Political Quotes

“I wanted to remind the Senate of why Judge Johnson was able to do the right thing in desegregating the south. It was because of John Minor Wisdom of Louisiana and John Brown of Texas and Elbert Tuttle of Georgia, who were Republican appellate court judges appointed by a Republican President named Eisenhower at a time in the 1950s when the Democratic side of the Senate was using the filibuster to kill every important piece of civil rights legislation that was proposed in the Senate. Senator Eastland of Mississippi, Senator Stennis of Mississippi would never have approved Judge Wisdom's nomination or never have agreed with it if they had known that he and Judge Brown and Judge Tuttle would order the admission of James Meredith to the University of Mississippi. So at a time when these distinguished former Democratic Senators were filibustering every piece of civil rights legislation in the Senate, they didn't even consider filibustering an appellate judge. That way Judge Wisdom, Judge Brown, and Judge Tuttle all were confirmed, and all ordered James Meredith to be admitted. The relevance of the point of the Senator from Illinois is that today's Democrats, our friends on the other side, are going further than the Democratic filibusters against the civil rights bills in the 1950s.”