Master of the Senate (219 page)

Not a single:
“The Rearguard Commander,”
Time
, Aug. 12, 1957.
“Sis”:
Fite, p. 502.
Lunch:
Reedy, Tames interviews.
“You’re lucky”:
Fite, p. 473.
“Well”:
Shaffer,
On and Off
, pp. 202–03;
Time
, Aug. 12, 1957.
“In addition”:
Ervin OH, RBRL.

“I would attribute”:
Ervin OH.

“Very unobtrusive”:
Krock,
NYT
, March 17, 1935.
“When he spoke”:
Fite, p. 126.

“With the blood”:
CR
, 78/1, pp. 8859–66.
“Let us”:
Russell to Truman, Aug. 7, 1945, White House Central Files, OF 197, HSTL. Truman’s reply is revealing of the difference between the two men. The President wrote “Dear Dick” that while Japan was “a terribly cruel and uncivilized nation in warfare,” he could not agree that “because they are beasts, we should ourselves act in the same manner.” He was unwilling, he said, to decimate an entire people because of their leaders’ “pigheadedness” unless “it is absolutely necessary” (Truman to Russell, Aug. 9, 1945, White House Central Files, OF 197, HSTL).

“No more ardent”:
Robert Byrd, “Richard Brevard Russell,”
CR
, 100/2, p. S 353.
“If Sherman”:
Milton Young OH; Fite, p. 353.
“I want”:
Fite, p. 353.
“In the field”:
Jack Bell, “Dick Russell, King of the Filibusterers,” advance for AMs of Sunday, July 28, 1963, III Speech, Box 78, folder “Russell Material (Biog. and articles),” RBRL.
“He is considered”:
Manatos to Johnson, May 20, 1968, WHCF, Box 344, LBJL.

“Every great”:
Fite, pp. 466–67.
Agreeing with Humphrey:
Meg Greenfield, “The Man Who Leads the Southern Senators,”
The Reporter
, May 21, 1964.
For thirty-eight years:
Russell’s long fight for farmers is based on Fite, pp. 149–60, 212–16, and Robert Byrd, “Richard Brevard Russell,”
CR
, 100/2, pp. 350–51. “
He kept”:
Harold H. Martin, “The Man Behind the Brass,”
SEP
, June 2, 1951.
“Essentially”:
Fite, p. 187.
“Throughout”:
Robert Byrd, “Richard Brevard Russell,”
CR
, 100/2, pp. 350, 351.

“He considered”:
Fite, p. 145.
“There are no”:
Fite, p. 167;
CR
, 75/3, p. 1101.
“I was”:
WS
, Feb. 29, 1960.
“The rights”:
Meg Greenfield,
“The Man Who Leads the Southern Senators,”
The Reporter
, May 21, 1964. Challenged in his bid for a full Senate term by Georgia’s most politically powerful racist, Governor Eugene Talmadge, he replied to Talmadge’s charge that he was unreliable on segregation by calling the Governor “despicable” for “doing what every candidate who is about to be beaten does. He comes in crying nigger.” But Russell vigorously defended white supremacy and segregation, and said in one speech that “this is a white man’s country, yes, and we are going to keep it that way.” In another speech, he said that it was an insult to the people of Georgia “to even insinuate that I stand for political and social equality with the Negro.” As Fite puts it (p. 149), “He used legal arguments in contrast to Talmadge’s bombastic accusations of dictatorship, but the difference between the Russells and the Talmadges in the South was mainly one of degree rather than substance.”
Full-dress speeches:
CR
, 75/3, pp. 374–75, 1098–1115;
CR
, 77/2, pp. 8804–05;
CR
, 78/2, pp. 8859–66;
CR
, 80/2, pp. 7355–64;
Current Biography
, 1949.
“More”; “strike vital”:
Fite, p. 167.

“Been evolved”:
CR
, 75/3, p. 1101.
“We believe”; “promotes”:
CR
, 79/2, pp. 10259–61.
“In a short”:
CR
, 75/3, p. 1101.
“I challenge”:
CR
, 77/2, p. 8904.
“Whites and blacks alike”:
CR
, 75/3, p. 1101.
“We have worked”:
CR
, 77/2, p. 8904.

“Unnecessary”:
CR
, 75/3, pp. 374–75, 1098–1115.
“As interested”:
“The Rearguard Commander,”
Time
, Aug. 12, 1957.
“If it”:
CR
, 75/3, p. 1101.

“Let the”:
CR
, 77/2, p. 8904.

“I don’t know”:
Time
, Aug. 12, 1957.
“We’ve had”:
Fite, p. 184.
“Russell did not”:
Fite, pp. 184, 168.

Borah, Norris:
Fite, pp. 167–68.

“At opposite”:
“Senator Russell of Georgia: Does He Speak for the South,”
Newsweek
, Aug. 19, 1963.
“Not a racist”; “must be respected”:
Shaffer, pp. 202, 206.
“Honest”:
Harold H. Martin, “The Man Behind the Brass,”
SEP
, June 2, 1951.
“Roots”:
Time
, Aug. 12, 1957.

“Knightly”:
Ervin OH.
1908 lynching:
Winder Weekly News
, Dec. 10, 1908.
1922 lynching:
Winder Weekly News
, Sept. 7, 1922.

Dorsey attempting; He “avoided”:
Fite, p. 43.

“Georgia exceeds”:
Burns,
Out of These Chains
, p. 369. A vivid description of the chain gangs is in T. H. Watkins, “A Fugitive’s Epic,”
Constitution
, Fall 1993.
“I used to”:
Martin,
Deep South
, p. 176.
“I suppose”; “had never”:
“Georgia Giant,” edited transcript, Part I, pp. 25, 26.
“So hungry”:
NYWT
, undated, but obviously 1932.
Promise broken:
Burns,
Out of These Chains
, p. 387; T. H. Watkins, “A Fugitive’s Epic,”
Constitution
, Fall 1993.
“Real importance”:
NYT
, Jan. 31, 1932.
“One would”:
NYHT
, Jan. 18, 1932.

Georgia’s Governor demanded; affidavits:
Burns,
Out of These Chains
, pp. 382–83.
Russell’s statements:
AC
, Dec. 23, 1932.
“A slander”:
Russell, quoted in Burns,
Out of These Chains
, pp. 396–97. Russell added, in what Watkins calls “a nasty aside,” that “the decision makes it easy to understand how the most horrible crime of modern times—the kidnapping of the Lindberg baby—could occur and go unpunished in a State whose Governor has such ideas of law….” (T. H. Watkins, “A Fugitive’s Epic,”
Constitution
, Fall 1993).
“Telling the world”:
NY Sunday News
, Dec. 25, 1932.

Russell saw it:
David B. Potenziani, “Look to the Past: Richard Russell and the Defense of White Supremacy,” unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, University of Georgia, 1981, pp. 15 ff. Potenziani’s thesis is a perceptive analysis of Russell’s racial views.
“To force”:
CR
, 77/2, p. 9065.
Blocked:
NYT
, Nov. 24, 1942.

“I am afraid”:
Russell to Cobb C. Torrance, May 31, 1944, X. Civil Rights Series, FEPC, 1944–1949, RBRL.
“Any southern”:
Russell to Alan Reid, Feb. 4, 1936, IV, Early Office Series, RBRL.
“A terrible”:
Russell to Storey, Feb. 13, 1942, Series X, Box 158, RBRL.
Not necessary; “Fully aware”:
Marion Young to Russell, Aug. 15, 1942; Russell to Mrs. Young, Aug. 18, 1942, X. Civil Rights Series, Negro File, Box 139, RBRL.

“In the last”:
Russell to R. F. Hardy, July 4, 1942, Series X, Box 158, RBRL.
“Fading away”:
Russell in
CR
, 80/2, p. 7360.
Marines:
When S. D. Mandeville of Tennille, Ga., wrote Russell that the Marine Corps “have achieved a brilliant record and a great fighting spirit without the aid of the Negro. Don’t let them ruin the morale of the boys by letting the Negro in the Marine Corps,” Russell wrote back, “I feel just as you do about the enlistment of Negroes in the Marine Corps, and I have vigorously protested any such policy.” (Mandeville to Russell, Feb. 5, 1942; Russell to Mandeville, Feb. 13, 1942, both from X. Civil Rights Series Negro File (subject) Correspondence, Box 139, RBRL.
“These people”:
Patience Russell Patterson OH.
“In spite”:
David B. Potenziani, “Look to the Past: Richard Russell and the Defense of White Supremacy,” unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, University of Georgia, 1981, p. 41.
“Health and morals”:
CR
, 80/2, p. 5666.
“No more intimate”:
CR
, 80/2, pp. 7356,
7361.
Special camps:
Russell to George Reynolds and to Theodore Cowart, Jan. 25, 1943, X. Civil Rights Series, Negro File, 1942–43, Box 157, RBRL.

“All of the men”:
III A. Speech, Box 32, Folder, “Dragon Speech,” pp. 18, 19, RBRL. This is a typed, 22—page text, evidently transcribed from notes taken by a secretary to whom Russell dictated it. On the typed text are changes made in Russell’s handwriting. Archivists at the RBRL say that Russell dictated the text after rushing from the Senate floor in a rage after he had suffered a setback during the 1957 civil rights debate, and that the speech was never delivered. The purpose of the speech would have been “to ask unanimous consent that” an article, dated July 20th, from the
Portland Oregonian
describing the rape “be printed in the Record.” The precise date that Russell dictated it is unknown. It was filed in his office files on Sept. 28, 1957. An unknown individual in Russell’s office named it the “Dragon Speech” because its theme is that in order to slay an imaginary “Southern dragon,” northerners had given themselves illegal powers. As a result, says the text Russell dictated, “the N.A.A.C.P. had achieved such power”—“controlling the policies of [America’s] only two political parties” that “the rights of ordinary white people, the most numerous group in the country, are enjoyable contingent upon the possibility that they may collide with any right, real or imaginary, claimed by a Negro citizen” (p. 20).

“No such thing”:
Russell to Hansell, Sept. 30, 1957, Civil Rights, Little Rock, Box 345, RBRL.
“They are determined”:
Undated newspaper clipping, Mrs. Ina Russell’s scrap-book, 1947–48, RBRL, cited in Fite, p. 233.

“Scathingly”:
Drury,
A Senate Journal
, p. 122.

“I am sick”:
Fite, p. 183.

Even “baseball [and] football”:
Fite, p. 184.
“Almost entirely”:
Russell to John M. Slaton, Aug. 17, 1944, Series X, RBRL.
“A wild-eyed”:
Fite, p. 229.

Transit plot:
Drury, p. 238.

1948 FEPC speech:
CR
, 80/2, pp. A-1863–64.
“The agitation”:
CR
, 76/3, p. 1102.
“This bill”:
CR
, 79/2, p. 179.
“Any white man”:
CR
, 79/2, p. 380.

Lynching in Monroe:
NYHT, NYT
, July 27, 1946.
“We can’t cope”; “persons unknown”:
NYT, NYHT
, July 28, 1946.
“Mr. President”:
CR
, 79/2, pp. 10258–60;
NYT
, July 28, 1946.
Other 1946 lynchings:
Zangrando,
NAACP Crusade
, p. 174; Egerton,
Speak Now Against the Day
, p. 362.
“I mean”:
Donovan,
Conflict and Crisis
, p. 334.

“South haters”; “hellhack”; “obloquy”:
Meg Greenfield, “The Man Who Leads the Southern Senators,”
The Reporter
, May 21, 1964.
“To alienate”:
Fite, p. 226.
“Cannot”:
Russell to Lemuel S. J. Smith, Feb. 20, 1948, RBRL.
“Gestapo”:
Fite, p. 231.
“hordes”:
CR
, 80/2, p. A-1864.

Facing Connally down:
Margaret Shannon,
Atlanta Journal and Constitution
, Nov. 24, 1963.
“A good case”:
“The Rearguard Commander,”
Time
, Aug. 12, 1957.

“Whether”:
CR
, 79/2, p. 161.
“We’ve had”:
Fite, p. 184.

“The Negro”; “Under Russell”:
Harold H. Martin, “The Man Behind the Brass,”
SEP
, June 2, 1951.

“Almost Roman”; “Olympian”:
Frederic W. Collins,
NYT Magazine
, Oct. 20, 1963.
“No one laughed”:
Wicker,
On Press
, p. 40.

“A monumental”:
Douglas Kiker, “The Old Guard at Its Shrewdest,”
Harper’s
, Sept. 1966.
“dishonorable”:
WS
, March 15, 1964; BeLieu interview.
“His colleagues”:
Fite, p. 200.
“A thousand”:
Harold Davis, quoted by Fite, p. 200.
“His bond”:
Fite, p. 289.
“Incomparably”:
White,
Citadel
, p. 87.

“Remember so well”:
Humphrey OH.
“A wink”:
Mann,
Walls of Jericho
, p. 75.
“Check it”:
Jack Bell, “Dick Russell, King of the Filibusterers,” advance for AMs of Sunday, July 28, 1963.
“No major”:
Don Oberdorfer, “The Filibuster’s Best Friend,”
SEP
, March 15, 1965.
“Well, I want”:
Gale McGee, quoted in Fite, p. 323.
“Scores”:
Fite, p. 317.
“Favorite uncle”:
Fite, pp. 323, 199.