The Congress: When Is a Majority a Majority?

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Administration and Senate leadership to accept his suggestions. ∙THE OPPONENTS' STRATEGY. The Democratic opponents of the civil rights bill realize that it will eventually be passed, and they are concentrating their energies on gutting a few key sections. With G.O.P. leaders like Dirksen talking about softening the public accommodations provision, Richard Russell has shifted his fire elsewhere. "The public accommodations section, severe as it is, is not the worst provision of this bill," he says. "There are at least two that I think are much more damaging to our system and would cause a much more violent reaction throughout the country."

One is Title VI, empowering Washington to cut off federal aid from programs where discrimination is practiced. Russell calls this the "genocide clause," insists that it would kill off "a large section of the country"—namely, the Deep South. The other is Title VII, empowering a Federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission to prevent job discrimination based on race, color, religion, national origin or sex (the latter thanks to an amendment offered by House Democrat Howard Smith, more in the spirit of obstruction than of chivalry). Russell contends that the commission would discriminate against what he calls "the average garden variety of American."

Russell has named as his lieutenants Alabama's scholarly Lister Hill, who weighed in with a 33-page speech in the filibuster's first hours; Mississippi's stentorian John C. Stennis; and Louisiana's peppery Allen Ellender, who held the floor for 25 hours, with overnight recesses, during a 1938 filibuster. "I'm 73 now," says Ellender, "but I wouldn't mind trying it again." Also in the ranks: South Carolina's Strom Thurmond, who holds the alltime Senate wind record with an uninterrupted 24-hr. 18-min. speech during the 1957 civil rights debate; North Carolina's Sam Ervin, who is ready with a waist-high pile of books on constitutional law and a heap of stories about Uncle Ephraim and Job Hicks; and Louisiana's Russell Long, whose father Huey once rambled on for 151 hours about the delights of potlikker and corn pones, finally gave up only because his colleagues denied him a "gentleman's quorum" so he could seek out a men's room.

But eventually the Democratic filibuster will end. That will come shortly after Leader Mansfield, having counted noses in his own forces and consulted with Republicans, walks quickly up to Russell and says something like: "Dick, I've got the votes for cloture."

Before he can do that, Mansfield almost certainly will have been forced into making some concessions on specific provisions of the bill. The extent of those concessions, and the strength of the bill in its final form, may go a long way toward answering the question of whether a Democratic majority can control a Democratic Senate.