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"If we do not succeed here tonight, it is inevitable that this issue will return again and again until justice is done," he warned. "It cannot be delayed, and it will not be denied." But when the last yea had been shouted, Knowland's justice had been denied. Voting for the jury-trial amendment were 39 Democrats and twelve Republicans, voting against were 33 Republicans and nine Democrats. To Knowland's chagrin, Majority Leader Johnson had scooped up such Democratic moderates as Massachusetts' Jack Kennedy, Ohio's Frank Lausche, Rhode Island's John Pastore, Washington's "Scoop" Jackson and Warren Magnuson, such Republicans as Maine's Margaret Chase Smith, Indiana's Homer Capehart, and West Virginia's Chappie Revercomb.
In the utter gloom that followed the vote, the Knowland forces freely predicted that there would be no civil rights legislation this session. Reason: the House, which passed a tough bill 286 to 126, would never agree to the watered-down Senate version. And even if it did, Dwight Eisenhower would be virtually forced to veto it because the four-page, 650-word jury-trial amendment was so loosely drawn that it would devastate the whole legal mechanism for dealing with cases under such laws as antitrust, atomic energy and securities exchange by the accepted injunction and contempt-of-court procedures (see box). It would even force jury trials for contempt of the United States Court of Appeals, which has no jury mechanism at all.
Meanwhile, the Senate got ready to pass its handiwork this week by a generous vote. It was left to Georgia's Dick Russell to administer the coup de grâce in grand style. The South, said he after a post-victory caucus, had decided not to filibuster against the bill as it now stands.