The Bill of the Century
The Epic Battle for the Civil Rights Act
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- $22.99
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- $22.99
Publisher Description
The Civil Rights Act of 1964 was the single most important piece of legislation passed by Congress in American history. It gave the government sweeping powers to strike down segregation, to enforce fair hiring practices, and to rectify bias in law enforcement and in the courts. The Act so dramatically altered American society that, looking back, it seems preordained-as Everett Dirksen, the GOP leader in the Senate and a key supporter of the bill, said, "no force is more powerful than an idea whose time has come." But there was nothing predestined about the victory: a phalanx of powerful senators, pledging to "fight to the death" for segregation, launched the longest filibuster in American history to defeat it.
The journey of the Civil Rights Act was nothing less than a moral and political epic, a sweeping tale of undaunted activism, political courage, historic speeches, backroom deal-making and finally, hand-to-hand legislative combat. The larger-than-life cast of characters ranges from Senate lions like Hubert Humphrey and Strom Thurmond to NAACP lobbyist Charles Mitchell, called "the 101st senator" for his Capitol Hill clout, and industrialist J. Irwin Miller, who helped mobilize a powerful religious coalition for the bill. Looming over all was the figure of Lyndon Johnson, who deployed all his legendary skills to steer the controversial act through Congress.
This critical turning point in American history has never been thoroughly explored in a full-length narrative. Now, New York Times editor and acclaimed author Clay Risen delivers the full story, in all its complexity and drama.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
On the 50th anniversary of the passing of the landmark Civil Rights Act, New York Times staff editor Risen (A Nation on Fire) takes an approach comparable to other similarly timed books on the subject: President Kennedy proposed the drafting of the bill; Lyndon Johnson, as Kennedy's successor, dogged Congress to pass it; and Martin Luther King, Jr. kept civil rights movement participants focused on it. Risen's interest is less in these big names than in the "pluralism of the process" the actions of a variety of politicians and other policy makers who ultimately shaped and shepherded the legislation through Congress. He opens with an overview of the postwar civil rights movement, contextualizing Kennedy's nationally televised June 11, 1963, exhortation to Congress to craft a sweeping equal rights bill. From there, it took just over a year of negotiations and compromises, both inside and outside of Congress, for the bill to become law. Risen does his best to infuse drama into a story that is already a matter of the historical record. Fortunately, Risen is adept at weaving in juicy snippets of conversation and his fluid prose mutes some of the wonkiness in the political-process narrative. Illus.