The Daily Bulletin

PEPPER, HILL, FULBRIGHT
TO FIGHT PERMANENT FEPC
By ERNEST E. JOHNSON
WASHINGTON, May 21 (ANP)

The last meeting of the senate education and labor committee on permanent FEPC legislation failed to report the coalition bill but did reveal that Sens. Pepper of Florida, Hill of Alabama and Fulbright of Arkansas, so-called southern liberals, are a part of the group of five southern senators who intend to fight S-101.

Meanwhile, the petition effort in the house is still dragging with not more than 100 signatures having been affixed in the three weeks it has been on the house desk. The rules committee was expecting to meet sometime this week to report the measure, chairman Sabath having been ill for the past two weeks.

A report that has gained some currency here following his recent talk with President Truman is that Sabath was told to get the Norton bill out of his committee.

The events of the week, however, were focused upon the senate committee, and an additional heat is expected to develop on Wednesday when the group reconvenes on the FEPC bill.

The hope had been that the bill would have been reported. It develops now that the three senators already mentioned, along with Ellender of Louisiana and Johnstone of South Carolina, intend to do all they can to keep it there. The National Council for a Permanent FEPC feel confident, however, that they still have enough votes to report the bill.

Emerging from the committee room Ellender and Johnstone revealed the support they have. Johnstone promised to "filibuster against it for three weeks if it comes to the floor," and Ellender said he would speak "for five months."

Ellender was so bitter that he said even Sen. Taft's "toothless commission" bill would get a break. Both men were "somewhat surprised to find Pepper on our side."

Pepper recognized what he called "a colossal problem" on both sides, and could see no way of reconciling them. He wasn't even sure that delay would help, although he asked for delay.

Fulbright said he would definitely "oppose committee report of the bill." He saw no hope for "any compromise," and assured that he would fight the measure on the floor. "I don't think the bill is timely and I think it goes too far," he asserted.

"I'll read every historian's report on the reconstruction's days," declared Johnstone. "I'll show what caused the feeling, and that that feeling is so ingrained into those people it will take a generation to get it out. No law will ever take it out."