THE MOOD OF AMERICA

...The civil liberties of Negroes were defended on the floor of the Texas Senate in two out-and-out filibusters which delayed passage of two and killed eight other bills to preserve school segregation...

...Senate, to say...

...Modern legislative bodies are in danger of becoming rubber stamps, with all the work done in committees and the results run through the assemblies with very little debate...

...The East Texans, disheartened by prolonged advocacy of a cause many of them knew to be unchristian and doomed and intimidated by the moral weight and eloquence of Gonzalez's arguments, nevertheless made their views prevail when they insisted, while moral intensity prevailed when they did not insist...

...We need more floor discussion and less power play," he says...

...Non-segregation does not automatically guarantee social integration, but it does hold promise for the future and, in the meantime, provides a better life for the Negro...

...The typical story of those who have done this, and what happened to them was told recently in a study made for the Connecticut Commission on Civil Rights and the Fund for the Republic by Dr...

...This at least is the story told to the Connecticut Commission by the 219 Negro families who have moved into better neighborhoods...

...Gonzalez liked the idea of filibusters...

...Who speaks for him...

...if it does not, the people will suffer and learn...

...traditions are not rules...

...Their occupations and income are, however, substantially the same as the rest of the people on the street...

...It is ringing for us all, for us all...

...Many of them told us they felt interracial play would be good for the child's future understanding of Negroes," the Commission says and adds, "Interraction on these age levels undoubtedly holds the greatest promise...

...The amount of social contact outside the home, as in PTA and church organizations, was reported at a low 17 per cent...

...But the Millers and Smiths (blessed with such plain Yankee names in the casual nametak-ing after the Emancipation) have received a life sentence...

...From their white neighbors, 30 per cent met some kind of opposition...

...this meant that when he finished, the debate was over...

...But it is not merely, for the Negro, a problem of civic inertia and an empty purse...

...he has admired them, in fact, since he was a boy reading Carlyle aloud to perfect his diction...

...Yet he is barred from full participation in the life of the white communities with which he has so much in common...

...The report, primarily a study of social integration in private and non-segregated residential neighborhoods, raises again the crucial problem of Negro housing...

...In the past decade anti-discrimination agencies like the Connecticut Commission have emerged as the most realistic .approach to problems of prejudice...

...But if their initial persistence was successful, they found banks and loan associations willing to cooperate...

...Only 20 per cent of the whites reported their children had no interracial activity at all, as contrasted with 75 per cent of white adults who had no social contact with Negro neighbors...

...The legislation visualized by proponents of open housing would block racial or religious discrimination in the sale or rental of housing, public or private...

...They want their own state majorities to rule on every issue from federal aid to the treaty-making power in the flaming cause of states' rights, but deny they are majorities when they are cramming their Negro minority into toiletless shanties, school rooms with broken windows, and the back ends of buses...

...The assault on the inward dignity of man, which our society protects, has been made . . . What about the Negro...

...Eighty-three of every 100 Negroes questioned were found to "really like" their neighborhoods...

...Their chances of breaking out are only poor to middling and they will find few allies when they try...

...But he adds: "I have nothing against limiting debate...

...This we have learned concretely in Texas...

...A geographical minority's oppression of a sub-minority cannot be justified by an appeal for minority rights that is based on a denial of the majority will, yet this is precisely the argument Southerners advance in defense of the filibuster in the U.S...

...The Matejeks, the Gio-vannellis, and the Rosenblooms who settled in the slums after arriving in this country were able to raise themselves out of them...

...Another filibuster was cut off entirely, without a word from the opposition, by a 14 to 13 vote, but the reaction against this gag procedure was so strong that an attempt to do the same thing was defeated, and Gonzalez was off again...

...In the 28th hour of the first one, the previous question was invoked, 13 to 12, while Gonzalez was holding the floor...

...For whom does the bell toll...

...A situation in Texas during the legislative session this year posed this issue, evoking cries of glee from liberal-baiting liberal Maury Maverick, Jr., of San Antonio and a flush of embarrassment from one distinguished liberal visitor from the East...

...Residential neighborhoods are not static and, the investigators found, fully half of the white homeowners had moved in after the Negroes...

...Children have little use for the color lines their parents draw and, surprisingly enough, often have no knowledge of them...

...Some 60 per cent of the whites looked favorably upon interracial play by their children even though most of them did not want the relationship to blossom into dating or marriage...

...What increase there is in social relations is almost completely limited to conversation from the occasional "hello" to long and frequent talks...

...While some help has been provided by statewide groups working for non-discrimination in housing, their efforts have generally been confined to information services and working for legislation...

...But a qualification is encouraging: those whites who had been in mixed neighborhoods more than four years were less inclined to believe values had declined...

...Generally, they have more education than their neighbors...

...As long as communities are unwilling to undertake extensive redevelopment and public housing projects, the slum dweller-whatever his color—is largely helpless...

...that the minority possess their equal rights which equal law must protect, and to violate would be oppression...

...For it should be remembered that this report tells the story of only four per cent of the state's Negroes...

...Running through this story is a significant finding...

...Admittedly they do not give in easily and worse still, white residents do little more than make exceptions for their colored neighbors...

...These commissions, despite spectacular achievements in these areas, have yet to acquire legislative permission to do battle in the private housing field...

...By the time the East Texans reached their third bill they no longer had enough votes to get the rules suspended to have it considered...

...in Washington the minority rules as long as it can stand and obstruct...

...Mexican, Negro, what have you...

...New York's Baker-Metcalf Act, in effect since July 1, 1956, is the most powerful of these, powerful because it spells in detail the breadth of the commission's authority...

...When all was said and said again the basic presumption of democratic society could be brought into play...

...As might be expected, the passage of years does much to break down the stereotypes of prejudice...

...But in many ways, the move would be the last one the legislatures could take in this field...

...I seek to register the plaintive cry, the hurt feelings, the silent, the dumb protest, of the inarticulate . . . What a noble opportunity to enlist in a cause that's eternal, the maintenance of the dignity of a human...

...Are we not the duly elected representatives of all, including the Negro...

...That, it seems to me, is as it has to be in a democracy, no matter how distasteful the verdict is...

...In a letter to an editor Maverick reveled in the dilemma: "Within the ranks of liberalism there is a strong and strident group which, heretofore, could prove that anyone who used the filibuster, and especially if he happened to be a white U.S...

...Henry G. Stetler, research director of the Connecticut Commission...

...not, 'the minority may rule to preserve its rights from the majority...

...Deny the right to Senator Eastland of Mississippi to filibuster and you deny it to Gonzalez of Bexar...

...In Syracuse, for example, they have made positive contributions by arranging sales between Negroes who wanted to purchase homes and white people who were willing to sell to Negroes...

...But what it can do and should do is make it possible for social integration to come about...

...If the verdict violates individual rights, the courts will strike it down...

...it is whether to limit full debate by two-thirds vote, as in the U.S...

...they may be well paid and distinguished in their professions, but with their colored skins, only a few can leave the black belts which straddle every large Northern city...

...The step would be a bold one not only because of the scope involved but because of the emotions which attend any tampering with the institution of private property...

...Of Connecticut's 16,000 Negro families, only 600 today live in private, non-segregated residential neighborhoods scattered throughout the state...

...Commission field representatives spent two years talking to 219 of them and 390 of their white neighbors...

...Colored and white children joined within the home as well, watching television and having dinner together...

...Fourteen per cent of the white residents reported having Negro neighbors in their homes but only to help out during illnesses...

...What's more, Gonzalez' erudition and eloquence commanded national attention as he quoted from Donne, Brandeis, Ben-tham, Pope, Bolingbroke, Herodotus, Jefferson, and the Bible...

...The New York law is still short of the goal, however...

...What were liberals, who are so quick to condemn filibusters in the U.S...

...The two men who demonstrated this in Texas were themselves spokesmen for one of the state's two minority groups...

...In this light the Lyndon Johnson-William Knowland compromise of cloture by two-thirds of the Senators present begs the question, and Senator Paul Douglas" advocacy of majority cloture to be invoked no sooner than fifteen days after it is voted seems entirely reasonable...

...A few have left...

...For most Negroes the problem is the same faced by all who live in slums and cannot afford to leave, but it is physically more severe and, like any ghetto, spiritually humiliating...

...We pause, we hesitate, not because of any intransigence, but because this bill has not had full discussion," Gonzalez said...

...The Senate was fully exposed to this minority's new presence on the Texas political scene...

...Under the twoJthirds rule a minority can decisively obstruct the majority, and therefore the national will, as it has obstructed that will on civil rights legislation...

...Housing is both the first and last refuge of prejudice...

...They aroused public opinion...

...Attitudes, however, do not seem to reflect in activity...

...Those working for "open occupancy" housing can find encouragement in this and they should study the report well...

...We don't want the state legislature of Texas to become a eunuch, to be divested of all its virility...

...It is an article of faith for democracy that the rights of the majority include the right to make wrong decisions...

...The Negro's problem is not over when he has finally bought a home...

...You, the white man, think it tolls for the Negro...

...THE MOOD OF AMERICA Notes on a Successful Filibuster in Texas And a Significant Survey in Connecticut Filibusters and Majority Rule by RONNIE DUGGER Austin, Texas ARE LIBERALS opposing the filibuster in the U.S...

...By focusing attention on the barriers confronting a Negro who wants a better home and can afford one, the report indicates lines of attack on the Negro housing problem...

...This is one of the most discouraging aspects of the report, although it can only be said of old, as opposed to new, white residents...

...Since 1945, eleven state legislatures have established anti-discrimination agencies to undermine bias in employment, public accommodations, and, in three states, educational policies...

...What about him...

...Much of the play implied acceptance of social equality, for it occurred at scout meetings, parties, and picnics...

...The conception is, the majority must rule, considerate of minority rights...

...Still the Commission found that "few if any . . . Negroes were forced to leave because of intolerable opposition . . ." While the study made no attempt to determine the actual impact on property values, it did show that the white neighbors were thinking about the question...

...under majority cloture the minority can avail itself of all the constructive purposes a filibuster serves without being permitted to perpetrate against the majority the permanent obstruction which is kin to privateering against the craft of democracy...

...yet, these same liberals are now strangely silent about the Gonzalez filibuster...

...They have found better homes and better lives in non-segregated neighborhoods throughout the North...

...He told of his own experiences with discrimination—as when he was denied the right to sit at a cafe table—and asked: "Well, what's the difference...

...But legislators—and in some cases the civil rights commissioners themselves—have been reluctant to take the giant step into private > housing...

...The act makes it illegal to exclude anyone, because of race or national origin, from private housing benefiting from federal-city land resale subsidy, state aid, local tax abatement, or mortgage insurance by the Federal Housing Administration or Veterans Administration...

...A tradition of filibustering is not incompatible with majority rule...

...A small four per cent said they wanted to move, and as often as not their reasons had no relevance to the racial issue but cited the congested, commercialized character of the area, the lack of neighbors their own age, or poor physical facilities...

...But it is the state upon which the Negroes should make their demands...

...Forty per cent of them thought their property values had decreased because Negroes moved in...

...Senate for sound theoretical reasons, or have they permitted their exasperation with the garrulous Southerners to corrode their respect for free and full debate...

...The others either didn't know, or felt the values had increased (eight per cent) or remained static (28 per cent...

...Senator Henry Gonzalez of San Antonio is the son of Mexicans who moved to Texas before he was born...

...A few among the eleven anti-discrimination states have begun the fight in publicly assisted housing...

...The tradition of full debate persists under either majority or two-thirds rule...

...They moved to their new homes about eight years ago only after beating down barriers which ranged from evasive action to insults and outright refusal to negotiate...

...Gonzalez' words tolled, too, and drew to their sanctuary some of the senators who had been wavering between expediency and conviction...

...Thus the rest of the bills died on the calendar...

...half as many were subjected to insulting remarks, and petitions were circulated against 14 per cent...

...They hold to the old prejudices and still believe them, but they are unwilling to inflict them upon their youngsters...

...The white homeowners are defensive in the area of discrimination...

...In Texas the majority retains its ultimate right to rule...

...The Quakers have been a notable exception...

...I say, the bell tolls for you...

...The Gonzalez-Kazen filibusters served ithese excellent purposes: • They let arguments be developed fully...

...A count of more than 500 messages Gonzalez received showed 12-to-l support...

...Gonzalez' Bexar County is one of the state's most cosmopolitan areas...

...When the lower house of the legislature passed eleven bills to preserve segregation and require advocates of integration to "register" with the secretary of state, Kazen filibustered fifteen hours with diligence and sincerity, and Gonzalez emerged from his twenty-two and eleven hour stands the acknowledged grand orator of the state and the symbolic leader of its combined Latin and Negro minorities of two and a half million...

...The Commission has established once and for all that interracial stability can be achieved in non-segregated neighborhoods despite the prophets of doom and racial strife...

...All, too, will bear in mind," said Jefferson, "this sacred principle, that though the will of the majority is in all cases to prevail, that will to be rightful must be reasonable...

...The First and Last Refuge of Prejudice by J. V. & L. L. HOPKINS THE problem of Negro housing wears two faces...

...They have left behind many friends and fellow workers still living almost totally apart from their community in segregated and sub-standard neighborhoods...

...Here is where the barriers crumble...

...Senate, or by majority vote, as in the Texas Senate...

...The Negro's life may be somewhat more lonely than that of his white neighbors, but it is apparently a good one...

...He damned the doctrines of "ghettoed minorities and segregation" as "rancid ideas, concocted in some foreign state...

...J. V. HOPKINS it a Hartford newspaper man who free lances with his wife, L. L. HOPKINS...

...As Henry Cabot Lodge protested during an 1893 filibuster, "There is another right more sacred in a legislative body than the right of debate, and that is the right to vote...

...Senator Chick Kazen, a son of Lebanese immigrants, represents the border city of Laredo, where more Spanish is spoken than English...

...Senator from the South, was a fascist and a scoundrel...

...The state cannot require social integration...

...They found that the Negro who "has made good" is in many ways an orphan in his own state...

...When it came to having the Negro in his home, the white neighbor was far less responsive...

...The Texas episode established that extended debate can be used for the protection of minority rights under the majority cloture rule...

...Perhaps it is the sight of their children playing with the white kids next door and knowing a better childhood than their parents had that brings satisfaction to the overwhelming majority of Negro residents...

...An even smaller number reported visits by their Negro residents...

...The majority did just that in the Texas filibusters...

...Once the state has placed the Negro within reach of decent housing, it will have come close to exhausting its possibilities...

...Having chosen to live near colored families, they are understandably more flexible and tolerant...

...Three-fourths of all white homeowners said they engaged in no activities whatever with their Negro neighbors within the home, even though 65 per cent of these were "next door" neighbors...

...They provided a way for the minority to respond commensurate to the intensity of their opposition...

...If the majority says we want to limit debate, that's all right...

...They may go to college...

...By occupation, education, and financial achievement, he has created an enormous gap between himself and the rest of the state's Negroes...

...As the Fifth Amendment is for both the guilty and the innocent, the filibuster, which I believe in, is for both the good and the bad...

...Senate...

...All this was accomplished within majority rule...

...The filibuster issue, however, is not whether to limit full debate...

...The intimate contacts of residence modify the attitudes of white neighbors toward particular Negroes as individuals, but, the report cautions, it "does not carry over into favorable attitudes toward new Negro neighbors as a group...

...Since the Force Bill struggle of 1891 they have used the filibuster to perpetuate their exploitation of the Negroes...

...RONNIE DUGGER is the editor of the Texas Observer, a bright, milltantly crusading political weekly published in Austin...

...He likes a tradition of unlimited debate...