Races: The Long March

(6 of 9)

The Administration's political approach to the civil rights issue has, in fact, satisfied nobody. Were a presidential election held today, President Kennedy would probably lose several Southern states to, say, Conservative Republican Barry Goldwater. At the same time, Negroes are out of sorts with the Administration. Early last week Kennedy's old friend, Martin Luther King Jr., comparing the Kennedy record on civil rights with that of the Eisenhower Administration, said the New Frontier had merely substituted "an inadequate approach for a miserable one." In New York, Whitney M. Young Jr., executive director of the National Urban League, declared that it was time for the President to "place human rights above regional politics" and to "exhibit the kind of guts that he himself described in his book, Profiles in Courage." Author Baldwin has charged the Administration with "spinelessness," and has demanded that the Kennedys take a moral position and stop playing politics."

Such criticisms plainly dictated a shift in Administration strategy. In mid-May the President announced that he would soon send a package of civil rights measures to Congress. Since then the debut has been twice postponed while Justice Department lawyers worked over the details. Scheduled to be dispatched to Capitol Hill this week, the President's package consists of four proposals that would: 1) extend the life of the Civil Rights Commission for four years, 2) fortify voting rights, 3) give the Attorney General broadened authority to intervene in school-segregation cases, 4) ban discrimination in hotels, motels and restaurants.

This legislative bundle is sure to bring on a Southern filibuster in the Senate. Once filibuster begins, the fate of the Administration bills will be up to Senate Republicans. To shut off the filibuster, Democratic leadership in the Senate must try to invoke cloture, which requires a two-thirds majority, or 67 votes. Since only 40-odd Democrats can be expected to vote for cloture, the Administration will need 20-odd Republican votes. To rally those Republican votes, President Kennedy last week talked long and earnestly to G.O.P. congressional leaders. He also called in former President Dwight Eisenhower for a talk. Earlier that same day, Ike had told a group of congressional Republicans that "passing a whole bundle of laws" would not solve the civil rights problem, and he repeated the same thought to Kennedy.

Eisenhower also seemed to suspect that the Democratic Administration would give Republicans none of the political credit for passage of civil rights legislation—but would love to blame the G.O.P. for failure. Late last week, in a scathing speech to a Republican group gathered at Hershey, Pa., Ike said: "To Republicans, 'the rights of men' is a living doctrine. To our opponents, it is a campaign catchphrase, a political gimmick to be cunningly exploited as part of the great mosaic which presents a public but deceitful image, known far and wide as concern for the common man—protection of the poor—champion of the people."