Southern lawmakers used Senate rules to enact Calhoun’s concurrent minority veto until 1965

Evidence

Despite insurgencies at home—the Populist Party, for example, swept through Georgia and North Carolina in the 1890s, demanding aid for farmers and a reduction in debts—Southern lawmakers were able to maintain an iron grip on federal offices until the Voting Rights Act of 1965. In their legislative fights the spirit of nullification lived on. Anti-lynching laws and some pro-labor legislation died at the hands of lawmakers from the “Solid South” who took advantage of Senate rules like the filibuster—under which lawmakers could speak indefinitely, tying up the chamber’s business—to effectively enact Calhoun’s idea of a concurrent majority against legislation that threatened the Southern racial status quo. — Nikole Hannah-Jones et al., The 1619 Project, 643

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the reader’s existing knowledge of how minority legislative vetoes function (Milgrom’s concurrent-majority-style mechanisms and institutional design in the law merchant work).
• DEFINE: Concretely defines how Calhoun’s theoretical ‘concurrent majority’ was operationalized through the actual Senate filibuster.