Races: The President’s Package

After weeks of hemming, hawing, consulting and promising, President Kennedy last week sent to Capitol Hill a package of civil rights legislation. He did so under the pressures of the Negro revolution that was bursting out all over. But once he moved, he moved hard.

Kennedy’s civil rights proposals were the broadest presented by any 20th century President. And he completely committed himself to fight for them. Said he in his message: “The time has come for the Congress of the United States to join with the executive and judicial branches in making it clear to all that race has no place in American life or law … I am proposing that the Congress stay in session this year until it has enacted—preferably as a single omnibus bill—the most responsible, reasonable and urgently needed solutions which should be acceptable to all fair-minded men.”

Kennedy’s major proposals:

> A law guaranteeing equal right of access and accommodation in lodging places, theaters, sports arenas, retail stores, restaurants, lunch counters, etc., that meet any of four conditions: 1) that the establishment’s goods or services are available “to a substantial degree to interstate travelers” (just what was meant by “substantial” was not specified); 2) that a “substantial” portion of its goods move in interstate commerce; 3) that its activities or operations otherwise “substantially affect interstate travel or the interstate movement of goods in commerce”; 4) that it is an “integral part” of an establishment covered by the bill—as, for example, a local concession within a national chain store—meeting any of Conditions 1, 2 and 3.

> Congressional authorization for the Attorney General to initiate school desegregation suits whenever requested to do so by someone who feels himself—whether through financial, political, social or other pressures—unable to sue on his own behalf. In 1957 President Eisenhower asked such powers for his Attorney General and was turned down by a Democratic Senate.

> Permanent, statutory authority for the President’s Committee on Equal Employment Opportunity. Under both Eisenhower and Kennedy, the presidential committee, chaired by Vice Presidents Richard Nixon and Lyndon Johnson, has worked to end racial discrimination in federal employment and among Government contractors. Yet it has been only mildly successful. Given the power of canceling Government contracts to enforce compliance during the Kennedy Administration, it has never used that major weapon. The new request would add congressional approval to what has already been decreed by executive order.

> Establishment of a national Community Relations Service to work for “cooperation and communication between the races.” Such a service, said Kennedy, is “no substitute for other measures; and it cannot guarantee success. But dialogue and discussion are always better than violence.” >Expenditure of an extra $400 million for federal aid in job training and basic adult education. Here Kennedy struck at a real root of the Negro dilemma—and the revolution it has spawned. Wrote he: “A distressing number of unemployed Negroes are illiterate and unskilled, refugees from farm automation, unable to do simple computations or even to read a help-wanted advertisement … If we are ever to lift them from the morass of social and economic degradation, it will be through the strengthening of our education and training services.”

> Passage of a provision “making it clear that the Federal Government is not required, under any statute, to furnish any kind of financial assistance to any program or activity in which racial discrimination occurs.” The decision about when and whether to cut off federal funds would be left to the discretion of the President.

In the racially explosive climate of 1963, there seems a strong likelihood that Congress will approve the President’s program—in part. Almost certainly doomed is the provision to outlaw discrimination in public accommodations under the U.S. Constitution’s interstate commerce clause (with the 14th Amendment tossed in, at the last moment, for good measure). Senate Republican Leader Everett Dirksen, even while agreeing to co-sponsor the rest of the package, flatly refused to back the public-accommodations provision. So did Arizona’s Republican Senator Barry Goldwater, who generally approved of the President’s proposals.

Leave Her Alone. What worried many Congressmen was the possibility that the provision, in the name of civil rights, might be used to override rights of private property. Vermont’s moderate Republican Senator George Aiken expressed it most aptly when he told the President: “I’ll goalong with you on the Waldorf, but I want you to leave Mrs. Murphy alone.” Why, Aiken wanted to know, cannot discrimination be banned in the big places without undermining the right of “Mrs. Murphy”* to run her own little boardinghouse in her own private way? Under what swiftly became known as the “Mrs. Murphy formula,” legislators began talking about the possibility of exempting from the law all facilities with a gross annual revenue of less than $150,000. But even the Mrs. Murphy formula seems unsatisfactory after close examination; it would, after all, subject the right of private property to the dubious test of bigness.

Also under attack was the President’s proposal that he be given discretionary authority to cut off federal funds to any program or project deemed discriminatory. Even the New York Times, which ordinarily supports civil rights propositions of any sort, objected: “The cutting-off of funds for a particular program will deprive all citizens affected (Negro and white) of urgently needed services, thus accentuating the economic deprivation that is a basic cause of racial discrimination. Furthermore, the presence of bias in some states remains so wide spread that the end result might be just what the President says it should not be: withdrawal of all federal aid and the virtual exclusion of the offending state from the Union. That is unacceptable.” For that matter, President Kennedy himself, as recently as last April, summarily rejected a U.S. Civil Rights Commission recommendation that he “explore” cutting off federal funds for Mississippi until that state improves its deplorable civil rights record. G.O.P. Is Key. With the possible exception of the public-accommodation and the federal-funds clauses, the Kennedy package would almost surely be overwhelmingly approved today by both branches of Congress. But the Senate, at least, may never get a chance to vote on the merits of Kennedy’s bill. Southerners are certain to filibuster, and the Senate has never yet imposed cloture against a civil rights talkathon.* For the two-thirds (67 members) vote required for cloture, the Administration will need support this time from at least 20 Republicans. It may well get that support —but only if it tailors its bill to meet Republican objections.

Even then, the civil rights legislation faces vast hazards—and, ironically, Negroes themselves may turn the tide in a way that they least desire. Last week, for example, Harlem’s Democratic Representative Adam Clayton Powell Jr. made a West Coast speech touting the Administration proposals, boasted (falsely) that he had authored at least half the package himself. Since Powell is the most unpopular person on Capitol Hill, his claim may lose votes for his cause. Beyond that, the leaders of several civil rights organizations have recently urged a massive Negro march on Capitol Hill to demand passage of the President’s legislation. It is unanimously agreed by legislators of all political stripes that any such pressuring attempt might mean the death of the whole package.

* Aiken was talking about all modest business proprietors, had no particular Mrs. Murphy in mind. Indeed, near his own home town of Putney, the rooming-house operator most closely meeting his definition is a Mrs. Carl Underwood, 78, whose $5-a-night place can lodge 18 at a time. * Last August, however, cloture was invoked against a handful of liberal Democratic Senators filibustering against an Administration bill to establish a communications satellite corporation owned partly by private interests.