Keeping America a white man’s country: Southern opposition to civil rights in the united states senate

This dissertation explores how southern senators, led by Georgia’s Richard Russell, forestalled civil rights legislation using the mechanisms of the Senate. The southern caucus beat back civil rights senators through a series of arguments that appealed both to the conservative nature of the Senate and their more conservative colleagues. While earlier arguments generally emphasized constitutional interpretations from southerners like John Calhoun, over time, southerners adapted their arguments to appeal to more conservative colleagues that were either skeptical of invoking cloture, or worried about the invasive nature of civil rights legislation. Over the course of my dissertation, I explore the 1938 Wagner-Van Nuys anti-lynching bill filibuster, the 1946 Fair Employment Practices Commission filibuster, the 1960 Civil Rights Act of 1960 filibuster, and the failed effort to filibuster the 1964 Civil Rights Act. This dissertation examines how four types of southern arguments operated over time and in different contexts. First, southerners used claims based in decorum, procedural objections to civil rights forces. Second, southerners used locus of the irreparable claims, drawing from a long tradition of states’ rights scholarship. Third, southerners scapegoated civil rights groups. Fourth, southerners used reciprocity, tied to home rule and public memory of Reconstruction. While initially these arguments worked, over time, civil rights senators began to grow weary of southern claims of oppression. Eventually, once civil rights forces marshalled efforts to develop elaborate, powerfully constructed cases in favor of civil rights legislation, opposition from the southern caucus collapsed. Decorum arguments, the last vestige of delay strategies, failed, as civil rights senators gave southerners ample time to discuss the bill, with little change in argumentative tactics. The result was total defeat in 1964.

Name thesis:degree_name

Ph.D.

Level thesis:degree_level

Dissertation

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

Communication

Grantor

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Year dc:date

2019

Author dc:creator

• Tokarz, David Michael

Contributors dc:contributor

• Gill, Pat
• Murphy, John M
• Finnegan, Cara
• Cisneros, David

• rhetoric, segregation, Senate filibuster, public address, Civil Rights history

Statement dc:rights

• Copyright 2016 David M. Tokarz

Language dc:language

en

Handle dc:identifier

http://hdl.handle.net/2142/105639

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:www.ideals.illinois.edu:2142/105639