The Dean by John David Dingell

Author:John David Dingell
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2018-10-22T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter 9

Promises to Keep

JFK challenged us to realize that the freedoms granted to us as proud Americans should make no exceptions for race, color or creed.

—TWEET FROM @JOHNDINGELL, NOVEMBER 22, 2013, 11:58 A.M.

IN 1957, PRESIDENT DWIGHT D. EISENHOWER INTEGRATED Little Rock Central High School. Arkansas governor Orval Faubus initially tried to use the Arkansas National Guard to block integration; Eisenhower federalized the Guard so it wasn’t under Faubus’s spell. The mayor of Little Rock asked the president for federal troops to protect the students from angry segregationists. Eisenhower sent in the 101st Airborne Division, the Screaming Eagles, the heroes of the Siege of Bastogne during the Battle of the Bulge in World War II.

Brooks Hays, a Democratic congressman from Arkansas, represented Little Rock. During the Central High segregation crisis, Hays had tried to mediate the dispute between Faubus and Eisenhower. Angered by what they saw as his betrayal, the old Dixiecrat wing of the Democratic Party drafted a last-minute write-in candidate, a Little Rock School Board member named Dale Alford, to run in the general election against Hays. After a heated campaign, Alford won a narrow (and immediately disputed) victory. Ultimately, the House would have to decide whether or not to seat him.

“According to precedent, the chair will swear in all members at this time,” Speaker Rayburn intoned from his perch atop the rostrum.

It was January 7, 1959, and the House was meeting to swear in the new members, elect a Speaker, and handle all the parliamentary business that is required at the beginning of every new session.

Before the Speaker could administer the oath to all the members, he noticed a tall, gangly Pole with thick-framed glasses and a skinny tie shoot up out of his seat. I was thirty-two, still a kid, tilting at every windmill.

“Mr. Speaker!”

“For what purpose does the gentleman from Michigan rise?”

“Mr. Speaker, upon my responsibility as a member-elect of the Eighty-Sixth Congress, I object to the oath being administered to the gentleman from Arkansas, Mr. Dale Alford. I base this upon facts and statements which I consider to be reliable.”

There had been a whiff of scandal about the race, given Alford’s late entrance, the relationship between Faubus’s gubernatorial campaign and Alford’s congressional campaign, and the fact that an Independent segregationist was about to join the Democratic Caucus despite beating the incumbent Democratic member. There were also questions about whether ballot boxes had been stuffed.

I thought the whole situation about Alford being seated was a crock of shit. He beat a Democrat; we shouldn’t have let him caucus with us. He was an unapologetic segregationist; we shouldn’t have let him caucus with us.

I wasn’t going to let a man like Alford get sworn in without a fight. However, I was still only a member-elect. Technically, the Eighty-Fifth Congress had not yet ended its term; that would officially occur only when the new members of the Eighty-Sixth took the oath.

I was the only one brash (foolish?) enough to challenge the all-powerful Sam Rayburn, even though I knew other members quietly shared my sentiments.

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