Fanning the Air

Standing at his desk on the Democratic side of the Senate, Mississippi's John C. Stennis orated in rich, sonorous tones about how public opinion was turning against the civil rights bill. "I believe," he boomed, "the proponents of this bill are beaten because they haven't got the votes." To that, Minne sota Democrat Hubert Humphrey, who is floor-managing the bill for the Administration, had a ready reply. "There is only one way to find out," said Humphrey. "Let the Senate vote on it."

Smear Specialists. That is precisely what the South's indefatigable speechifiers have been trying to prevent, for in a straight vote a majority of the Senate would probably approve the bill in quick time. To keep the measure from coming to a vote, the Southerners are determined to talk until the Senate adjourns for the G.O.P. presidential Convention in July, and they are off to a pretty good start. The House required only nine days to debate, amend and pass the bill. The Senate has spent better than twelve windy days merely debating a motion on whether to consider it. Complained Humphrey: "We are doing little more than fanning the air."

What further disturbed the pro-rights Senators was the rising tide of anti-rights letters pouring into their mailboxes. Much of it, apparently, was spurred by a racist advertisement placed in 200 U.S. newspapers by the anti-civil rights Coordinating Committee for Fundamental American Freedoms, Inc.,* and headlined $100 BILLION BLACKJACK. California Republican Thomas Kuchel said his mail reads 5-1 against the bill; New York Republican Kenneth Keating's swung from 5-1 in favor to 5-2 against this month. Mail to Midwestern and Rocky Mountain Senators was running as high as 10-1 against the bill.

Dead of Drought. Meanwhile, Southern Senators were performing their traditional sentry duties. One day it was Georgia's Richard Russell, who passed the time by reviving a musty notion of his--a $1.5 billion scheme to distribute Negroes equally among the 50 states (they now account for only 0.1% of the population of Vermont and North Dakota, but 42% in Mississippi). On St. Patrick's Day, it was South Carolina's Strom Thurmond. Sporting a dewy green carnation in his buttonhole, he rose to speak a few words, and by the time he was finished, five hours and 40 minutes later, the carnation was surely dead of drought. On still another occasion, it was North Carolina's Sam Ervin, who jawed for three hours and 39 minutes without a note to prop him.

Some time this week the Southerners are expected to give in and let the bill come to the floor. Then they will begin to filibuster in earnest. But yet another delay is in prospect. Just for form's sake, Oregon's Wayne Morse, a pro-rights man, believes the bill ought to go to the Judiciary Committee, headed by Mississippi Segregationist James O. Eastland, with instructions that it be returned in ten days. In Eastland's hands, a civil rights bill has the approximate survival quotient of a snowball in the Sahara: 121 such measures have been referred to the Judiciary Committee since 1953, and precisely one has found its way back to the Senate--and that only because there were specific orders that it be returned. Civil rights supporters feel that Eastland would send this one back, since he would have no choice, but it would be so maimed by crippling amendments that it would take weeks to nurse the bill back into shape.

*An outfit headed by Publisher William Loeb of the Manchester, N.H., Union Leader, a far-right supporter of Barry Goldwater, and Lawyer John C. Satterfield of Yazoo City, Miss., a former head of the American Bar Association and an avowed states' righter. Much of the committee's money comes from the publicly financed Mississippi State Sovereignty Commission.

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