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Introduction

Civil rights leaders meet with president John F. Kennedy

The famous 1963 March on Washington and I Have a Dream speech was successful in pressuring president Kennedy into starting the process of passing a strong civil rights bill

The Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965 are the two landmark pieces of legislation in the Civil Rights movement. They were both signed by president Lyndon B. Johnson during the height of the civil rights movement. Both faced severe opposition from segregationists in congress, with Strom Thurmond, a Senator from South Carolina, filibustering for 24 hours and 18 minutes, saying at the end of the filibuster, "I hope the Senate will see fit to kill it [the bill]." To end the opposing filibusters, the Senate needed enough votes for cloture (limiting debate time), which at the time required 2/3rds of the Senate to vote for cloture. One terminally ill Senator, Clair Engle, came to the floor in a wheelchair, and, unable to speak because of a brain tumor, physically indicated a yes vote, becoming one of the critical votes needed to end the filibuster. In a speech helping to bring Republicans into the fight to pass the bill, Senate Minority Leader Everett Dirksen quoted Victor Hugo, saying, "Stronger than all the armies is an idea whose time has come."

Passing the bill

During the time the bill was being passed, only five members of the 535 members of congress were black. Says An Idea Whose Time Has Come, "But paradoxically, the bill itself was proposed and passed mostly by men whose personal acquaintance with black Americans was limited to their own domestic servants and the leaders of the movement who provided the moral impetus and historical argument for its fierce necessity. Its passage was, in that sense, all the more remarkable."