The Covenant

Friday, Jun. 19, 1964

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On the sun-baked plaza behind the U.S. Capitol, TV vans hummed like hungry insects. Marching in disorderly array up the steps to the Senate cham ber came group upon group of summer tourists, sunglasses on and cameras slung high. Inside, the Senate gallery was packed.

Only an hour remained before the critical vote. Now Majority Leader Mike Mansfield of Montana rose, and in soft tones spoke in favor of cloture; if approved by two-thirds of the Senators present and voting, it would bring to an end the longest filibuster in Senate history. "The Senate," Mansfield said, "now stands at the crossroads of history, and the time for decision is at hand."

He read aloud a letter he recently received from a Montana mother of four.

"When I kiss my children good night," she wrote, "I offer a small prayer of thanks to God for making them so perfect, so healthy, so lovely, and I find myself tempted to thank him for letting them be born white. Then I am not so proud, neither of myself nor of our society, which forces such a temptation upon us."

"The Question Is . . ." Mansfield's time ran out, and he relinquished the floor to Georgia's Richard Brevard Russell, leader of the Democratic bloc that had been filibustering against the most far-reaching civil rights bill in U.S. history. Russell was about to go down in defeat, and he knew it. But his final-hour plea was urgent. Said he: "If this bill is enacted into law, next year we will be confronted with new demands for enactment of further legislation in this field, such as laws requiring open housing and the bussing of children. The country is becoming enmeshed in a philosophy that can only lead to the destruction of our dual system of sovereign states in an indestructible Union."

Russell gave way to Minnesota Democrat Hubert Humphrey, the Johnson Administration's floor manager for the bill. In his lapel Humphrey wore a red rose like a battle standard. "The Constitution of the United States is on trial," he said. "The question is whether we will have two types of citizenship in this nation, or first-class citizenship for all."

Only 15 minutes remained before voting time. Illinois Republican Everett McKinley Dirksen, 68, the Senate's minority leader, arose slowly from his front-row desk. He was the man most were waiting to hear, not merely because he is the Senate's most practiced and professional orator but largely because he is the shrewd, patient negotiator whose efforts, perhaps more than anyone else's, had made a favorable cloture vote likely. With great deliberation Dirksen took off his tortoise-shell spectacles, revealing his sad, bloodhound eyes underlined by deep, dark pouches. In his massive left hand, its little finger flourishing a green jade ring, he held a twelve-page speech he had typed the night before on Senate stationery.