In my father’s files, I found lots of correspondence that he exchanged with an array of members of the U.S. Congress during the tumultuous months leading up to enactment of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. To understand some of the nuances in the letters, I had to dip into the history of the landmark measure, which outlawed discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex or national origin, and forced Southern states to rescind laws that prevented blacks from voting or from setting foot in schools, restaurants, hotels and other public facilities that until then had been reserved for the exclusive use of whites.
Pres. Johnson signing the Civil Rights Act
To recap, the Civil Rights Act was sent to Congress by President John Kennedy on June 19, 1963. Bitterly opposed by a solid block of lawmakers from the South, it had gotten nowhere by the time Kennedy was assassinated six months later. On Nov. 27, two days after the slain president was laid to rest at Arlington National Cemetery, newly sworn-in President Lyndon Johnson told Congress that nothing would more eloquently honor his martyred predecessor than the “earliest possible passage of the civil rights bill for which he fought so long.”
Congress did not oblige. Instead, Southern legislators, mindful that large majorities in both houses supported the bill, used every legislative trick in the book to thwart the will of the vast majority and kill the bill in committees controlled by Southern racist dinosaurs. As Georgia Senator Richard Russell, speaking for his Southern colleagues, put it, “We will resist to the bitter end any measure or any movement which would have a tendency to bring about social equity and intermingling and amalgamation of the races in our states.”
The stonewalling in committees lasted for months, but when the bill finally made it to the floor of the House, it was overwhelmingly approved by a vote of 290 to 130. In the Senate, the bill’s manager, Sen. Hubert Humphrey of Minnesota, had to resort to a rare maneuver to bypass the Judiciary Committee, chaired by a die-hard segregationist from Mississippi. But a block of 18 Southern Senators, in those days all but one of whom were Democrats, commenced a round-the-clock filibuster that lasted for 57 days. It took until June 10 for Humphrey to round up the 60 votes needed to end debate, and days later, the Senate approved the measure by a vote of 73 to 27.
On July 2, in a famous scene following a televised national address, with Martin Luther King standing behind him, President Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act of 1964 into law.
Other Posts in My On-Going Exploration of Family Archives:
- How the Ku Klux Klan Welcomed My Father to Arkansas in 1964
- My Parents’ Mixed-Race Socializing Riled the Neighbors in Daytona in 1963
Sen. Fulbright: Keeping Faith with My Constituents
Sen. J. William Fulbright, a Democrat from Arkansas, was a hero to my father because of his exceptionally liberal views on foreign policy. Fulbright was an early and eloquent opponent of the Vietnam War, which was just starting to make it on to the front pages of the daily papers at the time, when fewer than 300 Americans had been killed in Indochina, out of the total of more than 58,000 who would die in that war. On civil rights, in contrast, Fulbright was a dyed-in-the-wool Southern politician catering to Southern constituents who were almost entirely white in those days before blacks could freely register and vote in the South.
In a letter that my father wrote to Fulbright on April 28, 1964 (click on date to view copy of letter), he thanked the senator for his “creative and courageous” leadership on foreign policy, mentioning in particular a recent speech he had delivered criticizing military spending. He urged Fulbright to “give the same kind of creative and courageous leadership in helping our nation to face up to its rightful responsibilities to all of its citizens.”
Sen. Fulbright
In his response, Fulbright avoided expressing a personal opinion about integration. In fact, there are hints in the letter that he was personally torn on the issue. “The racial problem is undoubtedly the most vexing and seemingly insoluble one with which I have had to deal while I have been in the Senate,” he said in his letter dated, May 14, 1964, when the filibuster against the bill, in which he was participating, was in full swing. “All I can tell you at this point is that I will keep your comments in mind,” he wrote, before proceeding to offer an unapologetic explanation for his opposition to the Civil Rights Act.
“I am sure that I need not remind you that in the past, I have opposed these bills on the ground that we cannot achieve by legislation a result which essentially requires better education on the one hand and understanding and compassion on the other,” Fulbright wrote. “I consider that having opposed the civil rights bills in the past, the people of Arkansas took this into consideration in reelecting me in 1962. A change from that position on a matter with such intimate and emotional overtones involved is, in a sense, a breach of faith with my constituents and I believe should be preceded by a thorough consultation with them.” Fulbright added that he had supported other measures “which I thought were designed to promote these ends,” such as federal aid to education.
Indeed, the senator’s name lives on in the Fulbright scholarship program, created by legislation he sponsored, which supports international scholar exchanges as a way to increase mutual understanding between people from different nations and cultures. That, apparently, was Fulbright’s way of setting the stage for the day, some generations hence, when he believed Southern white Americans might finally be prepared to eat a meal in a restaurant or go to a school that also admitted blacks.
In another letter from Fulbright in my father’s files, dated July 21, 1964, several weeks after Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act into law, the senator thanked my father for his “thoughtful letter of July 16 regarding my newsletter on the Civil Rights law.” I could not find a copy of that July 16 letter or of Fulbright’s newsletter in my father’s files.
Did Fulbright offer conciliatory words about the new law and beseech his constituents to comply with it? Giving the senator the benefit of the doubt, I’d like to think that’s the case. He closed his July 21 letter by saying, “I believe the course of future events will reflect credit on the people of Arkansas, and I know you will do everything you can as a member of the clergy to promote progress in race relations.”
Sen. McClellan: Won’t Quit Fighting ‘Vicious’ Bill
In contrast, Senator John McClellan, another Democrat from Arkansas, did not hesitate to express his staunch opposition to “the so-called civil rights bill.” His response to my father was dated May 4, 1964, when the filibuster was in its second month, with no sign of ending. “I shall continue to speak at length and in opposition to it,” he declared. “It is a vicious measure, and it should not be enacted into law. It will not serve the welfare of either race.”
Sen. McClellan
A few months later, I remember shaking Sen. McClellan’s hand. I was eight at the time. Our family passed through Washington D.C. on a summer vacation that included a visit to the World’s Fair in New York City. All five of us dropped by the offices of each our legislators from Arkansas. I’m not sure whether the others were in at the time or not, but only Sen. McClellan ushered us into his office for a quick visit. I have no recollection of what my father said, or attempted to say. He undoubtedly would have tried to get in a word about civil rights, and probably also about the rapidly escalating Vietnam War. What I do clearly remember is that McClellan, perhaps to change the subject, focused his attention on me and showed me a large stuffed bass mounted on a plaque on his wall, before, after a few minutes of polite chit-chat, showing us the door.
Rep. Herlong: I’d Get Replaced with a Hardcore Racist
The most interesting of the letters from Southern legislators on the Civil Rights Act was dated Dec. 12, 1963. It was sent to my father by Rep. A. Sydney Herlong, Jr., who represented a Florida district that included Daytona Beach, where we were living at the time. My father was embroiled that fall in a controversy within the church where he was minister, as well as in our neighborhood.
Rep. Herlong
On several occasions, my father had welcomed black visitors to take a seat and stay for the service. Many members welcomed the visitors, as my father recounted in a lengthy letter that he sent to the congregation after the first such incident on January 21, 1962. But some of the fine Christians in that church apparently couldn’t deal with the trauma of having to worship in the same room as a Negro so the controversy simmered for the next two years. At the same time, 16 of our neighbors in Daytona Beach delivered a petition to the board of elders of the church asking my father to stop violating their rights by inviting black Christians to meet with white Christians in our home. Though some members of the church never forgave my father, prompting him to search for the new ministerial position that he soon found in Little Rock, the elders gave him their support.
In his letter, Herlong referred to the controversy and said, “Had I been an elder in your church, I would have done exactly as your elders did.” But he proceeded to assert, oddly, that “there is a great difference, believe me, in church and state.” Apparently, in his view, it was wrong to bar blacks from churches, but the federal government had no business telling Southern states that they could no longer bar blacks from polling places on election day.
Herlong went on to suggest that while he couldn’t bring himself to vote for the Civil Rights Act, at least he was not a staunch foe of the measure, nor was he a racist. On the other hand, if he voted for it, he would get run out of office in no time flat by his racist constituents, and a diehard opponent of any civil rights measure would take his seat. That was the clear implication of his defense of his position on the Civil Rights Act in the letter he sent.
“The bill is going to pass and my vote won’t make any difference one way or the other…. [I]f I sacrifice my position in Congress by” voting for it, “my place would be taken not by one who is not prejudiced but by someone who would be running on an avowed platform” against civil rights, he wrote. “In your judgment, would the District be better off with someone like that? Please don’t try to tell me, Brother Thompson, that that type of person would not be elected, because if I know anything, I know the philosophy of the majority of the people in my district on issues like this.”
His letter was “for your own information,” Herlong added. “I have opened my heart to you. It is not for publication, and I am sure you will respect it as such.”
Herlong died 20 years ago, and in my opinion, his confidentiality agreement with my father has expired by now. According to his obituary published in the New York Times at the time of his death in 1995, he befriended Richard Nixon when the two served together in the House of Representatives, and after he left Congress, Nixon appointed him to a seat on the Securities and Exchange Commission.
He declined to run for reelection in 1968 because he was still a Democrat and his district had begun to turn Republican. But in 1968, he campaigned for Nixon, who defeated Hubert Humphrey in the presidential race that year. And in 1985, during Ronald Reagan’s first term, he switched parties to become a Republican.
“He didn’t change,” one of his daughters told the Times, “but the Democratic Party changed in this area.” Indeed, the Democratic Party by the late 1960s had become the party that believed black people should be allowed to vote, attend the same schools as whites, take any empty seat on a bus and enter the same restaurants and hotels as other Americans. As his daughter perhaps unwittingly acknowledged, Herlong apparently never fully accepted that.