Word: colmer
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Dates: during 1940-1940
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...blow-torching, shooting and roasting two Negroes to death at Duck Hill (TIME, April 26, 1937). The consequent horror sped the bill through the House but did not weaken Southern Senators, who filibustered the measure to sleep, as they had done its predecessors. Last week Congressman William Meyers Colmer of Pascagoula, Miss, addressed himself to the 1940 bill's chief sponsor-white, Tammany-Irish Joe Gavagan, from Manhattan's black Harlem. Said Mr. Colmer, who as district attorney once saved a Negro killer from a mob: "Of course, this bill will pass the House. . . . And I think...
What made Mr. Colmer so sure that the bill would pass was that: 1) 1940 is election year, and 2) Negroes in the north and west can vote. The lone Negro in Congress, white-topped Democrat Arthur Mitchell of Chicago, won no friends for the bill. He taunted Republicans with ganging up to "buy" Negro votes, made some almost angry enough to vote against the bill. A Republican who did vote "No" was upstate New York's Wadsworth, one of two ex-Senators who have come down to the House (the other: borderline Ken tucky's solemn, long...