Existing comment:
Southern Senators Launching a Filibuster
This is the first in a series of letters Clarence Mitchell wrote to chronicle the Senate debate on H.R. 7152. On February 26, Majority Leader Mike Mansfield (D-MT) filed a procedural motion to place the House-passed bill directly on the Senate calendar without the normal referral to Senator James Eastland's (D-MS) Senate Judiciary Committee, a roadblock for civil rights legislation. When Mansfield moved to take up the motion on March 9, Southern senators countered by launching a filibuster to protest his effort to bypass the Judiciary Committee as a violation of the Senate's rules. They ended the filibuster on March 25 to avoid an early cloture vote. |