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<text> <title> (64 Elect) Civil Rights Bill:The Final Vote </title> <history> TIME--The Weekly Newsmagazine--1964 Election </history> <link 11450> <link 11454> <link 03265> <link 15510><article> <source>Time Magazine</source> <hdr> June 26, 1964 THE CONGRESS The Final Vote </hdr> <body> On June 19, 1963, President John Kennedy sent to Congress a civil rights bill, urged its speedy passage "not merely for reasons of economic efficiency, world diplomacy or domestic tranquility, but above all because it is right." Last week, a year later to the very day, the U.S. Senate by a vote of 73-27 passed that bill--considerably changed and strengthened. The bill's opponents died hard. They brought up amendment after amendment, not in any expectation that the changes would be adopted, but rather as a time-consuming effort to delay the moment of truth. In one day, the Senate had 34 roll calls, an all-time record. Such was the pace that at one point a pro-civil rights Senator rushed onto the floor, heard his name called, shouted "nay," then turned to a colleague and asked just what it was he had voted against. In all, 115 amendments were voted on between cloture and the final vote, and only one of any great substance was approved. That was the package written by Republican Leader Everett Dirksen and approved by Democratic Senate and Administration leaders. All About Mammy. Under the terms of cloture, voted the week before, each Senator was limited to a total of one hour of speechmaking on all motions. Thus the day before the final vote, Georgia Democrat Richard Russell, leader of the filibustering forces, ran out of time, was ordered to sit down. He did so, with tears in his eyes: "We have fought the good fight until we were overwhelmed and gagged." But even with Russell out of action, the bitter battle continued. Just a few hours before the vote, Louisiana Democrat Russell Long, in one of those some-of-my-best-friends- are-Negroes statements, recalled how he had been reared by a "Negro mammy." The phrase enraged Rhode Island Democrat John Pastore. "We don't just want to protect your mammy," he said. "We want to protect everybody's mammy. We want to fix it so that a Negro woman can go into a drugstore and get a glass of water when she is thirsty. That's what this bill is about." At that point, Florida Democrat George Smathers got into the act, shouting at Pastore: "Not one word does the Senator from Rhode Island know what he is talking about! She could go into any drugstore and get a drink of water." Moreover, Smathers continued, there is discrimination in the North as well as the South, so Pastore had no right "to get so holy and mighty about this." Retorted Pastore: "Well, if you have no segregation and discrimination, then you don't need to worry about this bill." In their final, last-gasp effort, the Southern segregationists made a motion that could have required the Senate clerk to read the record of the entire 68-day "legislative day" since formal debate on the bill began--some 6,000,000 words in all. The motion was defeated, 73 to 18, and at long last it was time for the historic vote. Acid in the Pool. In the showdown, 46 Democrats voted for the bill, while 21 voted against it. Twenty-seven Republicans voted aye, while only six said no. In addition to Barry Goldwater, the dissident Republicans were New Hampshire's Norris Cotton, Iowa's Bourke Hickenlooper, New Mexico's Edwin Mechem, Wyoming's Milward Simpson and Texas' John Tower. Although the civil rights bill must next go to the House, little difficulty or delay is anticipated in reconciling the Senate and House versions. That done, it is expected that President Johnson will ceremoniously sign the bill into law on or about the Fourth of July. The bill's voting guarantees must wait for an election before being fully tested. The ban on discrimination in employment and labor unions does not become effective for a year. But effective immediately, and likely to cause the fastest fireworks, is the wide-ranging public accommodations section. Civil rights leaders were yearning to start testing that section. And even as the final Senate vote approached, there was no indication in St. Augustine, Fla., of what the summer might hold. There, five Negroes and two white fellow demonstrators dived into the swimming pool at the segregated Monson Motor Lodge. The motel manager, furious, grabbed two jugs of muriatic acid, a cleansing agent, tried unsuccessfully to splash the stuff on the swimmers. Cops moved in, one of them stripped off his shoes and socks, leaped gracelessly into the water and pummeled the swimmers with his fists. When the fracas was over, 34 people, including the swimmers and other civil righters who kept dry, were hauled off to jail. One Man's Stand Rarely has one man's vote been watched so closely as Barry Goldwater's on the civil rights bill. He had thought about it long and hard. "I really wanted to be able to vote for the bill," he told a newsman. "This week I've asked every lawyer friend I know to show me some constitutional justification for it. The answer is always: `All you can say is that you feel a majority of the people are for it, and so you're going to vote for it on that basis.' But that's not enough. I just can't go along with just that." Goldwater had consistently sided with Democratic segregationists in their proposed amendments to the measure. Now he had decided to vote against the bill itself. But first he had to explain his stand in a Senate speech. Police State? Reading rapidly and tonelessly, Goldwater declared that he had always been "unalterably opposed to discrimination." But he insisted that the real remedy lay in the good will in the human heart. The legislation that reached the Senate after passage in the House, he said, was produced by "sledge-hammer political tactics." He had hoped that it would be modified by "what was once considered to be the greatest deliberative body on earth." But it was apparent "that emotion and political pressure, not persuasion, not common sense, not deliberation, had become the rule of the day and of the processes of this great body." The Senate, he charged, had ignored the Constitution and "the fundamental concepts of our governmental system. My basic objection to this measure is, therefore, constitutional." Goldwater was bitter about the bill's public accommodations and fair employment provisions. These, he warned, would require the creation of a federal police force of mammoth proportions, would result in a "police state" and an "informer" psychology--"neighbors spying on neighbors, workers spying on workers, businessmen spying on businessmen, where those who would harass their fellow citizens for selfish and narrow purposes will have ample inducement to do so." "The Real Concern". Even Goldwater's harshest critics agreed that he was taking his stand on the basis of conviction, letting the political chips fall where they might. But his vote did demonstrate dramatically just how far he is removed from the mainstream of U.S. and Republican Party thinking. The civil rights bill was, after all, the product of national demand in the light of the Negro revolution of 1963 and '64. Republican platforms and declarations of principle have long been strong for civil rights. In the House of Representatives, Republican Leader Charles Halleck had gone down the line for the bill, and 138 out of 172 voting Republicans approved it. In the Senate, G.O.P. Leader Dirksen was the main architect of amending the bill into its final form, and Barry was one of a mere six Republican Senators who finally voted against it. Goldwater was, of course, aware of all this, but he felt that in good conscience he had no choice. Concluded he in his justification speech: "If my vote is misconstrued, let it be, and let me suffer its consequences. Just let me be judged in this by the real concern I have voiced here and not by words that others may speak or by what others may say about what I think." </body> </article> </text>