"The Coalition of Conscience"

"The employment discrimination provision stayed in place, though its details were slightly softened to keep McCulloch happy. The amended bill passed the House on Feb. 10, 1964. For the next four months, the coalition worked the Senate side. The key was to break the inevitable Southern filibuster, which began on March 30. Risen traces the cloakroom conversations and presidential arm-twisting that gradually moved Dirksen and his fellow Republicans toward voting with liberal Democrats to cut off debate, but he balances that insider story with a careful reconstruction of the coalition’s campaign. Take its approach to Nebraska’s conservative senator Roman Hruska, who would fly home on weekends. Every time he walked into the Omaha airport that spring he was met by a prominent clergyman, who just happened to be wandering through the terminal and had some time to chat about cloture. When the vote finally came, on June 10, Hruska joined 26 other Republicans and 44 Democrats to shut the Southerners down."


Kevin Boyle in The New York Times reviews Todd S. Purdum's An Idea Whose Time Has Come: Two Presidents, Two Parties, and the Battle for the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and Clay Risen's The Bill of the Century: The Epic Battle for the Civil Rights Act.