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What made Mr. Colmer so sure that the bill would pass was that: 1) 1940 is election year, and 2) Negroes in the north and west can vote. The lone Negro in Congress, white-topped Democrat Arthur Mitchell of Chicago, won no friends for the bill. He taunted Republicans with ganging up to "buy" Negro votes, made some almost angry enough to vote against the bill. A Republican who did vote "No" was upstate New York's Wadsworth, one of two ex-Senators who have come down to the House (the other: borderline Ken tucky's solemn, long-jawed Robsion, who voted "Yes"). Rich, wise old Jim Wadsworth called anti-lynching an unenforceable, unconstitutional piece of Federal usurpation of State powers: Under the proposed bill, not lynchers but peace officers who let lynchings happen would be declared felons, subject to fines (up to $5,000) and for imprisonment (up to five years), but peace officers always say that they have been overpowered by mobs and find witnesses to agree. How then, he argued, could the U. S. enforce such a law, even if the courts uphold its questionable constitutionality ?
"Why do you not brag on us a little bit?" cried Texas' Hatton Sumners. What he bragged about was that U. S. lynchings dropped from 231 in 1892 to 130 in 1901, to 54 in 1916, to 20 in 1935, to six in 1938, last year to three* (one in Mississippi, two in Florida, none for rape). These descending figures seemed to point the moral that if Congress lets right-thinking Southern whites alone, they can work their dark problem down to zero.
At debate's end 123 Democrats voted with eight Republicans against antilynching. For the bill were 109 Democrats, 140 Republicans, two Wisconsin Progressives, one New York Laborite — enough to pass Joe Gavagan's bill along to a sure filibuster in the Senate.
*According to most compilations. Maximum reported: five.