Johnson distributed all the pork he could get his hands on to win votes in the Senate. He had Secretary of the Interior Stewart Udall personally promise the Arizona senator Carl Hayden that the White House would offer assistance to the Central Arizona Project, a huge public project to move water from the Colorado River into Arizona, in return for Hayden’s promise to support cloture. Hayden was not a strong supporter of civil rights—in 1957 he had joined southern Democrats to delay the civil rights bill—but water was something Arizona desperately needed, so he made the deal.70
Yet there were clear limits to what Johnson could do. For every phone call in which he was able to cajole a senator into supporting cloture, there were others who refused to budge no matter how intense the Treatment became. When Johnson leaned in heavily on the West Virginia Democrat Robert Byrd, virtually begging him to support the administration in an election year, Byrd responded in an equally aggressive fashion: “I hope to hell we beat it. We’re going to do all we can for Lyndon Johnson. We don’t need that bill. You know, you know I’ll carry the weight where it’s needed . . . But not on this.”71
Johnson publicly campaigned for the civil rights bill only as one component of the campaign-style barnstorming trip he took in late April to promote his antipoverty program. On the trip, which was known as the Poverty Tour, Johnson delivered more than thirty speeches in under a month to ten states; he traveled most of the time by airplane and covered more than ten thousand miles.72 In the course of his pitch for the poverty program, the president talked frequently about the connection between poverty and race.73 Huge crowds greeted him everywhere. In Pittsburgh, he assured an audience of steelworkers that he would get a civil rights bill through the Senate “if it takes all summer” and that “we don’t want any Democratic label on it. We want it to be an American bill.”74 In Georgia, addressing the state legislature, with the racist senator Herman Talmadge and his wife sitting behind him, he urged the assembly to support civil rights. When he returned to the White House, Johnson could barely contain his excitement. He told Larry O’Brien, “I made sixteen speeches and we had a million people. That’s a minimum . . . Old Herman Talmadge got up after I made two civil rights speeches that he was present at, and said, ‘I just want to say that I have never seen as many people anywhere.’”75
NEGOTIATING WITH DIRKSEN
The final breakthrough in the civil rights struggle occurred behind closed doors, when Johnson turned to the Republican minority leader, Everett Dirksen, to deliver the votes he needed for cloture. It could have been a lot worse. Dirksen firmly believed that the job of a legislator was to make the compromises necessary to pass bills. Like so many others in this period of insider politics, when legislators stayed in office for long periods of time and devoted their careers to the institution of Congress, Johnson and Dirksen knew each other well, liked each other, and believed in working together. “They were old pros,” Johnson’s adviser Jack Valenti recalled. “They understood the ground rules and played by them, and never allowed combat in the press to obscure a hospitable regard for each other.”76
Johnson was confident he could make a deal with Dirksen. Though he was a midwestern conservative known primarily for his attacks on government spending and his opposition to federal regulations on business, Dirksen had supported several civil rights measures in the past, including the 1957 bill. The Illinois Republican was fully aware of how public opinion had shifted as a result of the civil rights protests in Alabama and Mississippi.
Johnson was hoping to take advantage of Dirksen’s concern for his legacy. Like Johnson, Dirksen measured his worth by the legislation he was able to move through Congress. At the moment, the senator was in terrible health—he had emphysema, from smoking three packs a day, and a peptic ulcer.77 The president felt that if the Democrats gave Dirksen something he wanted in the final bill, he would seize the opportunity to have his name on a truly significant piece of legislation. Letting Dirksen play a role in shaping the final legislation did carry some significant political risks; it would surely draw fire from liberals whose support Johnson needed on this and other issues.
“You’ve got to play to Ev Dirksen,” Johnson told Hubert Humphrey. “You’ve got to let him have a piece of the action. He’s got to look good all the time.”78 Though this was a bitter pill for a devoted civil rights advocate to swallow, Humphrey had become enough of a legislative operator to recognize that they would have to let Dirksen claim a measure of credit for passing the civil rights bill. Humphrey later said he “would have kissed Dirksen’s ass on the Capitol steps.”79
Though characteristically elusive, Dirksen gave numerous indications that he could support the civil rights bill as long as certain changes were made. The events of the past few months had brought him to the side of the civil rights activists in terms of prohibiting segregation in public accommodations. The part of the bill that now troubled him most was Title VII, which established the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. Dirksen thought the commission, as constituted in the bill, represented an excessive and dangerous expansion of federal power. He had always been an opponent of federal regulations on business, and he thought the EEOC would have too much authority over a firm’s hiring decisions. If the House bill were passed, the EEOC would have more authority than some agencies for equal employment opportunity already established by some states, including Illinois. Dirksen warned this would create a jurisdictional mess, with federal and state authorities competing over policy and businesses uncertain about which rules to follow.80 He also believed the measure could result in the establishment of racial quotas, which would compel the employment of certain groups at the expense of individual rights.
Dirksen recognized that to round up enough votes for cloture, he needed a compromise that would placate conservative Republicans who were adamantly opposed to the EEOC. The chairman of the Republican Policy Committee, Bourke Hickenlooper of Iowa, who didn’t like Dirksen and wanted to challenge him as minority leader, wasn’t on board with the deal Republicans had worked out in the House. In fact, he objected to the entire Civil Rights Act on the grounds that it would give bureaucrats too much power to intervene in the personal lives of Americans. The Iowan’s influence on the most conservative members of the Republican caucus could cause Dirksen trouble.
While the filibuster was well under way, Johnson, Mansfield, Kennedy, and Humphrey entered into top-secret negotiations with Dirksen. They were prepared to compromise on the EEOC as long as they could protect the section of the bill that prohibited segregation in public accommodations. In their minds, this had been the focus of the civil rights protests over the past few years, and there would be outrage among activists and liberal politicians if it didn’t pass. They had also looked at the polls and seen that public support for the desegregation of public accommodations was stronger than ever before. Although many liberals believed that ending racial discrimination in hiring was equally important to achieving civil rights, they also understood that Dirksen was not alone. A strong EEOC had substantial opposition among Republicans whose support they needed, and it would bring business interests into a debate they were otherwise happy to sit out. The civil rights movement had focused on ending segregation in schools and public accommodations and had turned congressional opinion on the issue, but it had not yet done the same on employment discrimination. When it came time to begin serious talks with Dirksen, President Johnson intended to stand firm on desegregation but give some ground on the structure of the employment commission.
The president relied on Burke Marshall of the Civil Rights Division and Deputy Attorney General Nicholas Katzenbach to make the deal with Dirksen. Attorney General Robert Kennedy would continue to serve as the administration’s spokesperson on the bill. On May 5, the Justice Department officials met with the Senate Democratic and Republican leaders to begin discussions on the civil rights bill. Humphrey, remembering Johnson’s instructions to flatter the minority leader, insisted that the ta
lks take place in Dirksen’s large office.
When Katzenbach and Marshall entered Dirksen’s office for the first meeting, they couldn’t help but notice the portrait of Abraham Lincoln looking at them over the minority leader’s shoulder. An elaborate collection of elephant figurines grazed on Dirksen’s desk, under the sunny bipartisan brilliance of fresh marigolds in an elegant vase.
Dirksen’s legal staff had brought with them bundles of research and notated drafts of the bill,81 which were soon spread out over the large rectangular wooden conference table where the men sat and slowly reviewed the content of the bill, section by section.
As word of the negotiations spread through Washington and the civil rights community, some liberal organizations were displeased with Dirksen’s prominence in the debate. Demands expressed by brave African Americans and white college youth were now to be answered by a white, antigovernment midwestern conservative. Conservatives who blocked legislation for years were then allowed to take credit for bills they were finally forced to accept. Humphrey recalled that some of his liberal allies told him, “You’re the manager of the bill. We’re the majority party. Why don’t you call Dirksen to your office?”82
These reactions were what Johnson had expected, but he didn’t believe he had any other option, given the politics of the Senate. Dirksen held the balance of power to stop the filibuster. Everything depended on what happened in his office. Every morning, the group around the conference table included Senators Dirksen, Mansfield, Humphrey, Kuchel, Magnuson, and Hickenlooper and from Justice Katzenbach and Marshall. Dirksen and Katzenbach sat next to each other at the head of the table. In the evening, the group was smaller, only Katzenbach, Marshall, Dirksen, and their legal staffs, who combed the language of the bill, line by line, looking for points of disagreement and compromises to resolve them. The group was often joined by Nebraska senator Roman Hruska, who was invited to represent the conservative wing of the GOP. The drinking and smoking that accompanied the negotiations lubricated the process at all hours of the day. Evenings usually saw the crystal ashtrays on the table filled with cigarette butts and all the participants gathered around the “Twilight Lodge,” Dirksen’s private bar that was fully stocked with bourbon, whiskey, and gin. “The process took time, and we were lucky to get one provision agreed to every two days or so,” Katzenbach recalled. “In those meetings Burke and I discovered three important facts: first, Dirksen wanted to be sure the provision [on employment discrimination] did not affect his state of Illinois in any significant way; second, he obviously wanted the bill rewritten, to appear different, even if there were no substantive changes, so that he could explain to all his colleagues all the ‘changes’ he had negotiated; and third, it behooved us to get agreement before too much bourbon had dulled the senator’s recollection of what he had okayed.”83
The administration invited lobbyists from the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights to attend the meetings on Tuesdays and Thursdays. Their role was to give a strong presentation of what the bill had to do to satisfy the movement; their participation was meant to bolster their confidence that the Senate would actually reach agreement on a good bill and to make them feel invested in the legislative deliberations. On the other hand, the participation of the civil rights lobbyists was limited, because the Justice Department felt that ultimately there would have to be certain concessions made to Dirksen that the civil rights representatives would not want to agree to.84
During the fifth day of deliberations, the negotiators reached the crucial section on the equal employment commission. If a deal wasn’t struck, the filibuster would be much likelier to continue. Dirksen suggested turning the EEOC into an investigative body with limited enforcement power. State commissions would have the primary authority to handle employment discrimination. The federal commission could investigate, however, if a state commission failed to implement remedies or if a state had no commission. Because there were no state commissions in southern states, whereas several northern states (including Illinois) had commissions, the compromise would protect much of the North from intervention by a federal commission but still allow the government to take action in most of the South. Humphrey and the White House could live with this. The administration also agreed to strip away some of the power the House bill granted to the EEOC, namely the power to file suits. Under Dirksen’s compromise, the EEOC could only investigate problems and make recommendations to the Department of Justice, whose attorneys could then take action.
The following morning, the staff reviewed the proposed language on the EEOC. Humphrey brought Joseph Clark to the meeting. The Pennsylvania senator was one of the most liberal members of the Democratic caucus, a passionate civil rights advocate, and a reformer who had just recently published a book lambasting the way the conservative coalition had made Congress dysfunctional. Clark walked into Dirksen’s office with a script in his head about how the next few minutes would unfold. He had spent most of his time as one of Humphrey’s floor corporals pushing back against southern misinformation and making the case for a civil rights bill that addressed inequality in the workplace. Dirksen, aiming to get himself more support from conservative Republicans and the business community, wanted to see if he could squeeze out a better deal on the EEOC than the one he had agreed to the previous day. As he slowly walked through the language of the section and explained his remaining concerns, Dirksen kept an eye on Clark, who made quite visible his unhappiness with what the minority leader was saying. When Dirksen came out and asked directly if they could agree to make the EEOC even weaker, all the participants in the room turned immediately to see Clark’s reaction. They were not disappointed. The senator pushed his chair back from the table, stood up, and, without even looking at Dirksen, stormed out of the room. “It’s a goddamn sellout!” he shouted as he walked through the door. Humphrey turned to Dirksen and said, “See what pressure I’m up against?” Dirksen acknowledged that he understood and brought the negotiations on the EEOC to a close. Humphrey and Clark had planned the walkout in advance.85
At 4:05 in the afternoon on May 13, Johnson’s team and Dirksen finalized their deal. Attorney General Kennedy, who had been present at the last meeting, called Johnson to let him know: “We had a meeting all day today, with Senator Dirksen on the civil rights bill . . . And [it would] appear that we have an agreement.” Kennedy said that Dirksen was “hopeful” they could get the votes on cloture.86 Johnson immediately called the minority leader. “I saw your exhibit at the World’s Fair,” Johnson told him, “and it said, ‘The Land of Lincoln,’ so you’re worthy of the ‘Land of Lincoln.’ And the man from Illinois is going to pass the bill, and I’ll see that you get proper attention and credit.”87
Predictably, the civil rights groups were upset about the weakening of the EEOC. Andrew Biemiller, according to Humphrey, shook his head and said, “This is awful,” but most of the liberals had suspected that in the end the president and the leadership would agree to a compromise along these lines, and they knew they were walking away with a bill that enacted a historic transformation in race relations, with bipartisan support, by ending de jure segregation.88 The very liberal Philip Hart, known as the conscience of the Senate, advised his Democratic colleagues to leave behind any concerns and support the bill.89
They would now have enough votes for cloture, but Johnson still wanted as much Republican support as he could get on civil rights as possible; he believed bipartisan support would be essential to help protect the legislation over the long term. Johnson had told Humphrey that there was the potential for a “real revolution in this country” once the bill went into effect, a reasonable fear given southerners’ violent response to Martin Luther King’s protests. The more emphatically Republicans expressed their support for the legislation at the start, the better the odds would be that the law could withstand the challenges Johnson expected it to face in its early years if southerners refused to abide by the law, responded with violence, or challenged it
in court. “So we’ve got to make this an American bill and not just a Democratic bill,” Johnson said.90
On May 26, Senator Dirksen introduced an omnibus amendment to the civil rights bill that included all the changes that had been agreed to with Humphrey and the administration. Despite the significant compromise on the EEOC, this was not a repeat of 1957, when civil rights supporters had seen their dreams go up in legislative smoke; the rest of the bill had survived the backroom negotiations remarkably intact. Dirksen had taken more of a bite out of the bill than many civil rights proponents were hoping for, but in exchange he had thrown his full support behind provisions that were far stronger than anything that had been done since Reconstruction; it was a bill that would have seemed impossible just one year earlier. The civil rights movement had spent an enormous amount of blood and energy fighting to desegregate the institutions of the South, and this legislation would put the weight of the federal government behind the final accomplishment of the task.
The final vote on cloture had to wait a few more days because the Republicans faced an added complication. Most in the GOP expected that their vote on civil rights, and that of the Democrats, would play a significant role in the November election. The bill was being debated in the middle of the presidential primary season. The front-runner for the Republican nomination was the Arizona senator Barry Goldwater, who represented the right wing of the party and was part of a campaign to purge the GOP of the centrists who had played a large role in the party, notably in their support of civil rights. Goldwater, who was well liked personally on both sides of the aisle, focused on his strident anticommunism and defense of free-market principles. He had made a name for himself by attacking organized labor and charging that Democrats were weak on defense. He also openly opposed the civil rights bill as a dangerous extension of government power, though he did not defend racial inequality; he argued that the role of the federal government had to be limited even in this matter. Senate Republicans agreed that they would not allow the vote on cloture to happen until after June 2, the day of the California Republican primary, for fear of embarrassing Goldwater.
The Fierce Urgency of Now Page 13