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Saturday, Aug. 1, 2020

Is the Senate filibuster a relic of the Jim Crow era?

Eric Smith, Gigafact
no

The filibuster, a legislative debating tactic to slow down a bill's passage, predates the Jim Crow era by decades, having been enabled by a change to U.S. Senate rules in 1806. Jim Crow, the title of an old Black minstrel song, became a catchphrase for a patchwork of segregation laws and provisions enacted after the Civil War.

The filibuster allows a minority of Senators to prevent a bill from being brought to a vote. This stems from Senate rules that enable unlimited debate until at least three-fifths of members vote to end it.

It was widely used in the 1950's and 1960's by southern senators seeking to block civil-rights legislation. The longest filibuster in history occurred when South Carolina Senator Strom Thurmond filibustered for 24 hours and 18 minutes against the Civil Rights Act of 1957 (the bill passed).

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