Overwhelming Moderation

On the ground floor of the Capitol in Room F-41, nine representatives of "100% civil rights or bust" organizations met secretly one morning last week. Among those present: Vice Chairman Joseph Rauh Jr. of Americans for Democratic Action; Roy Wilkins, executive secretary of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People; spokesmen for United Auto Workers President Walter Reuther and International Electrical Workers President James Carey. The Hobsonian choice before these good liberals: whether to support a civil rights bill that had been so weakened by the Senate's Democratic leadership that the South was putting up only token opposition (TIME, Aug. 12) or to fight for the tough bill that the Administration and Republican leadership had backed. Their answer: take the weak bill; it's better than none.

The decision made, the members of the so-called civil rights "Leadership Conference" rounded up other civil rights organizations, issued a bombastic statement backing the weak Senate bill ("The millions of victims of discrimination and intolerance have every right to demand completed legislative action this year").

Plenty of Company. On the credit side that bill would 1) establish a federal civil rights commission with subpoena powers, 2) set up a special civil rights division in the Justice Department, and 3) enable the Government to seek injunctions on behalf of persons whose voting rights are violated. But having thus moved forward, the Senate bill rear-marched with amendments that 1) restricted enforcement only to voting cases, 2) extended the right of jury trials for the first time in U.S. history to all phases of criminal (but not civil) contempt of court.

In its retreat--which would have been called betrayal short months ago--the Leadership Conference had plenty of company. Word spread that Harry Truman's Secretary of State, Dean Acheson, had helped author the amendment that weakened the bill by requiring jury trials in contempt cases. The New York Times, which had scored the jury trial amendment a few days before, urged the Senate to pass the weak bill as the best possible. So did ardently pro-Ike New York Herald Tribune Columnist Roscoe Drummond. So did the civil-righteous Washington Post and Times Herald: famed Post Cartoonist Herbert Block (Herblock), who is forever lampooning Eisenhower for indecisiveness, did an astonishing turnabout to sketch an impulsive Ike pointing a revolver at a fair Miss Civil Rights.

Remaining Question. In such an overwhelming atmosphere of moderation, even the tough-bill Republicans could not see their way clear to voting against a weak bill, and civil rights finally whisked through the Senate by a vote of 72 to 18 (voting yes were 43 Republicans and 29 Democrats, including Florida Democrat George Smathers; voting no were 17 Southerners plus anti-anti-Democrat Wayne Morse of Oregon). Indeed, the only remaining question was whether the House of Representatives, having already passed the strong Administration bill (286-126), would approve a Senate product best liked by the Southerners who voted against it.

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