The Uphill Battle for Civil Rights on Capitol Hill

The postwar period began with a renewed emphasis in Washington, DC, on the need for civil rights legislation. Reflecting the increasing influence of Black voters within the Democratic Party, President Harry S. Truman organized the President’s Committee on Civil Rights in 1947. The committee drafted a report outlining an agenda for civil rights reform which included federal antilynching legislation, voting rights protections, a permanent FEPC, the elimination of the poll tax, and the creation of an effective civil rights division in the U.S. Department of Justice. President Truman called for congressional action on these recommendations and later used a July 1948 executive order to desegregate the military.⁴⁶

Civil rights were central to President Truman’s re-election campaign in 1948. William Dawson praised the President’s record, declaring that his administration had made a “strike at the heart of some of the glaring inequalities in the treatment of our citizens.” Representative Adam Clayton Powell Jr., however, was more reluctant to celebrate Truman’s actions.⁴⁷

Powell had joined Dawson in the House in 1945. Elected from a Harlem district, he was the first Black Member to represent New York in Congress. When he arrived in the 79th Congress (1945–1947), it was the first time that two Black Members had served simultaneously since the 51st Congress (1889–1891). Throughout 1948, Powell urged Truman and the Democratic Party to earn the votes they sought from Black Americans. “Negroes will not be satisfied with words. Negroes have been studied, commissioned and conferenced almost to death. The time has long passed for action,” Powell said. He also confronted northern Democrats for their complicity in maintaining segregation. On the House Floor, Powell criticized those who blamed the “Solid South” for Jim Crow as a way to evade their own “individual cowardice, bigotry, and hypocrisy.” Powell denounced what he called a “bipartisan Jim Crow policy” in Congress and ultimately withheld a public statement in support of the Truman campaign until October 1948.⁴⁸

Democratic divisions were exacerbated by a faction of southern Democrats who were upset with the Truman administration’s civil rights efforts and defected to form the States’ Rights Democratic Party. These dissidents, known as Dixiecrats, sought to preserve and maintain segregation. They nominated South Carolina governor and future U.S. Senator James Strom Thurmond as their presidential candidate in 1948. When Thurmond called for President Truman to engage in a public debate in front of southern audiences, Dawson stepped forward to criticize the very notion. “We’re interested in a man’s position and not his oratory, and Truman’s position on civil rights is well known,” he said. “How can the subject of human rights,” he asked, “be debatable anyhow?”⁴⁹

After Truman prevailed in the 1948 election, Democrats and the press cited Black voters as a key constituency in this triumph. Dawson had addressed the Democratic convention in Philadelphia to support Truman’s nomination and worked diligently to generate Black support for the President’s re-election campaign. While most of the southern Democrats who bolted to the Dixiecrats returned to the party following the election, the third-party effort showed just how far congressional foes of civil rights would go to impede change and limit the role of the federal government in guaranteeing equality.⁵⁰

Eager to alter this dynamic and to stake their claim to a place in the emerging postwar political order, more Black candidates sought congressional seats in the urban North. In 1948, 10 Black candidates ran for House seats under the banner of former Vice President Henry Wallace’s Progressive Party, including Joseph H. Rainey, who was unsuccessful in his pursuit of a seat representing a Philadelphia congressional district. Rainey, a Philadelphia judge, was the president of the city’s NAACP branch and the namesake grandson of the first African American elected to the House, Joseph H. Rainey of South Carolina. The GOP put forward Black candidates in northern cities as well. In 1950, for example, several Black Republicans were nominated to run for seats in New York, Philadelphia, St. Louis, and Cleveland, Ohio.⁵¹

Only two new Black Members, however, joined Dawson and Powell on Capitol Hill during the 1950s: Democrats Charles Diggs of Michigan and Robert Nix of Pennsylvania. Though limited in number, the presence of Black legislators, coupled with the growing strength of a grassroots movement for civil rights, ultimately led to legislative victories that guaranteed Black civil and political rights to an extent unknown since Reconstruction.

Institutional Opportunities

The 81st Congress (1949–1951) began with a landmark appointment when the Democratic Caucus named William Dawson to lead the Expenditures in the Executive Departments Committee (renamed the Committee on Government Operations in 1952), making him the first Black Member to chair a standing committee in Congress. Dawson wielded significant power by conducting oversight of federal agency spending, holding investigations of executive department agencies and programs to audit federal appropriations. Except for the Republican-controlled 83rd Congress (1953–1955), Dawson held the post for the rest of his career—serving 10 nonconsecutive terms and becoming the Black Member with the longest tenure as chair of a committee.⁵²

Dawson’s committee chairmanship elevated his profile on the Hill, but he remained one of only four Black Members of Congress in the 1950s. During their service, Dawson, Powell, Diggs, and Nix outlined a legislative agenda that went beyond civil rights and voting rights laws directed at the South. Black legislators knew that racism and discrimination were not merely regional dilemmas. After all, the cities they represented were rife with discriminatory practices, whether codified in law or simply in the everyday actions of citizens. With that reality in mind, the lawmakers introduced legislation to create federal housing initiatives, shape urban renewal efforts, and promote fair employment practices. While most of these bills were never signed into law, they contained ideas and spoke to priorities that became central to the Democratic agenda later in the 1960s.

Employment discrimination remained a persistent concern of Black legislators. The threat of mass protest had led to the creation of the FEPC during the war, but southern Democrats and Republicans blocked efforts to make it a permanent tool in the fight against workplace bias. In 1948, Powell tried to add an FEPC amendment to legislation creating the European Recovery Plan, also known as the Marshall Plan, but the House voted it down.⁵³

In the 81st Congress, however, Powell introduced a bill to prohibit discrimination in hiring and to establish a permanent FEPC to enforce the ban. Powell was named the chair of the Committee on Education and Labor’s special subcommittee to consider his proposal. When he took the gavel, Powell became the first Black Member to lead a subcommittee hearing on proposed legislation, which he did in May 1949. He resisted many amendments and other maneuvers by opponents who aimed to weaken the bill in the House. Before the full chamber approved the bill, however, the opposition was able to eliminate most of its strong enforcement provisions, and the Senate declined to act on it.⁵⁴

Black Members also backed initiatives to shape housing policy in American cities, from public housing to urban revitalization efforts. Powell unsuccessfully attempted to add antidiscrimination riders to housing bills several times. In 1958, he introduced legislation to increase the federal reimbursement for businesses uprooted and displaced by urban renewal projects. Nix drafted measures to set standards for urban renewal proposals and appropriate federal funds for new projects. Nix and Diggs introduced bills that were precursors to the Area Redevelopment Act of 1961, which was designed to focus federal resources on the specific needs of a particular city or region.⁵⁵

As the Senate persistently obstructed civil rights legislation, advocates sought other ways to initiate reform. Powell developed a creative legislative solution for bills up for consideration, which involved attaching a rider prohibiting federal funds for institutions that promoted or endorsed segregation. In 1946, he first deployed this approach, which came to be known as the “Powell amendment,” on a funding bill for school lunches that became law. At the time, Powell’s move deferred to the imperatives of a segregated school system by requiring matching appropriations for Black and White students. He also introduced a similar amendment to a 1950 education bill, aiming to ensure that it prohibited discrimination in the distribution of school funds based on race or color.⁵⁶

Beginning in 1955, Powell vowed to attach his rider to every education bill, starting with appropriations for school construction. But he reframed the amendment, consulting with the NAACP to devise wording that would undermine school segregation more directly. Instead of banning discrimination in funding, the new Powell amendment prohibited federal funding for schools that continued to segregate their facilities. Many Members agreed with his principled stand, though they thought that the amendment would make the passage of the bill extremely unlikely, thereby undermining the appropriation of necessary federal investment in schools. Powell responded to his critics on the House Floor in June 1956. He urged his northern Democratic colleagues not to let the southern wing of the party block the education bill. He refuted claims that the federal government did not have the authority to enforce such a measure, quoting the Government Accounting Office which had affirmed Congress’s power to regulate the distribution of funding in this way. For Powell, if Congress did not act to end school segregation, America’s foreign policy would also suffer. “It would hold the United States and democracy up to ridicule before the whole world as a nation of pretense and preachments but not practices.”⁵⁷

Representative Dawson opposed Powell’s effort, predicting the amendment would erode support for the school construction bill. Ultimately, the measure was defeated in the House, an outcome which Dawson claimed “vindicated my judgement.” He criticized Powell for missing the long-term implications of his actions and sought a less confrontational approach to ensure that neither Black nor White students “will suffer cruel educational deficiencies.”⁵⁸

Like Powell, Charles Diggs used his seat in Congress to highlight the needs of Black Americans well beyond his Detroit district. In August 1955, the murder of Emmett Till, a 14-year-old boy from Chicago who was visiting family in Mississippi, once again brought national attention to the barbaric practice of lynching which remained a part of the Jim Crow system of segregation and repression. Determined to expose the brutality of the act, Till’s mother allowed the national press to photograph his mutilated body, and thousands of mourners streamed past the open casket.⁵⁹

Representative Diggs accompanied Till’s mother to the September 1955 trial in Sumner, Mississippi, which resulted in the acquittal of the two accused murderers. Diggs described the trial as “so filled with perjury, illegal and unethical practices of withholding evidence that undoubtedly a democratic nation could not imagine happening in its halls of justice.” Though he did not directly intervene in the case, Diggs noted that the Black community in Sumner welcomed his presence, as he was “a representative in the Federal Government—one of their own—and he was on the scene with them.” In addition to standing up for the Till family, Diggs pushed the Department of Justice to investigate the ongoing disenfranchisement of Black voters in Mississippi and proposed the House unseat the state’s delegation as long as these practices continued.⁶⁰

Diggs’s involvement contrasted sharply with that of William Dawson, who represented the Chicago district where Till’s mother lived. Dawson did not publicly comment on Till’s lynching, although he did provide financial assistance to Till’s mother. This was not enough for the NAACP. In a 1956 open letter to Dawson, the organization criticized the Chicago Representative for not speaking out on Till’s murder and denounced the lawmaker for “silence, compromise, and meaningless moderation” on civil rights matters.⁶¹

Black Members were joined by some of their White colleagues in introducing another round of antilynching bills in the two decades following World War II. Whereas the Dyer bill in the 1920s and several proposals in the late 1930s were subject to extended debates on the floor and several hearings, the antilynching efforts of the late 1950s and early 1960s did not receive similar scrutiny. The result was the same, however; southern Democrats maneuvered against these bills in the House and found ways to block any antilynching legislation in the Senate.

Congress, Committees, and Civil Rights Legislation

Congress lagged behind the presidency, the judiciary and, often, public sentiment during much of the postwar civil rights movement. Southern Democrats still wielded power on Capitol Hill, exerting largely unchecked influence as committee chairs in an era that saw the apex of committee power in Congress. This power was in no small part the product of decades of Black disenfranchisement in the South. The Democratic Party dominated elections in the South, and Democratic House candidates achieved consistent electoral victories without opposition. Starting in 1931, apart from the 80th (1947–1949) and 83rd Congresses, Democrats held the majority in the House. Southern Democrats from safe seats accrued seniority and rose within the ranks of the party, inheriting the gavels of numerous House committees. They were well-positioned by the 1950s to obstruct and defeat civil rights bills through parliamentary maneuvers, filibusters, and the committee approval process.⁶²

Notwithstanding Dawson’s position as chair of Government Operations, the small number of Black Members found it difficult to exert power in committees in the 1950s. In the 84th Congress (1955–1957), for instance, when Democrats regained the majority after a brief period of Republican control, southern Members opposed to Black civil rights chaired 12 of the 19 House committees, including some of the most influential panels: Education and Labor; Interstate and Foreign Commerce; Rules; and Ways and Means. The powerful coalition of southern Democrats and northern Republicans that had formed to oppose the economic and social programs of the New Deal continued to impede the work of civil rights reform well into the 1960s.

For most of this period, the House Judiciary Committee, under the leadership of Chair Emanuel Celler of New York, offered civil rights reformers one of the few friendly committee forums. A Judiciary subcommittee held hearings in July 1955 on more than 45 civil rights bills introduced in the 84th Congress. On the House Floor, a bipartisan group of Members emerged as civil rights advocates. Democrats such as Celler, Clifford Philip Case of New Jersey, and Helen Gahagan Douglas of California, were joined by Republicans such as Jacob Koppel Javits of New York, Hugh Doggett Scott Jr. of Pennsylvania, and Frances Payne Bolton of Ohio. In the mid-1950s, Case, Javits, and Scott were elected to the Senate and influenced that chamber’s civil rights agenda.⁶³

But no matter how much support rank-and-file Members provided, any measure that passed out of Judiciary was sent to the House Rules Committee, which directed legislation onto the floor and structured bills for debate. Chaired by arch-segregationist Howard Worth Smith of Virginia, this influential panel repeatedly sabotaged civil rights proposals; Smith either weakened bills or refused to consider them altogether. He often shuttered committee operations, retreating to his farm in Virginia’s horse country to stymie deliberations. When he explained one of his absences by noting that he needed to inspect a burned-down barn, Leo Elwood Allen of Illinois, the ranking Republican on the Rules Committee, remarked, “I knew the Judge was opposed to the civil rights bill. But I didn’t think he would commit arson to beat it.”⁶⁴

The Senate’s antimajoritarian structure magnified the power of pro-segregation conservatives. In contrast to the rules of the House, which strictly limited Members’ ability to speak on the floor, the Senate’s practice of allowing Members to hold the floor without interruption played into the hands of obstructionists. The filibuster—a Senate tactic that allowed a Senator or a group of Senators to prevent a vote on a bill—became the civil rights opponents’ chief weapon. In this era, too, the Senate modified its rules, raising the bar needed to achieve cloture—the practice of ending debate to hold a vote on legislation. From 1949 to 1959, cloture required the approval of two-thirds of the Senate’s membership rather than two-thirds of the Senators who were present.⁶⁵

As in the House, influential southern Senators held key positions and were among the most determined parliamentarians. Richard Brevard Russell Jr. of Georgia framed his opposition to civil rights initiatives around concerns about federal interference in state affairs. Russell used Senate procedure in an attempt to become a more palatable public figure than many of the Senate’s virulent segregationists, such as Mississippi’s James Kimble Vardaman or Theodore Gilmore Bilbo. Russell attracted northern and western Republicans to his cause based on their opposition to the expansion of federal powers that would be necessary to enforce civil rights in the South. Mississippi’s James Oliver Eastland, another procedural tactician who presided over the Judiciary Committee beginning in March 1956, bragged that he had special pockets tailored into his suits where he stuffed bothersome civil rights bills. Between 1953 and 1965, the Senate Judiciary Committee killed almost every one of the more than 122 civil rights measures introduced in that chamber during those 12 years.⁶⁶

These procedural impediments in Congress made the courts an even more important venue for the civil rights struggle. In 1954, the Supreme Court’s unanimous decision in Brown v. Board of Education, a case that tested the segregation of school facilities in Topeka, Kansas, set a new precedent regarding segregated schools in the South. “In the field of public education, separate but equal has no place,” the Justices declared, and a second Brown decision in 1955 directed school systems across the nation to move toward desegregation “with all deliberate speed.”⁶⁷

Despite significant moments of federal intervention, including President Dwight D. Eisenhower’s 1957 decision to send troops to Little Rock, Arkansas, to assure access for Black students, implementation of the Supreme Court’s ruling was slow. “Brown v. The Board of Education notwithstanding,” Georgia Representative and civil rights icon John Lewis recalled of his youth in Troy, Alabama, “nothing in my life had changed.” In fact, school segregation continued throughout the South. The enthusiastic and vocal racism of earlier opponents of desegregation was increasingly abandoned in favor of a seemingly color-blind approach that used new, ostensibly class-based divisions, such as neighborhood boundaries and tax policy, to perpetuate inequalities.⁶⁸

Nevertheless, Brown was a significant victory over an entrenched Jim Crow system based on the Plessy precedent. On Capitol Hill, southern defiance was blatant. Senators Russell, Thurmond, and Harry Flood Byrd Sr. of Virginia drafted a public statement. Titled the “Declaration of Constitutional Principles” and known as the Southern Manifesto, it attacked the Brown decision, accusing the Supreme Court of abusing judicial power and trespassing upon what they said were states’ rights. Signed on March 12, 1956, by 82 Representatives and 19 Senators—roughly one-fifth of Congress—and read on the House Floor the next day, the manifesto urged southerners to exhaust all “lawful means” in the effort to resist the “chaos and confusion” that would result from school desegregation.⁶⁹

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