The Bill of the Century: The Epic Battle for the Civil Rights Act

by Risen, Clay

  The day ended with a whimper; Kennedy had made his appearance and defended the bill as best he could, but he had proved a poor advocate—unprepared on the details, unwilling to sit through the frustrating but predictable hail of pinprick questions from the dais. The next day’s headlines said it all: robert kennedy offers to modify civil rights bill, said the New York Times; r.f. kennedy o.k.’s race bill limits, said the Baltimore Sun—hardly the bold opening the administration was looking for. Nor did the bad press stop. Lindsay was not alone in hearing rumors of a possible compromise. “It is believed in some quarters,” reported the Los Angeles Times, “that the actions of the Southerners indicate that a filibuster can be avoided, and a watered down, but meaningful, civil rights program can be enacted.”54

  More critically, though, Kennedy revealed how poorly the White House and the Department of Justice were prepared to work with Republicans. Lindsay in particular was key. Though he was too liberal to have much influence among the rank-and-file Republicans, the administration needed him on its team; otherwise, he could align with liberal Democrats, who could then claim their own unwieldy (in the administration’s eyes) alternative had bipartisan support.

  Three days later, Katzenbach sat down to write an extensive memo to Robert Kennedy detailing his strategy for getting the bill out of Congress and to the president’s desk. Katzenbach was not a born politician—he had spent most of his career in academia, most recently at the University of Chicago. But he was a quick study and proved to have a sharp tactical mind; he also spent hours that summer quizzing old congressional hands like Lawrence O’Brien on the intricacies of House and Senate procedure and, more importantly, the unwritten rules that dictated whether a bill would live or die on Capitol Hill.

  He began his memo by working backward: if the goal was to get the bill intact through the Senate, then a filibuster was inevitable—which meant they needed 67 votes to stop debate and bring the bill to a vote, which meant winning 19 of the 34 Republican votes (assuming all 48 non-Southern Democrats voted for the bill). The only way to do that, he wrote, was to get Dirksen on board, as early as possible. Why so early? Because Katzenbach could then take Dirksen’s support for the bill to House Republicans, who were open to civil rights but wary of siding with legislation that might get pared back in the Senate. Dirksen, of course, did not support Title II, but Katzenbach hoped that his support on everything else could give momentum to the bill in the House, and that by the time it reached the Senate, Dirksen would have to choose between agreeing to the entire bill or standing in the way of historic legislation. Given Dirksen’s enormous self-regard and well-known reputation as a dealmaker, Katzenbach told Kennedy he was confident it would work out.55

  But that still left the House. Though Katzenbach did not say it explicitly in the memo, everyone in the administration knew that Kennedy’s testimony had been a disaster, insulting potential Republican crossovers and giving the impression that, once again, the White House was not as supportive of civil rights legislation as the president had said on TV. They needed a strategy, not just an assumption that they could offer a moderate bill and watch the Republicans fall in line. And the first step in that direction was to woo McCulloch—in person, and with a gesture that underlined the White House’s awareness of the critical role he would play.

  The next week Congress was in recess for the Fourth of July holiday, and most members went back to their home districts, including McCulloch. On July 2, Burke Marshall followed him.

  McCulloch’s son-in-law, David Carver, met Marshall at the Dayton airport and drove him to Piqua. The two took an extended tour of the town, as McCulloch was giving a speech that morning to the local Rotary Club. Finally, early in the afternoon Marshall climbed the stairs to the second-floor offices of McCulloch, Felger, Fite, and Gutmann, located in the handsome neoclassical Piqua National Bank Building, not far from the Miami River.56

  Marshall’s mission that day was to get McCulloch behind the bill. Most congressmen would have scoffed: here was a representative from the other party, just 16 months before a presidential election, asking him to drop his own legislation on a potentially decisive issue and back the administration’s. McCulloch, though, agreed almost immediately—contingent on Marshall’s promise that the bill would not get trimmed in the Senate, and that Kennedy would give the Republicans equal credit. The first demand was already part of the administration’s strategy, and the second was a small price to pay for cooperation. Marshall’s trip was a breakthrough—with McCulloch on board, House Republican buy-in was almost guaranteed. The two men shook on it, and Marshall caught a late flight back to Washington.

  Robert Kennedy was elated. Not only had Marshall brought back great news from Ohio, but representatives from around the country returned to Washington to report that their constituents were strongly behind Title II. As the president said in a statement after a July 9 breakfast with the congressional leadership, “Even though the public accommodations section is causing controversy, it is clear to most Americans that when the basic constitutional rights of an individual to be treated as a free and equal human being come into conflict with the preferences of those who operate public accommodations, then the elementary rights to equal citizenship and equal treatment must prevail.”57

  While Kennedy was wrangling with Congress over the civil rights bill, movement leaders were wrangling over the planned march on Washington. The June 22 lunch in Walter Reuther’s Washington hotel suite had resolved nothing; though King had agreed in theory to a march—a rally, really, perhaps around one of the monuments on the Mall—instead of a moving, shouting, singing, provoking demonstration, there was no formal agreement, and both the NAACP and the United Auto Workers refused to back the project.

  The day after the meeting at the White House, King flew to Detroit for a “Walk to Freedom” rally that would provide a preview of the March on Washington. Organized by local labor activists and church leaders in the face of opposition from the local NAACP, the event was a massive success: 125,000 people, including Mayor Jerome Cavanaugh, marched down Woodward Avenue, Detroit’s main thoroughfare, to Cobo Hall, where King tested out some of the lines he would later polish to a historic high gloss in Washington: “I have a dream this afternoon that one day, right here in Detroit, Negroes will be able to buy a house or rent a house anywhere that their money will carry them.”58

  On July 2, the same day that Marshall sealed the administration’s plan with McCulloch, the leaders of the major civil rights groups, along with representatives from labor and the leading religious organizations, met at the Roosevelt Hotel in New York to discuss the bill, the march, and how they could coordinate what many worried had become redundant and often competitive efforts.

  The meeting also had a significant subtext: at the June 22 lunch, Reuther had called for the creation of a “coalition of conscience,” a clearinghouse operation to coordinate civil rights lobbying efforts across the dozens of groups active on the issue—with, of course, himself at its head. This struck not only the black civil rights leaders but many white activists as politically inept: Reuther was letting his ego blind himself to the awkwardness of a white union boss asserting control over an issue centered on the rights of millions of blacks, many of whom had mixed feelings about the labor movement. Reuther’s white skin aside, many did not like the idea of having a single person in charge, officially or putatively, at all—there was too much difference between, say, the NAACP and the SCLC to make a hierarchical structure work.59

  Fortunately, there was an alternative already in place: the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights, an umbrella organization that was created in 1950 to lobby for a permanent FEPC. By 1963 it included some sixty organizations, from unions to church groups. Though it was an ad hoc operation, existing more on paper than in practice, the LCCR received significant financial support from the UAW, and had a proven record of coordinating lobbying efforts across a wide variety of groups on issues like Rule 22.60

  After the June 22
lunch ended, Reuther had asked Arnold Aronson, the executive director of the National Community Relations Advisory Council (later renamed the Jewish Council for Public Affairs), to lead his proposed coalition. Aronson was a longtime civil rights activist and an ally of A. Philip Randolph, so Reuther may have been hoping to coopt the black labor leader by choosing him. His move backfired: Aronson turned down the offer, then told Randolph and Roy Wilkins about it. They agreed that the only way to block the UAW president was to show why his proposed organization was unnecessary. They arranged it so one of the first items of business at the July 2 meeting was a proposal to move the LCCR into a higher gear, with a staff and offices in Washington and with Wilkins as the titular head; as a consolation, they agreed to ask the UAW to pay for it.61

  Reuther, to their surprise, agreed, and within a week, the LCCR Washington office was open, in empty space on Connecticut Avenue owned by the Industrial Unions Department of the AFL-CIO. Aronson was named to head it, with the journalist Marvin Kaplan and the veteran ADA organizer Violet Gunther as his deputies. The office would coordinate lobbying efforts on the bill, but the actual work plodding the halls of Congress would be done by the organizations themselves.62

  The discussion at the Roosevelt then moved to the march. The Detroit rally had proven to Wilkins and Reuther that the momentum existed for the march to happen, with or without the NAACP and UAW, and that it could be done peacefully. Reuther had also come under pressure from the White House and Louis Martin, who likewise realized the march was inevitable—and that the UAW, with its deep pockets, could exert a moderating influence on the event. And so both leaders agreed to endorse the march, and to contribute money, manpower, and political influence. With just eight weeks to go, the planners were going to need it.63

  Seated alongside the civil rights and labor leaders at the July 2 meeting was James Hamilton, who ran the Washington office of the National Council of Churches. The NCC represented many of the country’s mainline protestant denominations, including some African American churches, but until recently had been quiet on civil rights. Through the 1950s its leaders had issued statements and vague directives promoting racial equality, but it had refused to take a stand on specific civil rights issues, even those within the churches themselves, like segregated congregations. When the Emmett Till murder trial ended in acquittal in September 1955, the general board of the council refused to make a statement, saying it “did not want to criticize the verdict of a jury.”64

  But a new generation of socially conscious church leaders was coming to the fore, both in the NCC and in the denominations themselves. In 1957, Will D. Campbell, a World War II veteran who had been driven from his job as the director of religious life at the University of Mississippi for his opposition to segregation, organized the “Southern Project” under the NCC’s Department of Racial and Cultural Relations. The project, which was really just Campbell, a car, and a few part-time assistants, put on training seminars and outreach programs for Southern whites interested in integrating their communities.65

  The rate of change at the NCC accelerated rapidly in 1960 with the election of J. Irwin Miller as president, the first layperson selected for the post. Miller was the chairman of Cummins Engine, one of the country’s largest diesel engine manufacturers, based in the small Indiana town of Columbus. A graduate of Yale and Oxford and an accomplished violinist, Miller was the archetype of the enlightened industrialist: through a special fund at Cummins, he had commissioned world-renowned architects including Eero Saarinen and John Carl Warnecke to design schools, churches, and other civic structures around his hometown, the better to keep top-flight managers from fleeing for jobs in larger cities. Miller also took positions uncharacteristic of a successful capitalist, like supporting unionization and calling for higher taxes on the wealthy.66

  Miller brought that same progressive attitude to the NCC. At the first general board meeting after his election, he gave a rousing speech explaining his vision for the council over his three-year term. “We are changing,” he said, “from the simple to the complex, from the familiar to the strange, with a speed which exceeds all experience, and in a direction which we do not yet seem to have calculated.” Too often, the NCC, and protestant churches in general, had refused to recognize progress. That had to change—or else the churches would begin to lose their relevance. “By following such a path, we may somehow miss serving the clear need of our time.”67

  Central to Miller’s vision for a socially engaged Christianity was civil rights. Along with like-minded, socially active church leaders like Robert Spike and Eugene Carson Blake, Miller believed that civil rights activism was part of the NCC’s dual role of bearing witness to the work of God on earth and to facilitating the direct communication between God and individuals. Under Miller’s aegis, in May 1963 the NCC created the Commission on Race and Religion, which reported directly to the general board and had an annual budget of over $100,000. Over the coming year the commission would use that money to send ministers into the Deep South, to bail out civil rights protesters, and to make thousands of sack lunches for the March on Washington. Miller also volunteered, at the June 17 meeting of religious leaders at the White House, to organize an ecumenical committee to coordinate lobbying by Catholic, Protestant, and Jewish organizations on the civil rights bill.68

  Like Miller, leaders from across the mainline Protestant world saw the civil rights bill as their chance to become more involved in bringing about concrete improvements in race relations and the lives of African Americans—to answer what many in the younger generation, inspired by Christian existentialist philosophers, referred to as the kairos, or opportunity created by God, that they saw inherent in the civil rights movement. Still others saw a more earthly crisis at hand: “If we don’t get strong federal civil rights legislation through this time I fully expect blood to flow in almost every street in the nation,” wrote Jon Regier, the NCC’s director of home missions, to Robert Spike, the head of the Commission on Religion and Race. “I honestly believe that this is priority number one and am prepared to risk the ire of every home mission board in America by throwing our staff behind it.”69

  A week later Regier and Spike convened a top secret meeting at New York’s University Club between religious leaders—including Father John Cronin of the National Catholic Welfare Conference and Rabbi Philip Hiatt of the Synagogue Council of America—and Louis Oberdorfer of the Justice Department to “develop working relationships between the major religious bodies of the nation with the federal government in the matter of the present civil rights crisis,” according to a confidential NCC memo.70

  Activating the churches was critical to the White House strategy. In a memo to Robert Kennedy at the end of June, Katzenbach argued that winning “conservative and middle of the road sentiment in favor of our bill” among the public was essential to putting pressure on the conservative Midwestern Republicans who could well hold the balance of the votes between the liberals and the Southern Democrats. “It is important to organize private sentiment in such a way that it has as its immediate target particular Congressmen from particular districts.” In most cases, those congressmen were untouchable by unions, civil rights groups, and other traditional liberal pressure groups. The churches, though, had enormous sway.71

  Central to that effort was Hamilton. A respected but unassuming church operative, Hamilton had been a Capitol Hill habitué since his law school days at George Washington University, where he had made pocket money as a doorkeeper for the House of Representatives. At the July 2 meeting in New York, he pledged $5,000 to the LCCR’s Washington efforts. But more importantly, he immediately began to bring the full weight of the American religious community to bear on the bill. On July 25, thanks to Hamilton’s organizing, for the first time ever representatives from the country’s three main religious confessions—Catholicism, Judaism, and Protestantism—gave joint testimony before the Senate. Hamilton’s real genius, though, was to recognize the impact that grassroots organizi
ng by churches far away from the District of Columbia could have on countless senators and congressmen—a strategy that would bear immense fruit in the coming months.72

  Just as the Leadership Conference was settling in to its new Washington office, another group interested in civil rights was getting started across town. This one, though, came from the opposite side: the sole purpose of the innocuously named Coordinating Committee for Fundamental American Freedoms was to kill the civil rights bill.

  The committee was the brainchild of John Satterfield, a lawyer from Yazoo City, Mississippi. Satterfield was, according to Time magazine, “the most prominent segregationist lawyer in the country”: he had spent over a decade doing legal work for segregationists and other right-wing causes, even as he commanded mainstream respect as a leading member of the American Bar Association; he even served as its president from 1961 to 1962. In late 1962 he defended Mississippi governor Ross Barnett against federal obstruction charges during the Ole Miss integration crisis, and he served as counsel for the Mississippi State Sovereignty Commission, which funneled public money to various segregationist causes, including the White Citizens Councils that had sprung up across the South in response to the Supreme Court’s Brown decision. The commission also operated a unique national PR effort: working on the premise that the rest of the country would be less supportive of civil rights if it understood the reality of race relations in the South, it sent some 180 teams on “informational” trips into Northern states from 1961 to 1963.73

  In a similar vein, Satterfield believed that the civil rights bill was simply the product of emotion over reason, that many of its supporters were both moved by the passions of Birmingham and afraid of seeing similar protests spring up elsewhere. If the bill could be delayed, those passions might cool; at the same time, an aggressive campaign to educate the public about what he saw as the bill’s hidden threats—to private property, to freedom of speech—could put significant pressure on enough senators to defeat the bill. (Satterfield assumed that the House, dominated by liberals, was a lost cause.)