PLATFORMS: Something to Live With

Room 115 of the Sheraton-Blackstone Hotel was air-conditioned, but the occupants were not: they were the 16 members of the Democratic Platform Committee’s drafting subcommittee. Early in the morning, after more than four hours of wrangling, softened and moderated by Massachusetts’ John W. McCormack, the Democrats’ civil-rights plank was nailed down. The subcommittee had handled the blazing Supreme Court issue in the spirit of unity, compromise, and remarkable consideration for each others’ regional problems.

“Recent decisions of the Supreme Court relating to segregation,” read the crucial paragraph, “have brought consequences of vast importance to our nation as a whole and especially to communities directly affected. We reject all proposals for the use of force to interfere with the orderly determination of these matters by the courts . . . [The Supreme Court’s decisions] are part of the law of the land.”

Outside Pressure. For Mississippi’s Governor James Plemon Coleman, who led the five-man Southern wing of the subcommittee over the rough flooring of the plank, the results were “palatable”; i.e., the plank was not shoved down his throat. His willingness to negotiate had kept the committee from blowing up altogether. But he and his fellow Southerners were sure of one thing: they would not countenance a change in the wording that would indicate any pledge to implement the Supreme Court’s decision. This settled, John McCormack called for a vote at 2:45 a.m. For the record, the solid South dutifully voted against the plank, knowing full well that it would carry 11-5. It did.

No sooner had Chairman McCormack solved his problems within the room than he ran into a violent and unexpected pressure buildup outside. A band of Northern civil-rights warriors, dogmatically certain that any compromise was bad, caught John McCormack before he got to bed. At the head of the band were Michigan’s Governor G. Mennen (“Soapy”) Williams (who comes up for re-election this year, must deal with powerful Negro and auto worker groups in Michigan), New York City’s Mayor Bob Wagner, and lesser partisans of the N.A.A.C.P., A.D.A. and other civil-rights groups. They demanded to know what the plank said. McCormack politely refused to tell them.

“Thank You, John.” Far into the morning the unhappy warriors, bossed by A.F.L.-C.I.O.’s Walter Reuther, fanned out in a relentless search for a copy of the plank. At length they got it; when the subcommittee presented its plank to the full platform committee, a civil-rights agent smuggled out a penciled version of the wording. Now Reuther & Co. set earnestly to work. Nothing would suit the band except the insertion of a sentence in the plank reading, “We pledge to carry out these [Supreme Court] decisions,” and the addition of a paragraph from the 1952 platform calling for federal civil-rights legislation, all poison to the South. (Reuther later was willing to concede that the McCormack plank was “something I could live with.”) The Reuther group spent most of the day getting 14 (out of 108) members of the platform committee to sign a minority report.

That night, as the minority report and the prospects of a party-shaking civil-rights fight loomed over the convention, the opposing forces gathered for spirited arguments in caucus rooms, back halls, finally behind the rostrum. When these sessions brought no peace, McCormack shrewdly allotted 30 minutes for debate: 20 minutes for his plank and only 10 minutes for the Reuther crowd. Georgia’s Governor Marvin Griffin asked McCormack for permission to debate the South’s point of view. “Hell no,” retorted McCormack. “We need all our time to fight the boys who are trying to make the plank tougher.” Griffin well understood. Said he affably: “Thank you, John. I’ll just tell the boys that Yankee sonofabitch wouldn’t give me any time.”

Others were not so amiable. Cried Virginia’s ex-Governor John Battle: “Damn it. We made a bargain and we will stick to it, but we won’t give another inch.” Plaintively, North Carolina’s Senator Sam Ervin complained: “I have surrendered four times . . . Now they want me to surrender a fifth time. Not even General Lee had to surrender more than once.”

“I Can Tell.” There was no surrender. The insurgents pinned all their hopes on a roll-call vote, but they exhausted themselves trying to round up the necessary backing, threw in the towel when even Harry Truman spoke up against them. McCormack loyalists had pushed through the hall to soothe such rights-conscious states as New York, Illinois, Michigan, Pennsylvania, California. When he sensed that there was no more spirit for fight, Mister Sam cocked ear and gavel for a voice vote on the minority report, ruled correctly that the noes had it. As critics yelled from the floor, Sam flipped his gavel like a menacing Peter Lorre, declared: “I have taken the ayes and noes many times, and I think I can tell.” That done, he got a quick vote on the whole platform, and John McCormack trudged wearily off to his first bed rest in 19 hours.

Over the rest of their prolix, 12,000-word platform, the Democrats had little difficulty, called predictably for high, rigid farm price supports (aiming toward 100% of parity), increased tax exemptions, repeal of Taft-Hartley, etc., demanded arms for Israel, internationalization of the Suez. The unexpected sleeper: a strong hint that the Democratic Party looks favorably on protectionism, might like to abandon its historic support of free trade.