
.” Now Johnson had all the ammunition he needed. That morning, Welly Hopkins telephoned him to ask how things were going. They were going just fine, Johnson said. Hopkins recalls that Johnson mentioned “certain senators…. He said, ‘I’ve got them. I’m just going to pick my time to call them. That’s when I’m going to put it to a vote.’” And that day, August 1, Lyndon Johnson sprang his trap.

W
ILLIAM
K
NOWLAND WALKED
straight into it—blind till the last. That very Thursday morning, at about the same time that Johnson was telling Hopkins that everything was going fine, Knowland was telling reporters—and the White House and Vice President Nixon—that everything was going fine, and reiterating his confidence that “at least thirty-nine or forty” Republican senators would join at least a dozen Democratic liberals in voting against the jury trial amendment. Asked by a reporter whether Church’s addendum would strip away any of the Republican votes, the Republican Leader said he thought not. That morning, copies of the brotherhoods’ telegram were delivered to the offices of individual senators, to be followed by visits from Cy Anderson and other union lobbyists. Pastore’s logic had had time to sink in. And that morning, Lyndon Johnson made his calls—and after several of them, erased the number that he
had placed next to senators’ names in one column on his tally sheet and wrote a number in the other column. Richard Russell was also keeping his own very careful tally sheet, and early that afternoon he told Johnson, “I’m ready to vote. I’ve got fifty votes.”