Word: mansfield
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...Fast. An even more serious long-range threat to Negro gains was raised in the U.S. Senate. A Senate Appropriations Committee report sharply criticized the Department of Health, Education and Welfare for the tough desegregation guidelines it has sought to enforce in Southern hospitals and schools. Majority Leader Mike Mansfield, a longtime supporter of civil rights measures, seconded the criticism, said he thought that the department was going "too fast" and was violating the intent of Congress by trying to enforce racial balance rather than merely to end segregation...
...After twelve days of deliberation over a motion to take up the measure, its supporters made their second, foredoomed attempt to choke off debate, but mustered only a 52-to-41 majority for cloture-ten short of the necessary two-thirds of those present and voting. Majority Leader Mike Mansfield thereupon recited the epitaph. "It would be futile," said he, "to prolong consideration of this issue...
Dirksen knew perfectly well, of course, that a solid score of those Democrats are Southern segregationists, hence that no civil rights bill stands a chance without G.O.P. support. All the same, Majority Leader Mansfield, for one, refused to make Dirksen the scapegoat. He reasoned that support for the bill had been eroded by the "rioting, marches, shootings and inflammatory statements which have characterized this simmering summer." He indicted, in particular, the evangelists of black power, "those who, in the name of racial equality or perhaps more accurately in the name of a new racial superiority, have not advocated further civil...
...Administration itself had lobbied only halfheartedly for the measure. As a result, its Senate supporters failed last week by ten votes to get the two-thirds majority needed to stop a filibuster against it by imposing cloture. In a last, hopeless attempt to resuscitate the bill, Majority Leader Mike Mansfield scheduled yet another cloture vote for this week, and the filibuster droned...
Hitting North. So incensed was Majority Leader Mike Mansfield by his colleagues' purposeful absenteeism that he threatened to have the sergeant at arms arrest recalcitrant Senators and dragoon them onto the floor. After this warning, a quorum finally materialized, and the bill was accepted for debate. However, having reluctantly answered the quorum call, most Senators, Republican and Democratic alike, quickly disappeared again. Since a recess can be demanded whenever 51 members can not be rounded up for a roll call, and since 51 Senators could rarely be rounded up last week, Southerners primed for filibuster were able to save...