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Last week Lucas announced that civil rights would be postponed once again with the President's approval until such bills as ECA, a $1.75 billion rivers and harbors bill, and a bill to increase CCC's surplus crop-buying power by $2 billion were disposed of. Majority Leader Lucas explained that the Administration did not want those measures jammed up behind the filibuster which FEPC was certain to provoke.
But there were other reasons. To force a showdown on FEPC now would only embarrass the faithful on their home grounds; several Southern Senators loyal to the Administration were facing opposition from Dixiecrats at the primary elections. Devoted Lister Hill of Alabama was not only trying to get re-elected but was also trying to lead his state back into the regular Democratic Party from which Alabama broke in 1948.
A speech which Lister Hill had made over an Alabama network was pounced upon by New Jersey's Republican Robert Hendrickson. Hill had told his Southern constituents: "It is the power and influence of your Congressmen that has made possible defeat of FEPC and other so-called civil-rights bills." His Democratic colleagues, Mississippi Senators Eastland and Stennis, he said approvingly, "had bottled up" various civil-rights bills in subcommittees of which they were chairmen. "I led the fight in committee against the FEPC bill," Hill boasted. ". . . If our group of Southern Senators is to continue to defeat these civil-rights bills, we must keep the power and influence we hold as members of the Democratic Party. I also warn that the Republicans are committed to civil rights."
Hendrickson chided: "Nonetheless, the Democratic Party has the audacity to claim that it is the party of tolerance, the party which abhors racial and religious prejudice."
To this Lister Hill replied as if explaining everything in the year of the Big Blow. "I was talking to the people of Alabama."