Nation: Dead as Slavery

Back in mid-July. House Speaker Sam Rayburn bluntly told President Kennedy that any school-aid bill this session was "dead as slavery." But the President insisted that his congressional leaders keep trying to turn up some compromise—almost any compromise—that would satisfy the House, where the issue of aid to public schools was roiled by religious rancor and segregationist distrust. Last week President Kennedy learned the hard way that Rayburn had been right. In the Administration's second major legislative defeat of the week, the House voted down a diluted school bill by the humiliating margin of 242 to 169.

As presented to the House...