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49 6 THE BEST WE COULD GET “I think there is a way that you can finally put the other provisions through, and then the other southerners would have no real reason to go on with their filibuster.” Those words from New Mexico’s Clinton Anderson were music to Johnson’s ears. He knew that the Senate must drastically weaken Part III to prevent a southern filibuster. Now, here was a trusted member of the liberal bloc volunteering to lead the fight. Anderson’s civil rights credentials were impeccable, but he understood that the “best” legislation would have no effect at all unless it could win the votes for passage. For several days before the Senate voted to take up the bill, he had “glued” himself to his desk on the Senate floor, where he listened intently to the debate over Part III. Anderson concluded that “if you could just remove the southern fears that we would march an army into the South, it would be worthwhile.” After a couple of days, Johnson sidled over to ask Anderson why he was so interested in this debate. When Anderson volunteered that he was considering an amendment to strike the most potent provisions of Part III, Johnson urged him to do it—and offered a suggestion. “He thought I should get a really good Republican to join with me.” After surveying the Senate, Anderson selected two respected Republican moderates: George Aiken of Vermont and Francis Case of South Dakota. Johnson instinctively understood the benefit of a liberal westerner and two moderate Republicans proposing to gut Part III. Had Russell or another conservative southerner presented the same amendment, liberals would have held it up as a willful attempt to destroy the bill by eliminating its strongest provision. It would have been anathema to everyone but the small southern minority. For many liberals, an Anderson-Aiken-Case amendment was a different matter altogether. The liberal Democrats and moderate Republicans who supported Part III could not intimate that these men were allies of Richard Russell. Their amendment immediately WHEN FREEDOM WOULD TRIUMPH 50 disarmed liberal critics, making it exceedingly easier for Johnson to find the votes to pay the first installment of his agreement with Russell. The unexpected assistance from Anderson, Aiken, and Case also complicated matters for Russell’s southern bloc. His sudden inheritance of liberal and moderate support foreclosed Russell’s ability to filibuster. “If you were going to filibuster,” George Reedy observed, “it’s one thing to filibuster when nobody is agreeing with you, when you’re standing there with your back to the wall. But when you start getting some reason and some cooperation from the other side, that puts you on a bad spot. You can’t really filibuster then.” From that point on, Reedy said, the southerners “laid down and they played dead.” Nothing, however, furthered the effort to emasculate Part III more than Eisenhower’s weak, faltering defense of his own bill. The day after the Senate voted to consider the bill, the president appeared before the White House press corps. At earlier meetings with the media, the president had undercut Knowland’s leadership by admitting his ignorance of the Housepassed bill. A question from reporter Rowland Evans sealed the fate of Part III. Evans asked if it would be “a wise extension of federal power” to permit the attorney general “to bring suits on his own motion, to enforce school integration in the South.” “Well, no,” Eisenhower responded. “I have—as a matter of fact, as you state it that way, on his own motion, without any request from local authorities, I suppose is what you are talking about?” “Yes, sir,” Evans replied. “I think that that is what the bill would do, Part III.” Through the fog of apparent ignorance of his bill, Eisenhower’s signal was clear: He did not support Part III. Blindsided again by Eisenhower’s inept defense of the legislation, Knowland did what he could to absolve his president of the blame. He argued, weakly, that “the details of the bill belong to this body and to the other body of Congress.” With Knowland’s leadership undercut by the White House, Johnson quickly moved to fill the void. He launched his strategy to weaken Part III and began rounding up the necessary votes to do it. Now Johnson supplemented daily exhortations for lofty, dignified debate with aggressive appeals for deleting the heart of Part III. “The...

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