Senate and South

The key to the passage of urgently needed civil rights legislation is the traditionally slow-moving Senate. While the lower House has repeatedly approved measures intended to insure equality under the law for members of all races and creeds, the Senate has lagged behind, with the intransigence of its Southern Democratic leaders the cause.

The issue grows increasingly critical. Besides the bombings and mob violence that have accompanied efforts at desegregation on buses and in schools, there have been repeated instances of economic pressures applied against Negroes seeking equality. Furthermore, there were distressingly frequent charges last fall that Negroes in some states were denied the right to vote.

President Eisenhower has asked Congress to increase the power of the Federal courts and Federal law enforcement agencies to deal with these abuses, and while the House will probably pass such legislation, in the Senate the bills were referred to James O. Eastland's Judiciary Committee. Eastland in turn refered them to the sub-committee on civil rights, but increased that group's membership from three to seven, adding four Senators whose attitude towards such legislation ranges from lukewarm to antagonistic. That sub-committee, in turn, gives every indication of intending to delay action on the bills as long as possible.

In discussing the Senate it is pointless to argue action on the basis of an electoral mandate last November. The Senate is anything but a popular or representative assembly, and the only significant bearing that the election will have on this issue is the supplying of several new Senators who favor such action.

Nor is there now much point in railing against the President for failing to push his legislation. This is not the time for Presidential pressure, for the Republican Senators whose votes he can occasionally swing by personal influence are not the Senators who now control the fate of the civil rights bills.

The ultimate argument for the bills is, however, one that should come from the Senate itself. Popular pressure cannot determine the Senate's course, but it sometimes has made that body aware of a crisis, and in critical times the upper House has moved quickly, lest the deeply respected force of law be shattered. The Senate tries never to respond to popular whim, but to a continuing swell of sentiment it may react.

Aware as it is of the issue and demand in civil rights, the Senate must in time feel compelled to align the nation's practices with its principle, and support the concept of equality under law. As William S. White notes, the Senate feels itself based upon a "moral-Constitutional authority" and duty, and ultimately, it would seem, this should prevail in the passage of civil rights legislation.

Yet the turbulent situation in the South is ill-suited to the ponderous aspect of Senatorial procedures, and the Senate as a whole should recognize the awesome responsibility it will have to bear if delay follows delay and rights bills are once again lost in the hurry of a session's end.