“Mansfield never did anything unless he informed all sides what was going to be done.”
Charles Ferris describes how the House-passed civil rights bill was placed directly on the Senate calendar, bypassing referral to the Judiciary Committee.
RITCHIE: In this case, the bill had passed in the House but when it came to the Senate you didn’t want it to go to the Judiciary Committee, because Senator Eastland would never report it out.
FERRIS: Yes, we used the procedure in Rule 14, paragraph 4–I think that’s right, that’s going back forty years to pull that out of the hat–but it was a procedure whereby when a House enacted bill came over to the Senate, the Senate Journal Clerk would read it once, and then it would be read the second time the next day. Then at that point, if an objection were interposed, the bill would not be referred to the committee with jurisdiction over the subject matter. It would go directly to the Senate calendar. That’s the procedure that was used to prevent the bill from going to Jim Eastland’s committee. Of course, Jim Eastland was on the floor and was informed about what was going to be done. Mansfield never did anything unless he informed all sides what was going to be done. So Chairman Eastland would be able to object vigorously to this bypassing of his committee. But I suspect that in his heart he no more wanted this bill in his committee than we did, especially because he knew this was a bill you just couldn’t smother and put in the closet. It saved him that problem, and also served notice that the Senate as a whole was taking jurisdiction over this piece of legislation. As a committee of the whole, in effect, they were going to determine the outcome of this bill.
