said "After [Thurgood] Marshall, I could not go back to Mississippi if a Jewish chief justice swore in the next president." The National Socialist White People's Party undertook a phone campaign that summer condemning Fortas as a "despicable Jew with a 'red' record that smells to high heaven." Such attacks were soundly condemned by most senators. Even so, the White House began alerting the press to growing antisemitic opposition against Fortas, and used the issue to garner support for him among the senators. Fortas himself called the effort to defeat his nomination, "anti-Negro, anti-liberal, anti-civil rights, [and] anti-Semitic." American University payments Fortas's acceptance of $15,000 for nine speaking engagements at American University's Washington College of Law became a source of controversy. The money had come not from the university but from private sources that represented business interests connected to 40 companies; Senator Strom Thurmond raised the idea that cases involving these companies might come to the Court, and Fortas might not be objective. While the fee was legal, the size of the fee raised much concern about the Court's insulation from private interests, especially as it was funded by former clients and partners of Fortas. The $15,000 represented more than 40 percent of a Supreme Court justice's salary at the time, and was seven times what any other American University seminar leader had ever been paid. Fortas Film Festival Thurmond also hammered at the issue of pornography. He condemned Fortas for voting with the majority to overturn obscenity laws dealing with pornographic films. Thurmond obtained some of the films in question and played them in the Senate building while the hearings were out of session. These showings became the known as "Fortas Film Festival", and the association of Fortas with some of the films' strip-teases and especially the rape or homosexual sex depicted in one called Flaming Creatures was effective in tarnishing Fortas's image and disheartening his supporters. Cloture vote It was not until September 17, that the Judiciary Committee took a final vote on the nomination, reporting it favorably by an 11 to 6 vote to the full Senate. Thurmond promised to filibuster, and when the senate debate began on September 25, Fortas's opponents restated every criticism they had directed against Fortas, especially with regard to the issue of obscenity. Johnson remained resolute in his support for his nominee, saying to an aide: "We won't withdraw the nomination. I