With George & Sam on Capitol Hill

Southerners kept up their hearing-room attacks on the Administration's civil rights proposals last week, firing away from both sides of the committee table.

Before the Senate Commerce Committee appeared Alabama's Governor George Wallace, known to the U.S. as the man who made a wilted and unsuccessful stand against segregation last month by placing himself in a doorway at the University of Alabama. In his testimony Wallace followed the line that Mississippi's Governor Ross Barnett had taken before the committee a week earlier: the integration movement is part of a Communist conspiracy to destroy the U.S.

"Is the real purpose to disarm this country as the Communists have planned?" Wallace cried. "As a loyal American and as a loyal Southern Governor who has never belonged to or associated with any subversive element, I resent the fawning and pawing over such people as Martin Luther King and his pro-Communist friends and associates." As a parting whack, Wallace accused the U.S. Air Force of "encouraging its personnel to engage in street demonstrations with rioting mobs." Perhaps, he added, "we will now see Purple Hearts awarded for street brawling."*

One-Man Filibuster. A far more formidable Administration opponent than Wallace was North Carolina's able Democratic Senator Sam Ervin Jr., a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee. A graduate of Harvard Law School and a onetime associate justice of North Carolina's Supreme Court, witty, folksy Senator Ervin is a respected constitutional lawyer. Using his wit, his folksiness, and his knowledge of law, he put on a sort of one-man filibuster in the Judiciary Committee hearing room.

When Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy arrived to testify, Ervin announced that he had a few words to say first. It would take a little while, Sam warned. "I'd have to talk very rapidly to finish it in an hour." With that, Bobby amiably picked up his briefcase and departed.

Not for just an hour, however. It took two days of committee sessions for Ervin to speak his piece. Before a standing-room-only crowd, Ervin launched into a section-by-section attack on the whole civil rights package, which he called "as drastic and indefensible a proposal as has ever been submitted to this Congress." He even opposed the idea of setting up a federal mediation service to adjudicate racial disputes. "We've got the Civil Rights Commission to agitate and the Civil

Rights Division of the Justice Department to aggravate, and now they want a mediation service to conciliate."

Background of Violence. At last Ervin sat back to give Bobby Kennedy his turn. As he had done in his testimony before the Commerce Committee, the Attorney General argued the urgency of civil rights legislation against the background of continuing civil rights demonstrations that often lead to violent clashes. "Even as we sit here today," he said, "National Guardsmen patrol the streets of Cambridge, Md., to prevent violence. Unrest is boiling in Savannah, Ga., in Danville, Va., and in countless other cities in the North as well as the South."

When Bobby finished, Ervin took over like a law professor tutoring a student:

Ervin: Mr. Attorney General, would you summarize in a brief way why the founding fathers decided to have a written Constitution in the U.S. rather than an unwritten Constitution as in England?

Kennedy: They wanted to assure that individual citizens would know what their rights and responsibilities would be, and also their relationship with their Government.

Ervin: Aren't you asking us to approve these bills because we're having troubled times and demonstrations?

Kennedy: That's not correct, Senator.

Ervin: Would you deny that the demonstrations influenced your decision to offer this legislation?

Kennedy: No, but the reason we need the legislation is not because of the demonstrations but because injustices exist that need remedying.

There were not enough hours for Ervin to complete his joust with Bobby. This week they will meet again across the committee table. For how long? Well, smiled Ervin, "it depends on his answers to some of my questions. I haven't got started yet. I've just got through the preamble. Since we're going to be here until Christmas Eve or thereabouts, we can go about this matter with a certain amount of calmness and slowness"--he paused an instant for effect--"and deliberate speed."

* Wallace was only partly right. The Air Force had permitted its men to participate in racial demonstrations if they did so while in civilian clothes and off duty. But as a result of Wallace's complaint, Defense Secretary McNamara quickly issued an order, which, in addition to reiterating the civilian-clothes and off-duty rules, forbade participation if such activities amount to a breach of law and order, or when "violence is reasonably likely to result."

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