Passage
In the waning hours of the 1963 General Assembly session, Rep. Phil Godwin introduced the bill, then called for a suspension of the rules to expedite its passage through the state House of Representatives. There were no committee hearings and no advance notice that the bill would be introduced, and only a few of the bill's supporters had copies of the legislation. The bill passed three readings in four minutes.
Having been passed in the House, the bill was immediately taken across the Legislative Building to the North Carolina Senate chamber, where Clarance Stone was presiding. When one senator spoke briefly against the bill, Stone responded by saying "No, it sounds like a real good one to me, I think we ought to get this one through." When several other members of the Senate began to rise to speak against the bill, Stone took off his glasses and said he saw no more people wanting to speak. He then called for the voice vote and declared that the bill had passed.
Governor Terry Sanford was against the bill, but at that time the governor of North Carolina could not veto legislation.
Read more about this topic: North Carolina Speaker Ban
Famous quotes containing the word passage:
“Modern dancers are inconvenienced by a local ordinance requiring the passage of visible light between partners.”
—State of Utah, U.S. public relief program (1935-1943)
“Where there is no vision, the people perish.”
—Bible: Hebrew Proverbs 29:18.
President John F. Kennedy quoted this passage on the eve of his assassination in Dallas, Texas. Quoted in Theodore C. Sorenson, Kennedy, epilogue (1965)
“Maria. He’s drunk nightly in your company.
Sir Toby Belch. With drinking healths to my niece. I’ll drink to her as long as there is a passage in my throat, and drink in Illyria.”
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)