An Epitaph Is Written

"If the cloture rule is rejected, of course I myself will not only make no further effort to press the [anti-poll tax] bill but will feel myself in honor bound. . . ."

Alben W. Barkley, leader of the U.S. Senate majority, was droning out terms of a humiliating surrender to a handful of Southern Senators. In seven days' filibuster they had tongue-lashed the leader and a majority of the Senate to defeat.

Every Senator knew it was more than surrender; this was the finely chiseled epitaph of a bill to end the poll tax as a means of disfranchising millions of Negroes and poor whites in eight Southern poll-tax States.*

Under musty, dynastic Senate rules, there was no other course left to Alben Barkley. The cloture vote was perfunctory. Only four times in history had the Senate suspended the sacred right of Senate filibusterers to filibuster. This was not one of them. The vote was 37 for limitation of debate; 41 against. (A two-thirds majority is required to invoke cloture.)

Top dogs in the Senate now were acid-tongued, bombastic Tom Connally of Texas, floor manager of the poll-tax State foray; Mississippi's Theodore ("The Man") Bilbo, who once proposed deportation of Negroes to Liberia; Tennessee's bumbling Kenneth McKellar, still chafing from his arrest for dodging Senate attendance (TIME, Nov. 23); and owlish Joseph C. O'Mahoney of Wyoming, only Democratic Senator from a non-poll-tax State to take the floor against constitutionality of the bill. O'Mahoney said he had no love for poll taxes, but their abolition was a job for the States, not the Federal Government.

Proud as a peacock of this last prize display, Tom Connally sent the press gallery a note. It read:

"To the Press: We hope you will give us a break by carrying O'Mahoney's reasons for opposing this bill. CONNALLY."

Below his signature he scribbled:

"They prove we have real grounds for opposing this bill and we are not a mere bunch of legislative ragamuffins."

U.S. Democracy will have to pass on that one later.

*States requiring payment of a poll tax as prerequisite to voting are Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Mississippi, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas and Virginia.

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