Washington-U.S.A.
COFFIN, TRIS
WASHINGTON—U.S.A. By Tris Coffin How Lyndon Johnson Engineered Compromise on Civil Rights Bill One day during the civil rights debate, reporters carefully watched a slim, handsome Senator stroll...
...He is accused of being a stooge for Texas oil interests, of being a downright ornery reactionary, or of lining up Dixie votes for President...
...Two years ago, Representative Frank Smith of Mississippi personally warned Dulles this was in the wind...
...On the other side of Capitol Hill, a force that Secretary of State Dulles and his lobbyists have too long ignored has placed a question mark before the whole subject of foreign economic aid...
...Johnson has privately told at least two other Senators that he will not run for re-election in 1960 because of his health...
...This approach was effective...
...He therefore rests his place in history on his record as majority leader...
...He thought Section III, giving the Attorney General the power to obtain court injunctions in civil-rights violations, was going too far...
...5. He wants to create a record for constructive legislation in the 85th Congress...
...At a breakfast, where Johnson nibbles on venison sausage and talks in a salty, Mark Twain way of people and events, he remarked: "A civil rights bill is going to be passed by this Congress...
...He happens to believe that the country is in an era of postwar normalcy and not eager for reforms...
...Bourke Hicken-looper of Iowa said the Administration bill was, in effect, a violation of the civil rights of the white race...
...I don't know the answer, but I'm going to do a lot of listening...
...A compromise could be worked out with the help of Senators from New England, the border states, the North Central region and the Rocky Mountain area...
...The three lead-off men, Dick Russell, of Georgia, John Stennis of Mississippi and Sam J. Ervin Jr...
...John Sherman Cooper of Kentucky recommended that the Senate talk about the bill for two weeks until they knew what was in it...
...Byrd talked to Jim Eastland of Mississippi...
...Carlson was given an idea he might pass along informally to the White House...
...of North Carolina, all former judges, spoke more in sorrow than anger...
...The latter withdrew from the "handout rack" in the press gallery a fiery Confederate speech...
...When Johnson started his search for a compromise late in June, his chances were not worth a plugged nickel...
...The President was disturbed and said so at his press conference...
...So he proposed that a jury trial be provided for criminal violations, but not for civil actions...
...The cotton states are adamantly opposed to aid to cotton - growing countries, such as Egypt...
...The keys to his power are an understanding of how far individual Senators will bend 011 any issue and a genius for persuasion...
...This, after his serious heart attack a year ago, has forced his decision...
...Now, the coal people have protested the Export-Import Bank loan to Poland on grounds that $4 million will be spent on modernizing mines and grab American coal-export markets in Argentina and West Germany...
...He bent in earnest conversation with Harry Byrd...
...This is true: A criminal-conspiracy statute can be used to enforce the Fifteenth Amendment, but it never has been...
...It was then that Lyndon Johnson moved in with general suggestions...
...He becomes so tense and excited after a week of maneuvering that he is unable to sleep more than three or four hours a night...
...Johnson's first move was to persuade the Southerners to hold back their blood-and-thunder oratory...
...There's no getting around it...
...A Democratic civil-rights bloc was organized by Senator Paul Douglas...
...Everett Dirksen of Illinois said the President already had power to enforce voting: Why didn't he use it instead of passing the buck to Congress...
...Johnson also thought that both sides had good points on the controversy over the jury trial...
...Kennedy began sounding out Northern liberals...
...All this was at the closed meeting...
...It seems likely that Congress will continue to vote for military aid and for dollars to under-developed countries for such projects as health and education...
...A Senate GOP caucus a few days later turned into a gripe session...
...But- the majority leader's hunch was that not more than a dozen Senators really were for the Administration bill 100 per cent...
...Actually, the answer lies in these traits of his personality: 1. Johnson, like President Eisenhower, has a deep-seated aversion to controversy and conflict...
...The prospect of an ugly Senate fight over civil rights disturbed him...
...They suggested the Congress had been misled by the Administration and handed a hot package that would send Federal troops into the South to enforce school integration...
...A whisper went down the long bench in the press gallery: "Lyndon's making a deal compromise, no filibuster...
...2. The Texas Senator is a useful political barometer...
...By Tris Coffin How Lyndon Johnson Engineered Compromise on Civil Rights Bill One day during the civil rights debate, reporters carefully watched a slim, handsome Senator stroll casually around the Chamber...
...he swapped jokes with Jack Kennedy...
...This is a buildup of the complaints of cotton states, textile states, and now the coal areas that American dollars are being used to create competition for American products...
...Republican party discipline held firm, even tearing apart ancient across-the-aisle friendships between Northern and Southern conservatives...
...The story of his operations 011 tin-civil-rights bill is a revealing study of the mood of the 85th Congress and Johnson himself...
...The onetime Texas National Youth Administration director and favorite of FDR comes closer to running Congress than any man since the autocratic Speaker Nick Longworth in the Twenlies...
...The textile states along the East coast and the cotton bloc are embattled against Japanese textile imports...
...and Clinton Anderson (D.-N.M...
...The Southerners said they had no prejudice against Negro voters, and that was true of many of them...
...He slapped his leg and said thoughtfully: "I'd like to see a bill the country can live with and not be torn apart...
...Both Knowland and Leverett Saltonstall, of Massachusetts, the GOP whip, expressed doubts about the Administration package...
...The result was the amendment sponsored by George Aiken (R.-Vt...
...The chances are that if Johnson saw the United States demanding a tough civil-rights bill, he would work skillfully behind the scenes to block the Southerners...
...But it will draw the line there...
...3. He has an almost awesome reverence for the institution of the United States Senate, and does not want it chipped by a filibuster or knock-down, drag-out fight...
...Lyndon Johnson's motives in following this path of compromise and moderation will start an argument anywhere on Capitol Hill...
...Looking over the Senate, he made this analysis: The deep South and such states as New York, Illinois and Michigan were prisoners of powerful political forces...
...This is the way Senate majority leader Lyndon Johnson, who looks like a Scott Fitzgerald hero—elegant, black-haired, charming—works...
...4. He wants to keep the Democratic party from splitting into two camps...
...The inference in the cloakrooms was that the trickster downtown was Attorney General Herbert Brownell, who is not liked on the Hill...
...Knowland decided to take a second look at a controversial section of the Administration bill...
...When the nation is in an exuberantly liberal mood, as in the New Deal, so is he...
...he put his arm around stolid Bill Knowland in a friendly gesture, and he stopped by the desk of Frank Carlson, the conscientious Kansan...
...The House had passed the Administration bill by 236 to 126...
...A few minutes later, things began to happen...
Vol. 40 • August 1957 • No. 31
