National Affairs: War Between the States

Louisiana Democrats last week fired the first salvo in the internecine war that will harass Democrats in general and National Chairman Paul M. Butler in particular right through the 1960 presidential election. In Baton Rouge the state committee, in a raucous, televised session, fired their national committeeman, Camille F. Gravel, Jr., 43. Grounds: Lawyer Gravel loyally supported the national party's civil rights platform.

In Washington National Chairman Butler, already worried over the Orval Faubus effect on northern Negro voters, quickly supported Gravel for his "integrity, candor and intelligence," snapped that the National Committee, which rules on its own membership, will keep Gravel in office until the 1960 convention. Louisiana's U.S. Senator Russell Long, in turn, noted pointedly that the State Committee decides who shall be called a Democrat on the ballot—a strong suggestion that Louisiana might turn thumbs down on the presidential and vice presidential candidates if the rebels do not get their way.

In Jackson, Miss. House Speaker Sam Rayburn, a Texas Democrat who had spent years trying to make the Democratic tent big enough for both North and South, refused to discuss segregation ("I don't think it would be helpful to talk about it"), attempted to turn the anger of 800 fund-raising Democrats against Republicans. The Mississippians refused to be distracted, gave their biggest applause to the cry of State Chairman Bidwell Adams: "I want to tell the honorable Speaker and everyone else that I am not a milk-chocolate Democrat. I am an old-line Democrat, who is not even about to drink the dregs left by Soapy Williams or any other liberal. I am tired of furnishing a back for them to practice their bullwhip lessons on."