January|February 2003




Five days after the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr., President Lyndon Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act of 1968 into law. Conventional wisdom holds that the statute, which prohibited discrimination on the basis of race in the sale or rental of private housing, would never have passed the House without the galvanizing event of King's death. But that is inaccurate: The Democratic leadership of the House strongly supported the measure, and its enactment there was never seriously in jeopardy. In fact, the turning point in the passage of the bill occurred a month before King's death, when a last-minute two-thirds vote of the Senate ended a Southern-led filibuster that had threatened to defeat it.

That two-thirds vote could be described as the high point of America's commitment to liberalism in the twentieth century. Almost immediately afterward, however, that commitment began to erode. It is virtually gone today. The story of the dramatic events that led to the Senate vote against the filibuster recalls much of what has vanished from our public life.

Southern-led filibusters had previously been overcome during the enactment of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965. In both those cases, President Johnson had actively led the fight against the filibusters, deploying his colossal energy and intimate knowledge of Senate personalities to cajole, caress, and bully his former colleagues to extract the votes necessary for overriding the maneuver. But by 1968 Johnson's goals had changed. The war in Vietnam had moved to the forefront of his attention, and his primary concern was to solidify his alliances with the chairmen of committees with jurisdiction over the military, tax revenues, and government expenditures. Those chairmen were white Southerners. While Johnson did not oppose the 1968 proposal to ban private housing discrimination, his publicly expressed support was tepid.

In addition to parliamentary obstacles, there were political problems for the measure as well. For three years a "white backlash" had been gathering force in response to race riots in Watts, Newark, and other Northern cities. Unlike the 1964 and 1965 civil rights acts, which had targeted Southern practices such as segregation in public facilities and voting-booth exclusions, the Civil Rights Act of 1968 threatened Northerners. Residential segregation was the dominant instrument for regulating social interactions between blacks and whites in the North. Segregated schools, for instance, were the norm in both North and South, but whereas Southern school segregation involved busing white and black students from their adjacent homes to separate, racially designated schools, Northern school segregation was accomplished by assigning students to schools within their own racially segregated neighborhoods. A 1967 national opinion poll found that white respondents opposed anti-discrimination housing laws by a margin of more than three to two.

In the face of popular resistance to the bill, how did two-thirds of the Senators find the political will to end the Southern filibuster? The story behind one senator's vote tells the tale. E.L. "Bob" Bartlett, Democrat of Alaska, was not then, and certainly is not now, a household name. But the success or defeat of the bill ultimately turned on his vote alone. The reasoning that led Bartlett to his vote reveals a moral difference between the culture of liberalism in 1968 and our political culture today.

The southern filibuster against the bill began in mid-January 1968, when a small group of liberal senators offered the housing discrimination provision as an amendment to a modest civil rights measure that had passed in the House. The liberal senators were led by Philip Hart, a Democrat from Michigan. During the next two months, as the filibuster droned on, early morning strategy meetings were held in his office two or three times each week. The senators in regular attendance were Walter Mondale, a first-term Democrat from Minnesota; Edward Brooke, a first-term Republican from Massachusetts and the only black member of the Senate; Edward Kennedy, the Democrat from Massachusetts; and Jacob Javits, a Republican from New York.

Attorney General Ramsey Clark also attended, though when invited to speak by Hart, he invariably declined on the ground that he knew too little about Senate procedures. His presence, he said, served only to demonstrate the complete commitment of the U.S. Department of Justice to the cause of civil rights—even if, as he implied but never stated outright, this commitment wasn't shared by the White House. The most important Washington lobbyists on civil rights—Clarence Mitchell Jr. of the NAACP and Joseph Rauh, the counsel for the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights—were also there, along with staff members from various liberal senators' offices. I was working as a legislative aide to Senator Joseph Tydings, a Democrat from Maryland, and was present at these meetings.

The first vote on the filibuster occurred on February 16, and the result was both surprising and heartening. Fifty-five Senators voted to end it—a clear majority of the Senate, though well short of the necessary two-thirds. Ten days later another vote was taken, but in the interim only one senator had shifted his position. Immediately after the second vote, however, Senator Everett Dirksen, the Republican minority leader in the Senate, publicly announced that he would consider supporting the bill with some changes. This was a move that opponents of the filibuster had been hoping for. Dirksen had played this same card during the filibusters against the civil rights acts in 1964 and 1965: He waited until it was clear that the Democratic majority could not find enough votes to end the Southern filibuster, and then proposed some diluting amendments; when the Democratic sponsors acquiesced, he produced enough additional Republican votes to reach the two-thirds figure.

Dirksen had relished these previous displays of power, and from the beginning of the filibuster on the housing discrimination bill, he had coyly hinted he might be willing to repeat the maneuver. After some haggling between Dirksen and the bill's sponsors, an agreement was struck. But when a third vote was taken on Friday, March 1, Dirksen was able to produce only three more Republican votes. The tally was 59-35 to end the filibuster—three votes shy.

The Senate majority leader, Mike Mansfield of Montana, announced that only one more tally would be scheduled. If that vote failed to end the filibuster, the civil rights bill would be removed from the Senate agenda. Monday, March 4, was the last chance. It seemed likely, moreover, that additional senators would be present for this final vote—maybe even the full house of 100. In that event, breaking the filibuster would require 67 votes, a full 8 more than had been secured on Friday. The weekend prospects seemed bleak.

Early Monday morning, the group of liberal senators and assorted staffers assembled in Hart's office. After a somber account of our prospects, Hart told us of a report from Vice President Hubert Humphrey about a conversation Humphrey had had with Bartlett, who had consistently voted to support the filibuster. Bartlett, a diminutive man who rarely spoke in the Senate, was regarded as a decent, modest colleague who saw himself as serving the needs of the Alaskans who elected him. Racial discrimination in housing was not a significant concern in Alaska, since hardly any blacks lived there. But, as Bartlett had explained to Humphrey, there was another issue of great importance to Alaskans: the reconstruction of the Alaska/Canada highway, which provided the only overland linkage between his state and "the lower 48." Richard Russell of Georgia, the recognized leader of the Southerners and the most powerful member of the Senate, had told Bartlett that if he supported the filibuster, Russell would guarantee that funds were appropriated for the highway. Russell also promised that when Johnson signed the appropriations bill, Bartlett would be publicly recognized as the highway's architect, and that Russell would travel to Alaska during Bartlett's next campaign to remind his constituents that Bartlett deserved the credit. Bartlett told Humphrey that he didn't want to refuse this offer.

Humphrey didn't ask directly for Bartlett's support against the filibuster. Instead, he requested that Bartlett withhold his vote until the very end of the Senate roll call—and that Barlett not decide how to cast his vote until Humphrey, who would be presiding, told him whether his vote would make the difference between success or defeat of the motion. Humphrey understood that Bartlett would never vote against the filibuster and lose his highway if his vote were a symbolic gesture in a lost cause—and he didn't ask Bartlett how he would vote if the cause depended on him. Bartlett agreed to Humphrey's request but reiterated that he did not expect to vote against the filibuster. Even so, Humphrey was optimistic. He had told Hart, "I know Bartlett. I know my man." But Hart and many of the rest of us in his office that Monday morning were skeptical whether Humphrey's habitual optimism was well-founded.

The Senate convened at 11 a.m. Ordinarily, staff members were permitted on the Senate floor, but on that day we had been banished to the gallery. I sat in the front row and watched as the floor filled with senators. Finally, at noon, Humphrey entered the chamber and bounded up the steps to the dais. "The rule of the Senate," he stated, "prescribes that when the hour of 12 has arrived, . . . the Chair is compelled to lay before the Senate the pending motion, which will be stated by the clerk." The Senate clerk then read the motion to end the filibuster and Humphrey directed him to "ascertain the presence of a quorum"—in effect, to take attendance in order to ensure that enough senators were present to conduct business. Ninety-seven Senators answered the roll call, which meant that 65 affirmative votes were necessary to break the filibuster—six more than on the preceding Friday. Humphrey announced that a quorum was present, and he continued, "The question is: Is it the sense of the Senate that debate shall be brought to a close? On this question . . . the clerk will now call the roll."

As the roll call began, I noticed that Bartlett's chair was empty. Though he had been present for the quorum count, he had subsequently gone into the adjoining room—the so-called cloakroom at the back of the Senate chamber. The clerk proceeded alphabetically and we quickly heard new affirmative votes from Howard Cannon of Nevada and Frank Carlson of Kansas. But as the roll call proceeded, many senators did not respond when their names were called, apparently waiting to see how others would vote. The clerk reached the end of the alphabet with no new affirmative votes and then a flurry of hands appeared. As Humphrey called on these various senators, it became impossible to follow the vote tally; some senators mumbled, and some even walked down the aisle directly to the clerk's desk at the front of the chamber so that their vote would be inaudible except to the clerk and Humphrey, seated directly above him.

For a brief moment, there was silence. Every senator in the chamber had voted. Then the rear door to the cloakroom swung open and Bartlett emerged. As he stood momentarily at the back of the Senate chamber, Humphrey called out, "Mister Bartlett." Bartlett had not raised his hand to seek recognition and he did not answer. Instead he started down the aisle toward the clerk's desk. But Humphrey called out again, "Mister Bartlett." Bartlett now shook his head and waved his arms in a sweeping negative motion and began walking more rapidly, almost running, toward the clerk's desk. Humphrey repeated a third time, with insistence in his voice: "Mister Bartlett."

Bartlett abruptly stopped. He stood silent for a long moment. Then in an almost choked whisper, he answered, "Yes."

Humphrey announced, "The motion is agreed to," and cheers erupted from the Senate floor and the gallery. Humphrey rose from his chair and lifted his gavel, apparently intending to enforce the Senate rule against public demonstrations. But he kept the gavel raised in the air for what seemed like a very long time, as we cheered and shouted. Now openly grinning, Humphrey finally pounded the gavel on his desk and order was restored. He then announced with solemn formality, "On this vote, there are 65 yeas and 32 nays. Two-thirds of the Senators present and voting having voted in the affirmative, the motion is agreed to." Cheers erupted again. Exactly two-thirds of the senators had voted yes. With none to spare, Bartlett had cast the decisive vote.

What had happened with Bartlett on the Senate floor? The next day, I called Bartlett's administrative assistant. He told me that he had spoken with Bartlett immediately after the vote and the senator had been completely confused by Humphrey's actions. Bartlett said that he couldn't understand why Humphrey was calling on him as soon as he entered the chamber. Humphrey had promised that Bartlett would have the final vote count, and so Bartlett refused to answer. But when Humphrey called his name repeatedly before he could reach the clerk, Bartlett stopped and "thought to [him]self"—as he reportedly told his aide—" 'What am I in the Senate for? How can I trade justice for a highway? If I'm in the Senate, I should be a senator.' So I voted yes. And when I got back to the office, I felt that had been the proudest moment of my life."

After talking to Bartlett's aide, it seemed to me that Humphrey's action, refusing to permit Bartlett to know the exact count before he voted, had forced him to step back from narrow political calculation and to grasp the moral significance of his vote. Humphrey did "know his man," as he had told Senator Hart. And Humphrey's action had brought Bartlett to know himself and his own moral stature.

Two-thirds of the Senators had seen themselves in this same light—not as followers of the latest public opinion poll but as leaders of their fellow citizens on the path toward equal justice. The prolonged struggle to end the filibuster had brought the senators to this understanding, this realization of the highest ideal of American liberalism. In today's political climate, with this ideal in eclipse, the Civil Rights Act of 1968 may appear to represent the use of governmental power to dictate individuals' decisions about their own private property. But the liberal ideal that was dominant in American political culture from the New Deal until 1968 offered a very different understanding. Government was not the enemy; government was us. Government expressed the collective judgment of all of us—a judgment that emerged after strenuous debate in which we informed and persuaded one another about the moral values that we already held, or should for the future hold, in common. The goal of this deliberative process was not coercion of a minority by majority vote but the emergence of a widely shared consensus that may not have been evident to anyone before the debating had begun.

The Civil Rights Acts of 1964, 1965, and 1968 had been the paradigmatic expressions of this liberal ideal. The goal of these laws was to bring about reconciliation, to transcend the old conflicts by breaking down barriers of racial segregation that had obstructed the capacity of blacks and whites to acknowledge their common identity and their shared moral values as Americans. This ideal may seem naive today. Yet as late as 1968, this ideal of reconciliation appeared not just to be a "dream," as King famously put it, but to be an attainable possibility. This, of course, was before the Vietnam War eroded confidence in our collective enterprise. This lost confidence appeared among opponents of the war, who suddenly saw American government as an uncontrollable and immoral instrument, as well as among supporters of the war, who saw the opponents as traitors, not as fellow citizens. America in 1968 could still locate itself within the inclusive ideal of liberalism. The Civil Rights Act of 1968 was the last clear statement of this American self-understanding in the twentieth century.

During the vote, I was sitting in the gallery beside Clarence Mitchell Jr. We had not known one another well. He was black and head of the Washington office of the NAACP and I was a young, white staff assistant to a senator. We had attended the same meetings in Senator Hart's office for two months but had hardly spoken to one another. Now seated side by side on this triumphant day, Mitchell and I cheered and laughed and wept. In 1968 it was unusual for men to weep in public. It was unusual for men and for blacks and whites to engage in publicly affectionate displays. But he and I embraced.

We left the Senate together on that afternoon. Mitchell's office, it turned out, was a few blocks away from my home. So we walked together and shared our personal reactions to what we had just seen. Mitchell told me about his grandfather, a slave before the Civil War who had believed in the Emancipation promises of freedom. I told him about my grandfather, a Russian Jew who had fled to avoid conscription in the czar's army to find freedom here. We agreed that our grandfathers would both have been proud—proud that the Senate had vindicated their faith in the basic integrity of this country, and proud of us for taking some part, however small, in this vindication. We also talked about the looming threats to this faith—the Vietnam War, the recent race riots, and the stirring up of racial and political intolerance. But for that moment we shared our grandfathers' conviction that our country was fundamentally honorable and decent. I shook hands with Mitchell—I couldn't quite bring myself to hug him again—and we parted.

The Senate debated various amendments to the civil rights bill for another week and approved it on March 11. King's death was not responsible for the passage of the 1968 act, but the misconception that it was responsible does capture an important symbolic reality. The year 1968 marked the end of the liberal dream for racial reconciliation. Robert Kennedy's assassination, just two months after King's death, was another and perhaps even more conclusive assault on this possibility. Our contemporary impulse to turn away from public life, to deride political dealings as inherently dishonorable and corrupt, has only been reinforced by subsequent events. But for a moment, the enactment of the Civil Rights Act of 1968 seemed to point in a different direction, toward the possibility that private conflicts impelled by hatred, guilt, and angry recriminations could find satisfying resolution in public life. As I walked away from Clarence Mitchell on March 4, I did not know—I would not have wanted to know—how short-lived that moment would be.

In December 1968, nine months after casting his decisive vote, Bartlett died of a sudden heart attack. He had not been up for reelection that year; his current term of office did not expire until 1973. Thus even if he had voted to support the filibuster in exchange for securing the Alaska/Canada Highway, it would have done him no good. But Bartlett had understood that well before he died.