Nation: Filibuster

When whites get into arguments about segregation, an old question almost inevitably comes up: “Would you want your sister to marry one?” In nearly half the states of the union, she couldn’t if she wanted to: in the way would stand a law prohibiting marriage between whites and Negroes.

At President Kennedy’s press conference last week, a newsman asked him whether he would “seek to abrogate” state antimiscegenation laws. Confronted with this touchy question the President put on a sort of nonsyntactical filibuster: “Well, I, the law would, if there was a marriage of the kind you described, I would assume that, and if any legal action was taken against the party then I, they would have a relief, it would seem to me, in the courts, and it would be carried, I presume, to the higher courts depending on the judgment so that the laws themselves would be affected by the ultimate decision of the Supreme Court. So that I think that there are legal remedies for any abuses in this field now available.”