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Renationalizing the Civil Rights Issue |
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Despite Justice Harlan's inspiring words, the major characteristic of southern blacks at the beginning of the 20th Century was that they were "governmentally isolated." They lived in a world in which, by both congressional action and Supreme Court decision, the protections of the national government had been removed from them. They were subjected simultaneously to the will of segregation-oriented state governments and, more threateningly, white individuals who could beat, lynch, or murder them with no fear of substantial punishment by either the national or state governments. After 1892, when the Congress repealed national voting rights laws, black southern males were even denied the vote, guaranteed by the 15th Amendment to the Constitution, as a way of improving their position in society.
It thus was clear to many by the start of the 20th Century that, if southern blacks were ever to be freed from southern white oppression, both official and unofficial, the national government in Washington, D.C., would have to do the job. There thus arose a constant call by those interested in black civil rights for action by the national government. Simultaneously, southern segregationists, realizing that the only potential threat to their "peculiar institution" came from Washington, D.C., became strong advocates of states' rights and dedicated opponents of national power. If southern blacks were to ever be free, the national Congress in Washington, D.C., would have to "renationalize" the civil rights issue.
But any new national laws protecting black civil rights would have to pass both houses of Congress - the Senate as well as the House of Representatives. In the Senate was a rule guaranteeing unlimited debate, the famous filibuster rule. Any civil rights bill to come before the U.S. Senate would face a filibuster by a determined group of southern senators, and the filibuster could only be stopped by a "cloture vote," which required a two-thirds vote in the Senate. Thus, from the very beginning of the black civil rights movement, the Senate filibuster was regarded as the great obstacle - and a successful cloture vote to stop a civil rights filibuster was the great goal. |
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