Changed Climate

In 1964, when the nation was appalled by the brutal treatment of Negro demonstrators at the hands of white Southern police, the Senate for the first time invoked cloture to pass a civil rights bill. Again in 1965, a Senate filibuster was choked off, and the voting rights bill became law. This year the climate has changed. Against the backdrop of violence that has engulfed Negro slums from Cleveland to Atlanta, many Americans are troubled by the implications of the black-power movement. Their mood is not, to say the least, strongly sympathetic to a civil rights bill that in some ways is more controversial than any of its predecessors.

The bill, backed by the Administration, would prohibit discrimination in the selection of federal and state juries, enable the Attorney General to initiate school-desegregation suits, and forbid intimidation or physical harm of civil rights workers or of voters. It would also forbid discrimination in the sale or rental of housing by anyone selling or leasing more than three units (other than their own house) in any one year. It is this provision that prompted Senate Minority Leader Everett Dirksen to oppose the law as "unconstitutional" and refuse to put his enormous prestige behind the measure. When the Democratic leadership tried to bring the bill to the floor, it took two days even to muster a quorum.

Hitting North. So incensed was Majority Leader Mike Mansfield by his colleagues' purposeful absenteeism that he threatened to have the sergeant at arms arrest recalcitrant Senators and dragoon them onto the floor. After this warning, a quorum finally materialized, and the bill was accepted for debate. However, having reluctantly answered the quorum call, most Senators, Republican and Democratic alike, quickly disappeared again. Since a recess can be demanded whenever 51 members can not be rounded up for a roll call, and since 51 Senators could rarely be rounded up last week, Southerners primed for filibuster were able to save their breath.

"There is a cyclonic enthusiasm for something other than this bill," said Dirksen. The housing clause would be the first civil rights legislation to hit harder north of the Mason-Dixon line than south of it. From New York to Los Angeles, the law's provision would strike at thousands of entrenched white neighborhoods like the Chicago suburb where whites battled Negro marchers this summer. Few Senators are anxious to go on record in support of the bill, and many Negro leaders, who hoped for a much tougher housing clause, maintain that it is so watered down as not to be worth the battle. Though the bill may stay alive for another week or so, it has no hope of passage this year.

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