Martin Dyckman
Fifty years ago, Congress was moving toward enacting the first meaningful civil rights law. Lyndon Johnson, the masterful president who was about to accomplish what had seemed impossible, was looking for someone to help implement the legislation.
The choice would fall on LeRoy Collins, Florida’s former governor. It would toll the end of his political career.
Anniversary celebrations will note how the law improved America in fundamental ways. They should not overlook those who, like Collins, paid a high price.
Johnson’s fatalistic prediction to Bill Moyers that he had “handed the South to the Republicans for our lifetimes” was an understatement.
Collins became one of the first Democrats to fall.
In 1964, he was contemplating a run for the Senate in 1968 while serving uncomfortably in the well-paid but tenuous presidency of the National Association of Broadcasters.
Collins had the quaint notion that broadcasters owed the nation public service and quality programming. He denounced tobacco advertising aimed at children. In one remarkable speech, he decried Southern firebrands who promoted violence from their “buckboards of bigotry.”
The industry’s trade press turned on him, savagely, and a test vote of NAB directors made it clear that his contract would not be renewed.
So he was receptive when Secretary of Commerce Luther Hodges called on Johnson’s behalf to ask whether Collins would agree to head the Community Relations Service, which would be established with passage of the civil rights bill.
Its critical role would be to mediate disputes involving the law; ideally, to prevent trouble in the first place.
LBJ’s White House tapes reveal he was cool toward Collins when Hodges, who had been Collins’ peer as governor of North Carolina, first proposed him.
But Johnson warmed to him after two other prospects declined the job.
“This is not going to be the place to win any popularity contests,” the president remarked.
“Not at all, and this guy would sacrifice anything in the world for the principle of doing a job for his country . . . no question about it,” Hodges replied.
Although Collins had been elected on a promise to preserve school segregation, his views were changing and he eventually became a champion of civil rights.
Johnson announced his appointment as he signed the civil rights bill on July 2.
Under Collins’ command, the Community Relations Service detected that racial tensions ran nationwide and warned of omens of violence in 11 Northern and Western cities. They included Chicago and Los Angeles, soon to be the scenes of calamitous riots.
But the law required the agency to avoid publicity, and so Collins was unable to warn the public of what the mayors chose to ignore.
In March 1965, Alabama Gov. George Wallace unleashed state troopers and vigilantes in a brutal assault on voting rights demonstrators attempting to march from Selma to the state capital at Montgomery.
As the demonstrators regrouped for another attempt, Johnson sent Collins to Selma to prevent more bloodshed.
He succeeded. The marchers agreed to wait for the outcome of a federal court hearing. Wallace agreed to let them make a symbolic demonstration.
Collins returned to Washington in time to hear Johnson urge Congress to enact the Voting Rights Act, closing his speech with the memorable words, “And we shall overcome.” When LBJ signed that bill, he gave Collins one of the pens.
Meanwhile, the judge had cleared the way and ordered Alabama not to interfere with the march.
Collins went back to Alabama to arrange for a peaceful entry into Montgomery. The only opportunity to talk with the leaders was to walk a ways with them.
A news photo of him walking and talking with Dr. Martin Luther King and others became an overnight sensation in the South. The mistaken notion that he had “marched” at Selma, eagerly exploited by his opponents, forced him into a ruinous second Democratic primary in the 1968 U.S. Senate race and contributed to his eventual loss to Republican Ed Gurney.
The cruelest part to Collins was that he lost even Leon County, his home. He took a long time going back.
It was a classic example of what has become commonplace in American politics: distorting the context of an event and magnifying it out of proportion.
Collins died in 1991 without having run for office again. By then, it was hard to find anyone in Tallahassee who would admit having voted against him. He is widely considered to have been Florida’s greatest governor.
Martin Dyckman is a retired associate editor of the St. Petersburg Times. He lives at Waynesville, N.C. Column courtesy of Context Florida.
