An organized campaign of resistance developed in the state to the 1957 civil rights proposals. Appearing for South Carolina before the Judiciary Committee of the national House of Representatives were Senator Thurmond; Representative Dorn; state Representative Robert E. McNair of Allendale, chairman of the South Carolina House Judiciary Committee; Thomas A. Pope of Newberry, former state House Speaker, currently chairman of the South Carolina Bar Association Executive Committee; state Representative James A. Spruill from Cheraw, member of the House Education Committee; and Columbia attorney Clint T. Graydon. Each in turn made impassioned pleas that the bill not be passed and that the South be left alone to deal with the race problem as it saw fit. Their arguments were generally based on legalistic and constitutional grounds.[482] They gave increased significance to a statement by Morning News editor O’Dowd that in the South democracy and states rights had come to mean that all men were equal but some less equal than others.
Commenting on the testimony of the state’s representatives the News and Courier said that South Carolina could “be proud” of its legislators and private citizens who spoke before the committee. “Clarity, honesty, dignity and understanding” characterized their addresses. “South-haters picture Southerners as Stone Age men, roughnecks and demagogues. They must have been bitterly disappointed when our spokesmen, in cool, intelligent tones, warned of perils threatening freedom in all 48 states.”[483]
South Carolina’s delegation in Congress opposed the civil rights bill in toto but they were unhappily aware they could not prevent passage of an act in 1957. Senate majority leader Lyndon Johnson, it is rumored, had told Southern Senators in January that a bill was going to be enacted and that they had better forget about their usual “corn and pot liquor” arguments and consider the legislation on its own merits.[484] Under such circumstances the strategy of Southerners in Congress was to take a last ditch stand against the most vulnerable of the bill’s provisions, namely that violators of Federal court orders be subject to punishment by a judge of the court without benefit of jury trial. By insisting on a jury trial amendment to the bill, the Southerners could present themselves as the real defenders of civil rights.
Yet the spectacle of the Southerners in Congress presenting themselves as champions of jury trials was ironic in light of the fact that jury trials were not guaranteed those similarly accused in state courts. South Carolina law, for example, provided that disobedience of a court order “may be punished by a judge as for a contempt.” Also, circuit courts might punish “by fine or imprisonment, at the discretion of the court, all contempts of authority in any cause or hearing before the same.”[485]
Both in the House of Representatives and the Senate South Carolina’s delegation fought a last ditch battle for total rejection of the civil rights bill. Speaking for his fellow House members from South Carolina, Representative Dorn argued that the bill was not needed and that it would further centralize power in Washington and pave the way for a “federal dictatorship.” Nor would South Carolina representatives accept any part of the jury trial compromise, said Dorn. An identical opinion came from Senator Thurmond who believed it “entirely wrong to make any concession on the jury trial amendment or any part of the bill.” The Constitution, he said, “specifically provides for jury trials in all criminal cases and the Constitution cannot be compromised.” Senator Johnston was equally adamant. He complained of not having been consulted on the compromise measure and accused the leadership in both the House and the Senate of high-handed and illegal procedures. In the closing debate on the bill Johnston declared: “The cornerstone of human liberty is being shattered.... This is the most backward looking, retrogressive compromise that has ever issued from any self-appointed committee within my knowledge, memory, or understanding.”[486]
Both South Carolina representatives and other Southern members of the Congress were engaged in a fruitless struggle. The civil rights bill, largely rewritten by Democratic senators and their advisers, was accepted by the House of Representatives which previously had approved a more stringent Administration measure. With this hurdle surmounted, only Senate approval remained. Since Reconstruction days, however, the Senate had been the graveyard for civil rights bills.
South Carolina political leaders continued to hope that the Senate would perform its traditional role and that Southern senators in general and their own in particular would resort to the filibuster, the ultimate weapon of beleaguered minorities. They clung to this hope in face of the fact that the Democratic leadership in the Senate had exacted an agreement from a caucus of Southern senators against use of such a tactic. Yet South Carolinians knew that a filibuster at best would merely delay passage of the bill and at worst invoke a move for cloture and result in the adoption of a more drastic act.[487]
True to form, Governor Timmerman called on “American citizens ... to demand that their representatives stand up and fight for what is right or step aside and let there be elected men with political courage who will.” The bill, he charged, was a “sell-out of principle for the evil of political expediency.” Should Southern senators “at this late hour falter or fail to filibuster,” they would be held accountable for “compromising the inalienable rights of the American people.” Similarly, Representative Mendel Rivers of Charleston stated that “if I were a senator, I’d talk until hell freezes over before I’d accept this bill.... I’d filibuster whether Lyndon B. Johnson is elected President or not.” Representative Robert Hemphill hoped that the Senate would “filibuster til Christmas if necessary.” Other South Carolina representatives expressed like sentiments.[488]
Senator Johnston did not heed the pleas of those urging resort to the filibuster; he had left Washington temporarily to attend the marriage of his daughter in Columbia. But the state’s junior senator responded nobly. Obtaining the floor of the Senate at 8:45 p.m. on August 28th, J. Strom Thurmond began a record-breaking filibuster that finally terminated twenty-four hours and eighteen minutes later. It was a prodigious effort and brought congratulations from Senator Wayne Morse of Oregon, the previous record holder.[489] But it only delayed passage of the compromise civil rights bill; more important, it brought an avalanche of adverse criticism on Thurmond’s balding head, particularly from infuriated fellow Southern senators who charged him not only with violating the caucus agreement, but also of making a grandstand play for personal political advantage.[490]
Back home, reaction to Thurmond’s filibuster was on the whole favorable though hardly enthusiastic. Many persons privately acknowledged that he had made a complete fool of himself. Particularly was this true in Columbia where local leaders were making a strenuous effort to retain Fort Jackson. It was feared that Thurmond’s action might ultimately hurt the city’s cause. Governor Timmerman, fighting mad, was the Senator’s principal defender. He was “shocked” to learn that Thurmond had received no help in his heroic battle. “When the going got rough,” he growled to a press conference, the Southern senators had “fallen down on the job.” He resented for Thurmond “the effort to belittle what he did.” The Senator, he said, “hasn’t broken faith with anyone; he’s the only one who didn’t break faith.... I’m commending, not condemning, what Strom Thurmond did.” Timmerman was sure that the people of the Palmetto State “didn’t send Senator Thurmond to Washington to be a political flunky for Johnson, Knowland or Eisenhower.” In what could be interpreted only as a rebuke to Senator Johnston, the irate Governor asserted that when the next election time came, he “would take a second look at the man who turned his back on his constituents” before he would support him. Finally, lashing out in another direction, Timmerman called President Eisenhower “a disgrace to the office he holds.”[491]