Tag: sam ervin

Ervin on racial lawlessness: Silent Sam

“Sen. Sam Ervin found much to criticize in Gov. George Wallace’s [1963 ‘schoolhouse door’] face-off with the Justice Department, arguing that ‘such conduct seriously handicaps Southern senators in the fight against civil rights bills.’

“Nonetheless, Ervin, who had staked out a hardline position on integration early in his career, chose to keep these sentiments private. Like the more moderate J. William Fulbright before him, he would not… publicly condemn white lawlessness and through his silence helped to ensure it would continue.

“Ervin theorized that voluntary community initiatives to create an interracial dialogue offered the best means of diminishing tensions…. What he never admitted was that these very same communities had been granted decades of opportunities to right the most pronounced racial injustices in the region.”

— From “Delaying the Dream: Southern Senators and the Fight Against Civil Rights, 1938-1965” by Keith M. Finley (2008)

A horse is a horse, of course, of course

senatorsam

“When the [Senate Watergate Committee’s] report failed to single out the President, [Chairman Sam Ervin explained] that it was possible to draw a picture of a horse in two ways. You could draw the picture with a very good likeness. Or you could draw the picture and write under it, ‘This is a horse.’ Well, said Ervin, ‘We just drew the picture.’

“In this… Ervin was a product of his culture,  for John Randolph of Roanoke, while making a sinister implication against President Adams in 1826, had said: ‘I do not draw my pictures in such a way as to render it necessary to write under them, “This is a man, this is a horse.” ‘ ”

–– From “The Natural Superiority of Southern Politicians” (1977) by David Leon Chandler

Pictured: Pinback button produced by Ervin’s admirers during the Watergate hearings.