Civil-Rights Victory

Stepping back a pace for a longer look at the heated House battle over the Administration's civil-rights bill. Minority Leader Joe Martin quickly realized that his work was cut out for him. The Southerners were concentrating their fire on a single point: the provision that a federal judge may order an end to interference with civil rights (including voting), thus also punish violators of his order for contempt of court. Bound on gutting the bill, Southern legislators rallied around an amendment taking contempt punishment out of the judge's hands and putting it in the hands of a jury. The trial-by-jury cry, a ,pretty good rabble-rouser, stirred up so much emotion that many a conservative Midwest Republican found it a handy pretext for joining Southern Democrats on the amendment.

Joe Martin's job. obviously, was to offset this cornfield maneuvering with cloakroom argument. So effective were his efforts that, when the decisive vote finally came last week, the Southern Democrat-Midwest Republican coalition was punctured and the trial-by-jury amendment collapsed with it, 199-167.

The Forgotten Man. Martin's strategy was simple. Aware that Virginia's Howard Smith and his hundred sympathizers were driving for quick consideration of the amendment before emotion wore off, Martin forced a delay. The extra time not only allowed him to win back some doubting Republicans but stretched the Southern arguments too thin. Virginia's Smith could only send in additional orators to rehash the same old points. The atmosphere in the air-conditioned chamber gradually changed from interest to boredom to sweltering bitterness.

The Southerners managed to outflank Joe Martin only once. Determined to find a conservative Republican who would introduce the trial-by-jury amendment for them, they lighted on Illinois' Freshman Russell Watson Keeney of Wheaton. It was Keeney who sponsored an amendment guaranteeing jury trials in criminal (but not civil) contempt proceedings. But when, at the climax of the ten-day debate, the amendment came to a vote, Joe Martin coolly predicted that he would lose no more than 40 Republicans. He actually lost 39 on the 199-167 tally.

With the House firmly on record on civil rights, Senate backers were ready with a strategy for taking the Administration bill directly to the Senate floor, thus bypassing the Senate Judiciary Committee chairman, Mississippi's James O. Eastland, and his Senate civil-rights bill guaranteeing trial by jury. Even if successful, this strategy could hardly bypass the Senate's proud penchant for unlimited debate. Probable outcome: more Southern oratory and a full-dess Senate filibuster that could doom civil-rights legislation for still another session.

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