Friendly Filibuster

The U.S. Senate had resigned itself to a few more days of filibuster when suddenly there came a stillness--and then it was all over before anyone could say Appomattox. By a vote of 77-16, the Senate approved a constitutional amendment to abolish the poll tax for voting in federal elections.

Of eleven states that put the poll tax on the books around the turn of the century, only five retain it--Alabama, Arkansas. Mississippi, Virginia and Texas.

Arguing against the amendment, Southern Democrats knew from the start that their cause was hopeless, yet they were determined to have their say for the benefit of the folks back home. Confident that he had the votes to pass the measure, Majority Leader Mike Mansfield was willing to let the Southern Democrats talk on, without applying any pressures. His sternest moves were to schedule the first Saturday session of the year and to start all sessions at 9 a.m. instead of noon.

For ten days the filibuster continued in friendly fashion. Then the Southerners ran out of words, and the sponsor of the amendment, Florida's Spessard Holland, rose to deliver the death blow. A Southern conservative, Holland had led the successful campaign to repeal the poll tax in his own state in 1937; since 1949 he has annually introduced an anti-poll-tax amendment in the Senate. Holland moved that the Senate take up a resolution to make a national monument of Alexander Hamilton's house in New York City.

When his motion was approved, Holland moved that the language of the anti-poll-tax amendment be substituted for the language of the Hamilton resolution.

The maneuver was necessary to bring the poll-tax amendment to a Senate vote; the actual bill was tied up in the Judiciary Committee, chaired by Mississippi's James O. Eastland. Holland's tactics stirred the brief wrath of Georgia's Richard Russell, leader of the fight against the amendment. Cried Russell: "We are adopting an absurd, farfetched, irrational, unreasonable and unconstitutional method to get this amendment." Then Russell subsided and Holland's motion carried.

With that, Mansfield began scouting around to see if any Southerners wanted to resume the filibuster. "We were careful to check all of those fellows," said Democratic Whip Hubert Humphrey, "so that they couldn't complain that we'd tried to rush them. We asked John Stennis and Lister Hill and all the rest. But none of them was going to have any more to say." After the lopsided final Senate vote, the amendment was sent to the House; if approved by two-thirds of the members, it will still require ratification by three-fourths of the state legislatures before becoming the 24th Amendment to the Constitution.

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