Word: southernism
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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When the HEW bill came to the House, Whitten led more than his usual constituency of Southern Democrats. Pulling Northerners guarding against the Wallace threat into his alliance, Whitten rammed the rider through. None of the money voted in the bill, Whitten's amendment said, could be used or withheld to make local school districts integrate their schools...
Liberal papers throughout the country righteously excoriated the cabal of Southern Democrats and conservative Republicans who held up, and finally defeated, the appointments of Fortas and former congressman Homer Thornberry. Unfortunately, much less time was spent on the substantive issue of whether Fortas, and more particularly Thornberry, were good choices for the positions. That they were opposed by the Senate neanderthals, and that many of the attacks on Fortas were fatuous and petulant, seemed enough to make the case for their appointments airtight and inviolable...
During the later part of his term, and particularly during the three years of the Kennedy-Johnson administration, Thornberry began to establish a reputation for himself as a "Southern moderate." He had voted against most of the watered-down civil rights measures of the fifties, and tended to vote with the "conservative coalition" more often than not during that time, but he avoided the rabid racism and extreme conservatism of the deep Southern block...
...member of the key House Rules Committee under Kennedy, he enhanced his reputation as a moderate by being the only Southerner to side regularly with the administration. But he never declared himself in favor of the most important measure to come before the Committee during his tenure--the Civil Rights Bill of 1964. As administration representatives diplomatically put it, they hoped they wouldn't have to depend on the votes of Thornberry or any of the other "Southern moderates...
...bland Times editorial this June supporting Thornberry's nomination referred to his Southern origin and his moderation four separate times, as if that unlikely juxtaposition would suffice to insure his vote for the forces of sanity and enlightment. The Times concluded that Thornberry's appointment would keep the Fortas court "firmly cemented into the liberal posture that was characteristic of the Warren court." One Southern legislator with a better conception of the meaning of "moderate" in the South commented simply: "It looks like a pretty good deal to me. Okay, so we let Fortas become Chief Justice. In return...