Muted Thunder

As it must whenever and wherever Democrats gather, the civil-rights issue hung heavily over Chicago last week. But although the thunder rumbled and dark clouds gathered along the horizon, the lightning did no serious damage, at least none up to convention's eve. In the week before the Democratic National Convention began, there were simply too many lightning rods around to divert it.

Tall among them, in spite of a blunder that early in the week threatened to bring high-voltage bolts crashing down around him, was Adlai Stevenson. In a curbstone television interview, Stevenson nearly threw away months of patient missionary work among Southern Democrats by saying he believed that the party platform "should express unequivocal approval of the [Supreme] Court's decision." Next night the interview appeared on film, and the Southerners blazed. But before the boss could be undone by forthright words, Stevenson aides sold the South all over again on the premise that Adlai is indeed a man of moderation, would not repeat his inflammatory words.

Even while Stevenson's lines were being repaired, other lightning rods were functioning. The Platform Committee, headed by Massachusetts' Congressman John McCormack, an old hand at managing political compromises, steered carefully clear of showdown situations. McCormack appointed a Civil Rights Subcommittee composed mostly of moderates on both sides. And he got some unexpected help in his work from Harry Truman, who told the committee that he thought the 1948 and 1952 civil-rights planks were just about right.*

The most effective lightning rod of them all turned out to be a Southerner: Mississippi's Governor James Plemon Coleman. Husky, affable Governor Coleman, who learned how to handle extremists in his home state, kept his head when the thunder began to rumble at Chicago. Under his steadying hand, Platform Committee Southerners sat silent, although glum, through a parade of outspokenly civil-righteous witnesses, e.g., A.F.L.-C.I.O. President George Meany, who demanded that "the Democratic Party must declare that it is not in favor of thwarting a decision of the Supreme Court."

Then McCormack's hand-picked moderates on the subcommittee retired to hammer out the plank. No one familiar with the unpredictable Democrats was willing to guess what shape it would take. But one thing was certain: civil-rights thunder was going to continue to mutter over the Democrats for a long time to come.

* In 1948 and again four years later, the Democrats pledged themselves to seek equal protection of the laws and equal economic and political opportunities for all citizens. The 1952 platform added "equal opportunities for education."

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