Majority Leader Scott Lucas (D-Ill.), who led the pushes on both army desegregation and the FEPC.
In 1950, the Senate took on two issues on civil rights that had been pushed by President Truman. The first was army desegregation and the second was on a proposal for a permanent Fair Employment Practices Committee (FEPC), the purpose of which was to curb employment discrimination based on race.
Analyzing the Votes
Senator Richard Russell (D-Ga.), the leader of the Southern Democratic faction, managed to include an amendment to the draft bill allowing “voluntary” segregation in units. This had the potential to seriously undermine President Truman’s desegregation of the army, and Majority Leader Scott Lucas’s (D-Ill.) motion to delete the amendment carried 42-29 on June 12th. Democrats voted 25-16 against Lucas’s motion and Republicans voted 26-4 for. One might trot out the old “party switch” talking point, but the votes for defeating the Russell Amendment included most of the GOP conservatives too. There were also a few votes outside of the South from Democrats in Carl Hayden of Arizona as well as Lester Hunt and Joseph O’Mahoney of Wyoming. The Republicans who favored keeping Russell’s amendment included Chan Gurney of South Dakota, the ranking Republican on the Armed Services Committee, as well as westerners Zales Ecton of Montana, Guy Cordon of Oregon, and Arthur Watkins of Utah. I am curious, what was with some westerners and supporting this amendment anyway? You also had many high-profile conservatives voting for, such as William Jenner of Indiana, Kenneth Wherry of Nebraska, and John Bricker and Robert Taft of Ohio.
The Fair Employment Practices Committee bill had a bit of a different thing going on as it involved in the invoking of cloture, or ending debate. The vote to end debate failed 55-39, with the vote going against ending debate 27-22 by Democrats and for ending debate 33-6 from Republicans. Interestingly, the number of Senate Republicans who would vote against the Civil Rights Act of 1964 would also be six. Of the GOP senators who voted against this year, Milton Young of North Dakota and Karl Mundt of South Dakota would later vote for the Civil Rights Act of 1964, vote to retain Title II (public accommodations), but support striking Title VII (employment discrimination). In Arizona and Nevada, senators had a long history of not voting to end debate in case legislation targeting their state was on the table and they wished to filibuster. Indeed, all senators from Arizona and Nevada voted against. This does not necessarily indicate opposition to civil rights. Hayden, for instance, voted against ending debate on the Civil Rights Act of 1964 but voted for the bill and voted to keep in Titles II and VII, the most debated parts of the measure. Nevada’s Pat McCarran and George Malone both voted to kill the Russell Amendment to hinder army desegregation, but Malone would also be one of the Republicans who voted to strike Title III from the Civil Rights Act of 1957 and for a jury trial amendment. Had Malone won reelection in 1958 and survived until 1964, I find it quite possible that he would have voted against the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
Interestingly, only two Senate Republicans took the side of the South on both votes: Zales Ecton of Montana and Chan Gurney of South Dakota. People who would later be thought of as civil rights liberals in the South such as Estes Kefauver of Tennessee and Lyndon B. Johnson of Texas vote against both. You also see a curious left/right intersection on civil rights here, as some of the most left-wing senators vote alongside some of the most right-wing senators (of the North, anyway) in favor.
Interestingly, for the FEPC vote, Senator Kenneth Wherry (R-Neb.) says of it, “…I do not believe in the FEPC legislation in the form which it is now before the Senate. I am sincere about that. But I will state that I believe the time has come when we should terminate debate and agree to a motion to take up. I think, however, that the Members of the Senate should write an FEPC bill which will be acceptable in the four corners of the United States. On that basis, I am perfectly willing to vote for cloture, in order to bring the measure before the Senate, and enable it to perfect such a bill” (Congressional Record, 9979). Since Wherry was one of the Senate’s strongest conservatives and a good representative of the strongly conservative, there may have been quite a few more conservative Republicans who didn’t like the bill as presented, but wanted to give the measure a chance to be considered so it could be crafted more to their liking. Wherry’s support for cloture may have been of importance in winning as many conservative Republican votes as it did. The Democratic Party of 1950 in the Senate is fundamentally more split on civil rights and on the negative side, although a significant part of this is that Republicans had seats in states that would later elect staunchly pro-civil rights Democrats. The states of Indiana, Michigan, Missouri, Ohio, and Wisconsin all had two Republican senators in 1950, but by 1964 all the senators were Democrats. In none of those states were there “nays” for on striking the Russell Amendment nor on the FEPC. That’s right, folks, Joseph McCarthy voted for the FEPC! It may sound strange to some, but the whole conflating of civil rights and communism was primarily a John Birch Society and a Southern thing. McCarthy was also a bit less conservative than people might think he was given his rhetoric. Interestingly, Scott Lucas would lose reelection that year, and his successor, Everett Dirksen, would be minority leader in the 1960s, being a leading figure in the Senate push for the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
Oh, yes, and the votes I have analyzed with DW-Nominate Scores:
References
Federal Fair Employment Practice Act – Cloture Motion. (1950, July 12). Congressional Record. Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office.
Retrieved from
Hayden, Carl Trumbull. Voteview.
Retrieved from
https://www.voteview.com/person/4227/carl-trumbull-hayden
Malone, George Wilson. Voteview.
Retrieved from
https://www.voteview.com/person/5944/george-wilson-malone
Mundt, Karl Earl. Voteview.
Retrieved from
https://www.voteview.com/person/6796/karl-earl-mundt
Young, Milton Ruben. Voteview.
Retrieved from
https://www.voteview.com/person/10450/milton-ruben-young
Mad Politics: The Bizarre, Fascinating, and Unknown of American Political History 