Nation: Opening the Doors

If, as Lyndon Johnson intended, the 1964 civil rights bill was a monument to John Kennedy, the measure that became law last week will stand in part as a memorial to Martin Luther King. The 1968 Civil Rights Act, opening some 80% of all the nation’s housing to Negroes, should also endure as a major legislative landmark of the Johnson Administration. “The proudest moments of my presidency,” said L.B.J. at the bill-signing ceremony in the White House, “have been such times as this when I have signed into law the promises of a century.”

Actually, the bill had been in the congressional works for months before King’s assassination. Passed by the House last summer as a comparatively toothless measure to protect civil rights workers, the measure acquired its incisors in the Senate, where a Republican-Democratic liberal coalition, improbably abetted by Minority Leader Everett Dirksen, pushed through the open-housing provision and sent the much expanded package back across Capitol Hill to the House.

Swift Realignment. More conservative now than when it approved a 1966 open-housing bill that was afterwards killed in the Senate, the House might have doomed this year’s measure. Some 60 G.O.P. liberals supported the bill but were chary of bucking House Republican Leader Gerald Ford’s opposition.

King’s death immediately realigned forces on both sides. Ohio’s William McCulloch, ranking Republican on the House Judiciary Committee, abruptly broke with Ford to come out in support of the bill, followed by Illinois’ John Anderson and more than a dozen other Republicans. Knowing that enough G.O.P. votes had probably swung over in favor of open housing, Johnson canceled his announced civil rights address to Congress. Principal reason for the decision: he did not wish to risk antagonizing the Republican converts by seeming to claim partisan proprietorship of the bill.

Psychological Effect. Though city rioting caused many Democrats with urban constituencies to bridle, Administration forces commanded by Speaker John McCormack brought them into line. Abandoning his rostrum to speak from the floor, McCormack rasped: “We are talking about human dignity!” When the votes were tallied six days after King’s death, the bill passed 249 to 171.

The measure contained other titles—two antiriot clauses and language safeguarding the constitutional rights of American Indians—but its crucial provision was for open housing, which will eventually help turn the lock to release Negroes from their imprisoning urban ghettos. Like other recent civil rights bills, the 1968 act carries the danger of promising too much and delivering too little, and reaction among Negro leaders was mixed. CORE’s associate director Roy Innis sneered: “This is a hoax on the black people.” Replied the N.A.A.C.P.’s Clarence Mitchell, who lobbied for the bill: “Anyone making such statements either has not read the bill or is just plain dishonest.”

The measure does nothing—directly —to conquer prejudice or poverty. Moreover, enforcement may prove forbiddingly difficult since a Negro who is refused housing because of his race must first appeal to the Department of Housing and Urban Development, then file suit in the courts. Yet the psychological effect of the act upon developers, homeowners and Negroes alike will open many doors. For the first time by federal law, a Negro in the U.S. is as entitled as any white—or more accurately, four-fifths as entitled—to buy or rent any house or apartment that he can afford.