ALABAMA: Family Seat

When President Roosevelt last fortnight nominated Alabama’s Senator Hugo La Fayette Black as an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court, it raised two questions: 1) how readily the Senate would confirm the appointment, and 2) who would get the vacated seat in the Senate. Last week both were answered.

First question was quickly settled. The Senate took a full day for lively debate on Senator Black’s fitness, then confirmed him, 63-10-16. Two days later. Hugo Black went to lunch at the White House, emerged with his commission as an Associate Justice neatly wrapped in a cardboard cylinder. Said he to reporters: “. . . I suppose I said thank you.”*

Second question was settled when day after the Senate’s confirmation of Hugo Black, Alabama’s Governor Bibb Graves left Montgomery by plane for Washington. On the plane with him was his wife, whose maiden name was Dixie Bibb. At Washington, “Miss Dixie” was greeted by a crowd of friends and reporters. Said one: “I want to shake hands with a woman Senator.” Said Mrs. Graves in her gracious Alabamian accent: “You’d better go up to the Capitol and see Miss’ Caraway. She’s the only woman Senator.”

Next day, Governor Graves called at Senator Black’s office, accepted his resignation, came out to tell reporters what by this time was no surprise: that he had appointed Mrs. Graves to fill the Black vacancy. Said he: “I think she can fill any job anybody could fill.” Just in time to give its members a chance to see what she looked like, the fourth woman Senator—after Georgia’s Rebecca Felton who served 22 hours in 1922; Hattie Caraway who served from her husband’s death in 1931 to date; and Rose McConnell Long who, following Huey’s assassination, served until last January—Dixie Graves was sworn in and seated.

Behind Governor Graves’s appointment of Senatress Graves lay the peculiarities of Alabama’s Constitution, which forbids its Governors from running for the Senate until a year after their terms expire, and requires them in case of a Senate vacancy to call a special election “forthwith.” Thus out of the running himself, the Governor did what was best calculated to please everyone else: 1) set the election date for April 26, 1938, which will enable any of Alabama’s Congressmen to have a fling at it and, if defeated, to run for re-election to their present seats the following fall; 2) appointed a Senator who will not endanger any aspirant’s chances by running for reelection; 3) brought a $10,000-a-year job and $12,000 a year of clerk hire into the Graves family for a few months at least. Minnesota’s Republican Representative Knutson sarcastically spoke many a Congressional mind by hoping that in picking clerks she would “not be forced to go outside the family.”

After a good look at Dixie Graves, shocked Washingtonians decided that Governor Graves might have made a worse appointment, that besides being her husband’s cousin, she was at least fully his equal in political sophistication. During his 30-odd years in politics and two terms as Governor, she has been a tireless clubwoman. She belongs to United Daughters of the Confederacy, American Legion Auxiliary, Alabama Federation of Women’s Clubs, Women’s Christian Temperance Union, and Montgomery’s literary, “No Name” Club. Besides a salary almost twice that of her husband, her perquisites will include free beauty parlor service (instead of free barbering for male Senators). Said Senator Graves last week: “My husband and I think as soon as the primary’s over . . . I ought to retire. . . . I believe in women in politics, too. . . . Social legislation, the budget, regulatory legislation—it’s all a larger kind of housekeeping. . . .”

* Unlikely to prevent Hugo Black from sitting as a Supreme Court Justice were two petitions addressed to the Court last week by onetime Special Assistant Attorney General Albert Levitt and Boston Lawyer Patrick Henry Kelley, both based on points already threshed out by the Senate: that no vacancy exists on the Supreme Court because Justice Willis Van Devanter did not resign but merely retired, and that, even if a vacancy existed, ex-Senator Black could not fill it since he was a member of the Senate when it guaranteed full pay to retired Justices last winter.