The Congress: The Covenant

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Discussing the period after the civil rights bill first reached the Senate, Dirksen recalls that "We sort of let the thing simmer and jell, waiting to see what would happen. We knew that we could expect a freshet of long speeches. We knew that for about 30 days nothing would happen."

Help from Hubert. In the interim, Dirksen met almost daily with his top legal aides—three experts on constitutional rights and administrative procedure—and the four men picked the House bill apart. After weeks, they had accumulated a sheaf of some 70 amendments, many technical, some substantive. This was the em-ryonic Dirksen "substitute package."

It was ready for unveiling in late April, and Dirksen explained it at meetings of the eleven-man Senate Republican Policy Committee. "I was trying," he says, "to condition them a little as to what I had in mind for this bill." There was some grousing, mostly from New Hampshire's Norris Cotton, Iowa's Bourke Hickenlooper and Kentucky's Thruston Morton, who were upset over the bill's equal-employment-opportunity section. To a certain extent, Dirksen agreed with them; his own Illinois has strong laws in this area, and Ev found that the bill might usurp states' jurisdiction. His amendment took away the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission's right to file suits.

By now Republican Dirksen and Democrat Hubert Humphrey were in almost constant touch. Early in the civil rights debate Humphrey knew that he had a hard core of 41 Democrats who could be relied on to vote for cloture.

Dirksen could count on only twelve to 14 Republicans. The total fell far short of the two-thirds vote that would be needed to shut off a filibuster. Slowly, carefully, patiently, Dirksen went to work on even more amendments, all calculated to bring more Republicans into the cloture fold.

By mid-May, recalls Dirksen, his amendment package was "in pretty tangible shape." At Dirksen's suggestion, Humphrey arranged for a bipartisan meeting between Senate and Administration leaders. The place: Dirksen's leadership office with the tinkling chandelier that once belonged to Thomas Jefferson. The participants: Dirksen, Mansfield, Humphrey, California's Republican Senator Tom Kuchel, Attorney General Kennedy, Deputy Attorney General Nicholas Katzenbach, and a sprinkling of liberals, moderates and conservatives from both parties.

In five conferences, agreement was finally reached on the package, essentially a rewritten version of the House bill. On May 26 it was introduced to the Senate by Dirksen as an amendment. Said he: "I doubt very much whether in my whole legislative lifetime any measure has received so much meticulous attention."

The Thrust. The bill contains sections dealing with discrimination in voting, public accommodations, publicly owned facilities, education, employment, and federally assisted programs. It also extends the Civil Rights Commission, sets up a Community Relations Service and provides a variety of enforcement powers ranging from court injunctions to jail terms of six months and $1,000 fines (TIME, May 29).