and sing in the words of the negro spiritual "free at last, free at last, thank god all mighty we're free at last." we pray in your sovereign name. amen. >> ladies and gentlemen, please remain at your seats for the departure of the official party and until your row is invited to depart by a visitor services representative. thank you. >> up next, senate historian don richie discusses the congressional debate and passage

of the 1964 civil civil rights act with former cbs correspondent roger mudd and former "harold-tribune" reporter andy glass. this is an hour. >> this session will be with two very distinguished guests today, two veteran reporters who covered the civil rights act of 1964. just by way of introduction, we're in one of the most historic rooms in the capitol complex, the senate caucus room, now known as the kennedy caucus room is the room where the mccarthy hearings were held, the watergate hearings were held, this is the room where john f. kennedy announced his candidacy for president. it's room where a lot of nominees have been grilled by committees. thereby have been a lot of inquisition, but today we're not doing an inquisition, we're

doing a conversation and we're very pleased to have andy glass and roger mudd as our guests today. andy glass was born in warsaw, poland, and arrived in the united states during world war ii. he became a citizen in 1948. he's a graduate of the bronx e high school of science and yale university. in 1960 after he completed his military service he became a reporter for the new york ""herald tribune"" and in 1962 he was assigned to its washington bureau. in 1963 he became the "herald tribune's" chief congressional corps spon dentd, having grown up in new york city and having read the new york "herald tribune," i always lamented when it folded as a newspaper, went out of business in 1966. but his career continued. he worked for "newsweek," he reported for the "washington post," he then came up here to capitol hill where he worked for senator hugh scott, the senate republican leader, he was a

press secretary for senator jabets, then he went back to journalism. he went to the "national journal" and also for cox newspapers where he was a column list. more recently we're familiar with him because he was the managing editor of t hill newspaper and in 2006 he joined politico. so that's quite a resume over time. and our other guest today is roger mudd who was born right here in washington, d.c. and graduated from washington and lee university and took a masters degree at the university of north carolina in history and he was studying the relationship of the press with fdr's new deal. and at that point he thought he should get experience in seeing what the press was like so he took a summer job with a num, the richmond "news leader" and it happened the richmond "news leader" owned a radio station called wrnj across the street

and that station needed a news director and so instead of going on for his ph.d. in history as he planned he planned to become a broadcast news journalist. he came to washington, d.c. in 1960 for wtop, that was both radio and television. informs the same building with the cbs news and so he moved to the national news in 1961. though some of you who are old enough may remember that in 1961 the national news was only 15 minutes and that it wasn't until 1963 that it went to the standard half hour program. in the subsequent years, he became a regular on cbs. he was their cbs senate reporter. he was covering political campaigns. he was anchoring wherever walter cronkite was away. he was a regular feature on "cbs

evening news." in 1980, cbs had the equivalent of the war of the roses and he went to nbc and then to pbs and many of you are much more familiar of him in recent years as a host on the history channel on many of their programs. he's also the author of a wonderful memoir that i recommend very highly called "a place to be: washington, cbs, and the glory days of television news" which has a lot of stories about covering the senate and covering in particular the civil rights act of 1964. so andy and roger i want to welcome you both and thank you for being here today. you were both members of something called the cloture club and i wondered if you could tell me about what the cloture club was and how you found yourself members of it back in 1964? >> thank you for that kind

introduction. we inconvenient it hvented the . it did not exist until it rose phoenix like from the ashes. but the problem was that it was a filibuster and nothing was happening except a lot of speeches. and we wanted to make news now that didn't mean we created news or made it up but we were like bees going to flowers, flowers were senator russell, senator dirksen, senator humphrey, majority leader mansfield and others and we went around and asked them questions and made comments and said, hey, majority leader said "x," what do you any and at the end of the day roger had a pretty good story for cbs news and i had something to write for the "herald tribune." so that was the nature of the

cloture club. there were five of us -- roger, myself, peter compa unfortunately and ned kenworthy of the "new york times." peter was the senate correspondent for the baltimore "sun." ned ken johnworthy of the "new york times" and john haverhill of the "los angeles times" we created and ran, as it were, the cloture club. >> everybody's dead now except andy and me. [ laughter ] >> and we're headed there. >> including dirksen and mansfield and all those names. we travelled in a pack but journalism does prohibit you to a certain extent sharing stuff. so we tried to keep independent of each other but the press conference the senator would say "oh, god, here they come, the cloture club." but that was -- it was interesting that not every news outlet, not every newspaper, had

a full time reporter assigned to cover the filibuster and the civil rights bill. there was -- we didn't have anybody, say, from the "washington post" with us regularly. bob -- robert all bright was assigned to the story but we never saw him and big newspapers, "chicago tribune," "atlanta constitution," st. louis post-ditch pat-- "st. lou post dispatch," they didn't think the story deserved zone coverage which was -- which the cloture club was doing but it was my first introduction to covering something that important day in and day out and i learned as much about the senate and the vanity of the senate and the dependence on the staff members and how some senators were pretty stupid,

some were very bright and in between there were a lot of senators. but it was an education for me. >> if you're looking for a conspiracy theory, which i love, as a 28-year-old reporter who is getting page one bilines everyday in the new york "herald tribune." so think about what the "herald tribune" was. it was competing the times but it was basically a liberal republican newspaper. and the owner was a guy named john whitney, a friend of president eisenhower, former ambassador at the court of st. james in london and very much interested in seeing this legislation succeed. he was married to -- i think her name was haley and her sister was married to a head of cbs --

bill paly. and roger stood out among the three networks, there were only three then, as getting a lot of airtime. we can go into that later. and i wonder now 50 years later whether the paley sisters had something to do with having all of this happen. >> what was i going to had? the problem is i had a thought and i've forgotten it. i stood out not because of anything i had done special, i was just the only one. i had no competition. three networks, abc was kind of a weak sister then and nbc over at cbs we always called nbc the national biscuit company. [ laughter ]

we regarded nbc as they sat warned leather patches on their elbows and smoked their pipes and did wonderful stylish stories the second day but they were bad losers on the first day and if in your opinion the news business, you ought to do -- anyway. one -- i've been up a week or two, road down on the elevator with bob mccormick who was the nbc correspondent on the hill and i overheard him sniffing about cbs' coverage. he said "our people aren't interested in that." so i had no competition. that's why the prominence. >> i was going to ask you, what was the challenges for a tv correspondent to cover the senate in the 1960s? in particular the civil rights but just in general. how easy or hard was it far tv correspondent? >> well, everything -- the main stuff was behinded closed doors, as you can imagine.

cameras were not welcome except at certain places. cameras didn't get into the house until 1979 and not into the senate until 1986 i think it was. and i thought when cameras finally got into the chambers the world of political reporting would really, really change because for the first time the public would be able to sit in and watch what happens on the floor. well, as you know, not a lot happens on the floor. [ laughter ] so as -- so it was difficult just to know where to go with the camera. you couldn't go lots of places. you couldn't go into the chamber, you had to wait for the sergeant at arms and stake out a place and then you've have had v

to grab them as they came out and interview them. so it was hard work and most times you came up empty handed because they didn't want to give away what was going on behind closed doors until they get nailed down. the changes and amendments to title 9, title 6, title 2. >> if i could add to that, my clear recollection is that roger is an expert in what the trade calls an establishment shock. in other words, he would go outside the capitol but stand in the place where the viewer would know where he was in front of the senate or on the capitol steps. so the day the crunch came, which i think was in late june of '64, senator russell made a point that when roger was going to cover the vote, which was the crucial vote, the 67 that ended

the 84-day filibuster he couldn't do it on the capitol grounds. my recollection is that they kicked you off and you had to go across the street. am i right on that? >> well, you were kind of right, andy. the first week i broadcast from the actual steps of the senate and nameless other senators got the bill small, my boss and bureau chief and said "we can't have that." so i was moved across, still on capitol grounds, just across the street where the park is, where the retaining wall is and that's where i set up. and i remember about the second week i came down the steps to do the 9:00 feed for the morning television show and there was a crowd of tourists waiting for me to get there and i'd never -- [ laughter ] i'd never -- i'd never been in a

crowd like that. i didn't know what they were going to do. whether we were going to hold up signs or wave or anything. they didn't -- they just stood there. didn't make a sound, didn't deserve anybody. and -- didn't disturb anybody. then after i finished they came up, "can you sign my guidebook?" [ laughter ] so, andy, it was before the vote that i was moved across the street and the day of the vote we had a big, big -- the art department of cbs set up an easel, a chart of all the senators and their names. and that's how we did the last counting. >> well, this was one of the longest debates that took place in the history of the senate and i went back and was reading some of your stories from the "herald tribune" about it and in march of 1964 you started one of your stories "the talk begins. >> all it took to get the civil

rights debate going was a two-week discussion about whether or not to debate it." [ laughter ] and that was just to get it to the floor. so that raises the question. this was a story that just dragged out for months. what were the complications of keeping that story on the front pages of the "herald tribune"? >> good question. well, there were two filibusters. there was a mini filibuster to decide whether or not to send the bill to the judiciary committee which was then headed by james eastland of michigan and it would have got there or to use some complicated formula to get it directly to the floor which was the strategy that senator mansfield and senator humphrey decided on. so that was a debatable matter

and they debated that for a couple of weeks and they finally brought it to the floor and then they had, i believe i historians in the room, it's still the longest single filibuster in senate history. 84 days. as we said earlier, it was a stretch to try to write about it. one day i wrote senator long, who came back and talked about the part of the bill where -- i think it was title vii about employment that they had to have female priests or something and so and so i wrote for the "herald tribune" the next day, you could just about get away with this, "senator long, who had dined well, but not

necessarily wisely." [ laughter ] went off on this -- then i wrote about it. i also had a great advantage, i must say, over the "new york times" because it was so arcane what was -- emotion on the floor and the previous motion and so on. and the "herald tribune" was very good about that because i would just write "a parliamentary hassle ensued." [ laughter ] and that was the end of it. but the "times," which was the paper of record, had to explain how it happened. >> there was a slogan up here that reporters love congress because there's always a story in congress but their editors hate congress because so much of the story is timetable. the bill moved from the subcommittee to the full committee. you had to report not only once a day but many times a day during a story. how did that come about that you were on the steps for multiple

sessions everyday? how did you ever find enough to say each of those times? >> i was assigned by the newly arrived president of cbs news was a volcanic man named fred friendly. and he thought the whole issue of civil rights deserved total dawn-to-mid-night coverage. so he said here's the plan, you're going to do a report on the morning news to television morning news, noon news, mid-afternoon news, cronkite news and good night news and you're going to do a report on every other hourly radio broadcast everyday until we finish. and i said, you're kidding? i said, i mean that sounds like a flagpole sitting stunt. he said no, no, no, this is serious. we're serious.

and so i said okay. so it became up to me to make it sound interesting when 95% of the story was not interesting because as andy said, it was a parliamentary hassle. so i started out just wandering around getting to know people, getting to know the staff, the senators, the south -- southern senators did not trust me. because they thought i was working for a big liberal network which wanted to cut the south back to stature and it was not until they realized after a week that i was not pulling my punches. i was doing both sides and the first day we broadcast i had humphrey out.

i made sure before i ended the "tomorrow night we're going to have richard russell." so it was very balanced and so finally the southerners began to trust me and i would begin to get calls from their press secretary. do you want to come over and meet with alan eleanor? >> one thing we could do, don, to keep the story going, is doing profiles of the key actors, senator dirksen, senator keek l, i mentioned majority leader mansfield and of course we'd always go up to the white house and try to get a feed or feel from larry o'brien or even the president who was accessible on this story but one day i went to see james o. eastland figuring as my colleague that they required some coverage. by the way, over 84 days it

became andy but it was always with senator russell and mr. glass invariably. so i went to see the chairman of the judiciary committee. i said i'd like to introduce myself, i'm the congressional correspondent with the new york "herald tribune," i'm sure you know. he kept nodding, a big flag of mississippi here and an american flag and was kind of nodding, not saying much. then after about five minutes of a monologue on my part he said -- he had a cigar. he took a cigar out of his mouth and said "sonny, you stick around here for 20 years and maybe you'll understand how this place works." [ laughter ] that was the interview. later we became more friendly and he invited me for a weekend to his plantation in sunflower county and had a great time a so things change. >> i don't think i ever new or

covered a senator as interesting as richard russell. he was -- publicly he was a very remote, dignified man. privately he was as generous as a friend as you could have. it took him a year before he called me "roger" and he never called me rojjer in public. it was always private. i would go down to georgia on occasion on political trips and i would go see him before i wind to tell him i was going and he'd give me the names and phone numbers of people i ought to check to see how he was and when i got back i'd get a call "come see me, tell me what you found out." and he was always generous in that way. he told me before the filibuster

began in so many words that there wasn't anything else he could do. he knew he was beaten i think before it started. and i asked him, is there nothing you can offer america's black population? and he said "all i can offer is hope that we can get through this difficult period." and that told me that he knew he was going to get defeated. and i thought the main conflict was not between dirksen and humphrey versus russell as it was between humphrey and dirksen, whether those two leaders could krooft a bill that would pull along enough republicans to so they could break the fill buster. >> my take on it was a little different. i always thought a the big 17 whose picture is over there, including john tower and robert

byrd of west virginia -- >> not always honorary. >> not all the time and then there were also spies, the two spies were fulbright and smathers who were going to these southern meetings -- southern delegations, southern caucus, whatever they called it, and leaking stuff to humphrey and we weren't allowed to write that but my feeling -- and i wrote at the time -- was there there was a rope a dope strategy, that there was a hope -- that's the right worth -- that the country which was very much united on the idea that this, as dirksen once put it, an idea whose time has come, would turn because there would be a summer of violence by what were then called negroes and the country would then lose interest in the

bill. and so i think that was the reason that this thing was being stretched out. hoping that something would happen to change the chemistry. i thought that finally that the -- the real problem -- my real problem was to stay sober when everett dirksen said "come in the back room, i want to talk to you." [ laughter ] because you'd get a buzz on when you wrote your story. but dirksen's had his own littl with, i think, senator norris cotton of new hampshire and others and was very jealous of dirksen who had a big ego, and getting those people to come along was a great feat, but, really, the guy who did it was hubert haus hubert would go on "meet the press" and "face the

nation" saying it was dirksen's bill, and that's what he wanted to hear. >> he had this nasal iowa accent, chairman of the republican policy committee, and wasn't a very good spokesman on television, and he resented dirksen becoming the spokesman about everything and anything. i remember the first time i met him, he said, mudd, mudd, i don't know what's worse. i mean, he was trying to be funny. he was. don asked us about the difficulty of covering -- if i may answer the question, for television, it was doubly difficult because, as you know, cameras were not allowed in the chamber. the rules in this press gallery

allowed you to bring it a reporter's notebook, but you could not bring in an artist's sketch pad to get illustrations sfrt floor, we hired a world war ii combat artist named howard bro brody, and i gave him a run down what i thought i needed to illustrate the report i would be airing for the kronkite show, so howard could come out in the chamber, in the gallery overlooking the floor, and would sit like this hands up to the temple and laser in on jake a memorize everything he could and leave the gallery and sketch it, and 15 minutes later, he would

laser him again to pick up details about his hair and chin, and that's the way he interpreted so every night he turned out five or six sketches to illustrate what i was beginning to write that night for cronkite show. he was a marvelous artist. he had one problem. he was a california liberal and gould not get down on paper jay thurman. >> great advantages to print because you went in the back room, like i said, like dirksen, and after we developed a relationship of sorts, he said to me one day, this is a story i've not seen printed anywhere, that he was playing with the house's money, and that was important to him, and i said, what do you mean, senator? he said, well, in world war i when i served in the artillery,

that would be truman at the time too, they assigned me to the balloon core so the balloon went over the trenches at about a thousand feet, and with binoculars and wire, gave way the german positions and made the buyer from the -- a lot of guns more accurate, but the problem with these balloons is that they were filled with hydrogen, and there were these german planes that would shoot the balloons down in flames so dirksen said the casualty rate was approximately 80%, and they were not injured. if you came down in the balloon, that was it. he said, i got out without a

scratch so ever since then, i feel like i'm living on borrowed time, and that was something i always remember about him because i think he really meant that. >> i ask you about your sources. who were your best sources in those day, and were they on both sides or essentially the promoters of the bill? >> yeah, they were instantly successful and so was dirksen. mike mansfield, not so much. dirksen would come up to the press gallery behind the chamber fairly regularly, and he'd bum cigarettes from everybody, and he was spinning these stories. jack, the reporter, a regular back then said, dirksen, before the press is like throwing

imitation pearls to the real swine. there was jon stewart who worked for humphries and neil kennedy who worked for three lawyers from the judiciary committee, and nemo kennedy was who i used a lot, and charlie ferris at the time was the -- >> democratic policy committee. >> yeah, he was the director of the senate policy. i don't think an hour or two went by that i didn't check with charlie to me, but he trusted us and told us he thought would be helpful, and it is a combination of senators and staff people. every session would begin with

what we begin doug out chatter. when the leadership would come down the aisle, it was that moment the press was allowed on the senate floor with notes, and we could get in two or three minutes before the bells rang if we could get the senators down close enough, we could pop questions to them, and that always gave me enough to write a 10:00 radio piece, but it was scrapping coming out. the chatter was helpful for us to know which way to go and which senators to follow and whether there was something thaefs an amendment that was going to be proposed. >> when roger talks about staff, it's important to emphasize these were people who were getting their hands dirty with the bill. they were sitting in meetings that we were getting a good fill on. one, i remember, was pat who worked for senator chavetz, i had a new york paper, so i had

help there, but what was absent at this time were press secretaries. i don't recall ever talking to a press secretary during that whole time, not that i don't have anything against them, i was one myself for a short period, but there weren't -- roger and i and other members of the cloture club dealt with others who were members of the senate or working very closely. one source i had was a good legislative assistant for the republican whip, tom of california, whose name was -- wait for it -- leon panetta, so things change that way. one story, if i may -- >> you have 30 seconds. >> bumming cigarettes, i was smoking at the time.

dirksen came up to the gallery and said, you know, i'm like little johnny when the teacher says, johnny, can you spell straight? johnny says, s-t-r-a-i-g-h-t. >> she says, what does it mean? he says, hold the gingerale, and one day i walked in, and he said, senator andy, you know about delaware, don't you? i thought he was going to talk about williams. it could go either way. i said, no, what about delaware? i took out my yellow pad. he said one congressional direct when the tide is out, no congressional districts when the tide is in. this is his idea of humor. >> the name, tom's come up, and

he's not well remembered, i suspect. a lot of people didn't know he was the republican whip in the 1960s, a very influential senator, and he gave you particular insights how the democratic conference operated, can you tell that story? >> he's the minority whip had, down the hall from the senate of a little hideaway office, and it used to be the added chamber for the elevator that went down into the caucus room beneath him, a big elevator because william hourtd taft -- because the supreme court was down there, and the elevator was removed, but the door was not, and i made friends with the senator's secretary, and she let me -- so when the senate democrats were caucusing in the old supreme

court chamber, she let me come in and put my ear to the door. she would not let me do it when the republicans were calling. so i had, you know, i had five or six hour break on stuff that would come out through this door, and those were little privileges that you accumulated when you nice to people. >> i think one thing, before we end, is very important. looking at the bill itself, the most controversial title of the bill was so-called title 267. senator dirksen's opening was get rid of title 2, second position was sever title 2. he was against the idea that

private individuals were obligated to serve people regardless of a race or any other criteria, and he based that on the same grounds that initially that senator goldwater did when he voted against the bill and against cloture saying it was unconstitutional. it was actually an 1875 decision by the supreme court that reversed -- excuse me, 1883 decision that reversed an 1875 reconstruction era bill that created public accommodations, so cleverly, the managers of the bill did not hang this thing on the 14th amendment, which was the way it had been declared

unconstitutional, but it was the commerce clause. people traveled all the time, in a restaurant, crossing the state line, and the other restaurants, so the restaurants had to serve, and the irony is if you look at that bill today and you look at education, we have to do that over. we look at voting right, still a controversy, but the most controversial section of that bill, don, was the one that was most clearly and quickly accepted, and the get was that hotels, restaurants, other places of public accommodation were open to blacks and that was it. >> one of the critical senators in that was george aiken of vermont, and i remember -- i wasn't caught up so much just personally in the civil rights movement, didn't know much about it. i was isolated ov ed on the hil. you don't know what's going on in the rest of the country, but i remember aiken kept worrying,

was -- it wasn't was the bill pass and would america be great? it was, was the amendment going to get out of subcommittee, and the amendment was exempt all bbs in vermont from the public accommodations, and that amendment would sweep all the way through the small hotels and bbs in new england, and that was -- i don't know whether that got through or not. >> i think under 50. >> under 50, yes. >> one other thing about covering is that -- i know andy will bring it up unless i do. back then cbs paid its reporters in addition to their base salary, $25 every time they were on the radio, and $50 every time they were on television.

so here i am five times on television, ten times on the radio, and my weekly salary went up from about $400 a week to a little more than $2,000, and when i realized this, my wife and i were then -- started a little remodelling well before the filibuster started, and in the middle of this, i called my contractor and told him, i wanted to switch the panelling from glue on to cherry. >> also, i never went to the office. we had desks in the senate press gallery and had western union, and we had typewriters, so if i didn't have too much to drink and still fairly sober enough to write a story, which was in my interest, i would go back after

doing all this stuff with or without the cloture club and figure out what the story was that day, and they would always accept that, type it up, and there were only six desks there because there were only six of us that were covering it, so we had big desks, three on each side, and then on the top of your story, you would write npr, which was not national public radio. it was night press rapid or something like that, and you'd just hand it to this guy, and the next morning her on the hill, i would go to to the tribune, and that was the next time i saw the story. it was a great way to make a living. i didn't make money like roger, but i was doing okay. >> i wanted to ask about the day of the vote of the cloture, one of the most dramatic day in history.

it was the most critical vote. if they could get that, the bill was going to pass, andy, you were in the galleries for that voting and roger you outside recording on it, but can you describe the atmosphere and the events that took place during that vote? >> well, i recall the night before the cloture vote i had dinner at the monaco which just opened with hubert, and he was still worried. he knew he had 65 or something, but he needed 67. they cut a deal with carl hayden, who i think by then was in his 90s, would vote for cloture if it was the 67th vote, and at the end, he didn't, but there was also very interesting, roger and i talked about this just before the session, claire engle who died in july of that year of brain cancer was

actually wheeled into the chamber when his name was called, senator engle, and it was so dramatic because he had a navyman push the wheelchair, and the clerk repeated his name again, senator engle, watching, looking over, and he couldn't talk, and he very slowly raised his hand, moved it to his right eye, and i think it was senator mansfield who said to the presiding officer, the senator indicated his support for cloture, and if he can do it again, you know, to confirm that, and inc.engle heard that did it again and votes yes. it was very dramatic, and right before that key vote was the

great speech of dirksen who, i think, was quoting who -- victor hugo saying stronger is all the armies whose idea time has come. >> it was. >> the chamber was absolutely jammed. the gallery filled, standing room only, no staff allowed on the floor. just 100 senators. as the vote proceeded, it was silent like a tomb, and when john williams of delaware cast the deciding vote, everyone, there was a corporate exhaling of breath. it was so tense that everybody literally held their breath

until that last vote was counted, and in a blink, richard russell was on his feet demanding to know what the hell we'd do next. >> just to think about it, you know how hard it is to get 60 for today's senate, this was 67, which was a much higher bar, and there was clearly a block of people who were against it, and it was one by one, president lyndon johnson got a few, and one i remember writing about was jack miller, the other senator from iowa, i think it was dubuque, and there was an archbishop who called him saying if you don't vote for cloture, we'll excommunicate you.

i mean this was really -- today, martin luther king, a create american and lyndon johnson, arguably a larger than life president, get a lot of credit for passing that bill, but in truth, johnson almost screwed it up by pressuring the leadership to, as he put it, bring out the cots. this is taking too long. hubert just refused to do it. he told me at that dinner, we're just going to sit at, you know, let it play out, and that turned out to be a very good strategy. >> remember, this was the 12th time there was a filibuster on the civil rights bill. 11 times the phfilibuster succeeds, this was the 12th time, and the filibuster was never the same after that vote in june because the senate began to use it for anything and everything.

filibuster this, filibuster the oil bill, filibuster, filibuster, filibuster. it was a turn in the feeling. two other little memories that don't take but a minute. one night john tower, the diminuti diminutive texan was holding the floor. tom mcentire of vermont -- >> new hampshire. >> new hampshire was preproviding. no one in the gallery. just mcentire presiding, and tower had the floor. he said, mr. president, may we have order? it was very funny line, and nobody got to hear it except -- the other memory i have is harrison williams of new jersey facing bernard, a right ring

republican, nervous about his chances if he got too close to the issue and got hung up, and he was called from the floor by a group of his constituents, not williams's constituents, but they wanted to beret him, and he came out and came on the floor and asked him to come again. this time, he slipped out one of the doors of the chamber, ran down the haul and sought asylum in mike's office. >> one story, if i may about, about mike, a wonderful secretary, also a source namedd sophie englehart, and when the vote showed up one day, she puckishly went into the inner office where we chatted and

said, senator, there are four reporters here to see you, and a yesman from "the new york times." >> i wanted to give the audience a chance to ask some questions as well. we have a few more minutes, and so i'd like to throw the floor up to you and there's a question right here. >> i had a quick question -- actually, it's not a quick question, that was a lie, sorry. i wanted your thoughts on the role of the filibuster played. the longest filibuster, a huge part in this legislation's history, and i also hate to make a comparison between now and what, you know, reporting and what the news service is now versus then because it's quite an evolution, but begin the context of this special technique or this special process, did you see from, especially southern reporters or

from other communities, once they read maybe what you were writing or what others were writing, was there a backlash to this technique used opposed to general debate or, i guess you could see more commonly used techniques to get legislation passed? was there some sort of accountability demanded from senator thurman that the public demanded? what were your thoughts generally on how the press and how people reacted to the reporting of that technique? >> this is -- what was the public's reaction to the filibuster is a tactic, and did you get feedback from that and reporting? >> good question. remember, this thing was on two tracks. what was going on in the senate, which was boring, but important because if you didn't have a quorum, you'd lose so they had to organize to always be able to

have the ability, but the other track was going on behind the scenes with the leadership counsel on civil rights. we mentioned the religious people, all three major religions were involved, and, of course, bobby kennedy, burke marshall, all of these meetings, by the way, occurred in dirksen's office because that was one of the ego trip, and so we had to cover what was going on on the floor because that was the public of it, and we had to devine, as roger was very good at, what was begin on behind closed doors. >> yeah, could you -- i'm sorry to ask again, i lost the gist of your question. was it -- was there a reaction

from the public to the use of the filibuster? >> i guess it was however you would like to respond. the thinking behind what i was trying to was ask was, you know, sometimes people today see that the press is supposed to hold, especially members of congress, accountable, and they are supposed to ask, you know, tough questions and allow for this public debate to occur about, obviously, controversial issue, and i think now one of them being the filibuster because it's frequently, but such a unique process we have in the government. did you see any of that kind of conversation happen either within the public, you know, communities, or the press, and they wanted to, you know, sort of make a statement about what, especially senator thurman was doing? >> were people challenging the idea of a filibuster essentially? >> there was a reaction in some mail i got that a big powerful

company like cbs would decide that a certain issue was or was not in the best interest of the company, and it would use its instruments to convince the country to do something that it was reluck at that particular time to do or never thought to do. that was an interesting case of journalistic ethics, should a television company be in the business through a reportorial coverage of the issue, be in the business of trying to change people's minds or just in the business of laying out and let them decide for themselves? it's a fine question. it's a narrow question. it is. yes. >> one of the things that cbs did for that was to have a clock for a while, wasn't it, or a

calendar to indicate how long the filibuster was going on? >> yeah, and they wanted me to grow a beard, but thank god. >> you can't forget that the country was sitting on top of what i would call a racial volcano, and there was really a fear, legitimate fear, that things were getting out of hand, and something had to be done so the people roger worked for and that i worked for, i think, shared that view. >> i got a letter from an irate viewer who accused me of being an unpatriotic american, a communist, a hand maiden for the left wing and dismissed me out of hand and at the bottom, it said, ps, i watch your show every night, and i enjoy it a lot. >> what's the question here? >> what were you most proud of in your reporting, and what might have you done differently looking back? >> i was proud of getting a page

one story at 27 years old. i thought that was terrific. i was proud of the fact that they trusted me coverage. i was really very lucky. today, if you're 27 years old, you're an intern at "politico," but at that time, the tribune made a terrific decision to start a new column by evans and novak, and the congressional correspondent of the tribune, now a columnist, so there was an open slot, and they said, hey, andy, how about covering the hill? i said, fine, and the next thing that happened was the civil rights bill, so that really was a great time in my life. >> yeah, i think if i may say so, i was most proud of nobody knowing what i thought. not the senators.

not the audience. it's hard to do. it's the best way to do it. >> question in the back. >> do you get the sense of the opponents in the bill, from any of the opponents of the bill that they actually believed that it was the right thing to do to pass the bill, but because of their concern about their political futures and who they were representing, that they had to oppose it and participate in a filibuster, did you get any sense of that from any of the opponents. >> look, these people had a tremendous investment in what they believed was our way of life, which was jim crow, and the last thing they wanted to do was to give that up, and public accommodations was key to that, and so at every stage, they were

not interested in compromising. they didn't want to see the south change, and they believed maybe accurately, maybe inaccurate, that this bill was directed to the old confederacy, and the rest of the country, it was not important, so the feelings on the part of the opponents of being beleaguered were, i mean, we were writing that, and that was very evident. would you agree? >> there were a few bill william fulbright comes to mind. he refused to sign the southern manifes manifesto, but -- and he was a faint-hearted participant in the filibustering, and without his

ever having said so, i think he had serious, grave misgivings about the maintaining the segregated country. >> that was an exception, yeah. >> yeah. >> question here. >> how did foreign leaders respond to the process? comment publicly, privately, do you know? >> did you hear from foreign leaders or foreigners? how did the story play outside the united states? >> i don't know. >> don't know. maybe you could answer the question. i don't know. >> i suspect it's impossible to explain the filibuster to anyone else in the world. even in the united states it's hard to explain. >> question? >> you were -- sorry, you were in the '60s, and then today, if

you had a bill as big as that and members of congress to navigate then versus today where journal newspapers is disappearing, everything's on the internet, comedy central, more people get news from comedy central, the way people vote, the people who are in congress, can you compare and contrast then versus now? >> how differently would it be reported today as it was then? >> say that again. >> how differently would the story have been reported today than you were able to report it in the 1960s. >> would have still been behind closed doors, still that difficult in. and, i mean, that's always the barrier for the press. there would be the advantage for television to having, and that

would have provide d that would have provided central elements of the coverage, but what went on on the floor then and now remains slightly off the center of gravity for the story. >> two important changes between then and now, one is that your sources, which were mainly the principles, trusted reporters and reporters had almost a visceral sense of what you could walk out the door and write, what you could kind of use, but not attribute, and what you were told that you could never even tell your wife, and that was all gone. that doesn't exist today. the second great advantage to print people opposed to roger,

is that we had some leisure. i could take the whole day and think about what happened that day and write it and people would be quite content picking up the "new york times" the next day finding out what happened. not only that, if something important happened, i could have another day to call other people and say, hey, this important thing happened, what do you think about it? i'd have another day, maybe a sunday story, we call a violin to look at the big picture, what's going on with the bill, and so there was leisure is not the word because we worked very hard, and we had a better sense of thyme, and in my opinion, the public was better served by that kind of pace than it is today. >> well, i'm afraid we haven't anymore time for questions at this stage, but i wanted to point out the public depends on knowledge for reporting, and

historians, of course, are dependent on it because this is the first rough draft of history, people on the firing line, writing the story as it happened, and going back and reading the stories and reading your accounts of what was going on you called the story really quickly, and as a historian, i'm relieved to know i could use your materials to recreate a past, a time when i was not here and able to see this, and so i want to thank you, and i want to thank everyone for coming, and i want to thank, in particular, the staff of the senator historical office, you notice the pictures up here, the ones organize i organizing things, and i hope you have a chance to look at the pictures as well after the session, and thank you, all, for coming today.

up next, author todd purdman on his book, he was at the national institution seconstitur an hour. >> i'm the chancellor at rutgers university in camden right across the river and also professor of law and history, and it's really my honor and pleasure to be with you this evening and to share a little time with todd. todd is a contributing editor at "vanity fair" and senior writer at "politico," and former columnist at the "new york times," and idea whose time has come. todd, it's a pleasure to be with you. >> really, it's my pleasure. >> we're going to talk, and there's a lot of opportunity for

audience questions, and i think you already have some note cards that have been passed around in case you want to ask a question. so, todd, it's the 50th anniversary of thesivity rights act of 1964, a reason to write the book, but talk about your personal journey to writing the book. there must have been other things that drew you particular to this story. >> i had occasion to think about this week because i've been asked that question more than once, and i have an editor, colin murphy, the editor of "the atlantic monthly", and he's been off me to write a book that would be manageable, not a ten-year project, but three years or so, and three and a half years ago, he reminded me the anniversary is coming up. he said, you know, i think you ought to take a look at it. it's always a chapter or section in somebody else's book. it's not a book of its own. i did a little preliminary research and absolutely fascinated to find things didn't know how the bill was passed

incoming with overwhelming bipartisan support it was passed, and i was embarrassed to realize i was not sanctions, really, but i was alive during the passage of that bill, and moreover in the winter of 1964, i grew up in illinois, my family took a car trip, a vacation, spring break to florida, and m sure we went back in 1965, there had to be a difference, but i didn't know what it was. i thought it i owed it to myself and children to find out about it. i grew up in illinois, knew of senator dirksen's role, and i lost it, but there's a picture of me autographed by dirksen. he was a friend of my grandfather's, and as i did research, it was a rich and incredible story this is, beautiful personalities, both races and both pears, not as remembered as they should be, and that was the satisfying part for me digging into the story. >> excellent. it is rich with stories, as you

just said, so many people not remembered. i want to get to them in a second, but to set up that conversation, you know, the battle of our civil rights is century's old and on going. >> and ongoing. >> won't be done ever probably. could you tell us a little bit about what you see as major issues in the early '60s they dealt with that advocates and legislators talk about ats major things? >> well, basic reality was that a hundred years after the civil war and the war was unfulfilled and equality in the eyes of the law was not a reality in large parts of the country, and it was awkward for john kennedy even has the 61-62 went on, there were commemorations of thissing act and anniversary of that, and when it came around, he was very stymied on what to do because he didn't want to do because he didn't want ignore it or make a big deal because it was too

clear the promise of emancipation was not vicinindic, and what happened is court ruled in the brown case. deliberate was a word, slow. but, of course, it was not honored in large parts of the country and had not addressed the question of segregation and public accommodations, lunch counters, hotels, and so on, and it began to seem to a generations of ampbs who served in world war ii, in europe, other places, they did not experience that jim crow discrimination, 15, 18 years later, seemed completely untanble, and, of course, in the spring of 1963, all the demonstrations culminated, starting with the freedom rides in 1961, olk miss, a riot, and then dr. king and ralph and the other sclc demonstrators had incredible days in birmingham

with fire hoses and police dogs were turned on young people and children, knocking them to the streets, and the world was outraged and president kennedy too in part because he realized it was a horrible international black eye for the country in the cold war, and finally after years of equivocation, he was moved to have a bill. >> kpfs comprehensive. public accommodations was one of the major issues of the fact throughout the south african americans could not stay the night at a hotel, eat at a restaurant. that was one part. discrimination in the workplace. >> initial popes were considered to be weak and disappointing to the community. they didn't have any enforcement teeth. involved contractors, not the private sector in the beginning. >> voting rights? >> there's some, and not abolition of literacy test, but insistence they are the same, and the bill did not to state and local elections, just

federal elections. provision to cut off funds to state and local programs that received federal money that were discriminated, that was controversial for some people, and making permanent the civil rights act, and establishing some other agencies of community relations service to help mediate disputes. those were the principle things, and the real heart and soul was the public accommodations section, principle and symbolic, affecting the daily lives of african-americans, and martin louiser king himself spent his honeymoon in the only place available to them in the rural area where they got married which was the extra bedroom of a black funeral parlor. >> strikes me it was only 50 years ago. you have a great vignette. you mentioned about the emancipation proclamation. tell everyone where president

kennedy was. >> well, on the day that they had a commemoration of the lincoln memorial of the first draft in the fall of 1962, he was at the american cup races off newport watching the races, and on board his vessel was a young student named john kerry, and so he was there and rockefeller came to new york in person, and to the degree they were for either party a republican issue, and governor rockefeller not only came and spoke, but brought with him one of the most precious possessions, the draft of the proclamation in lincoln's own hand, and kennedy was incensed and worried about rockefeller as a potential opponent in 1964 so when lincoln's birthday rolled around in february of 1963, he decided to have a big reception for about 800 african-americans in the white house, the largest

gathering at that point, and he was incensed to find his friend davis brought his white wife, and he was so mad that he want to make sure there were no pictures of them at all and asked to be pulled aside, and mad at the request, she left the party in tears, and it got a lot of attention, the black press completely ignored in the white press, and there's a marvelous picture of them all sitting awkwardly in the diplomatic reception room trying to put the best face on the occasion. >> and there was the demand to the to be there that day. uncomfortable -- >> about what to do. what are you going to do about it, he didn't want to answer. >> amazing. i hope we can come back to president kennedy and johnson. as you point out, so often in the book, there's interesting people who played a role in this, and you can't talk about all of them, but a few of them.

>> certainly two, mitchell, the lobbyist in washington, african-american, went to law school, got his degree shortly before the whole civil rights debate, the bill. he was such a persistence presence on capital hill, he was the 101st senator when only five members of congress were black. born in baltimore, lived there, commuted to washington every day. didn't drink, didn't smoke, didn't walk in the crosswalk until it turned green because he didn't want to get in trouble, and he was just incredibly brave and patient and diligent, and went out of the way to establish relationships with the most hard core segregationists, and, in fact, on the day that the cloture was voted in the senate and the filibuster was broken, he walked the leader of the filibuster, dick russell of georgia, back to the office just as a gesture of courtly gentlemanship, and it's hard to imagine something like that happening today. the other unsung hero,

impossible not to admire, a conservative republican congressman from ohio named william mccullen, home in the west central part of the state is today represented by john boehner, and he opposed gun control, opposed federal aid to education, bus he was descended from abolitionists and a die hard supporter of civil rights, and in the summer of 1963 as president kennedy proposed the bill, there was a deal with the kennedy justice department in the white house that if they would promise not to water it down in the senate as it happened in 1957 and 1960, if they promised to give the republicans equal credit, he'd use the clout with the kau cause to passed bill, and, of course that was necessary because the democrats were split and the southerners were opposed to the bill, and it had the affect of forcing the kennedy administration and johnson add

mgs to attempt something never succeeded, which was to break a filibuster on the senate. this one man, and people, as in the know, as the attorney general, and kennedy are on record saying he thought at the end of the day, he was the single most important force in getting the actual legislation passed. i mean, it has a thousand fathers of the legislation, fathers and mothers, and someone said they discussed the questions with one of president johnson's daughters, linda or lucy, and asked him at the time the bill was passed why he'd given so many pens to the senate republican leader when dr. king was responsible for getting the bill passed, and president johnson supposed by said to her, dr. king passed the bill, but senator dirksen made the law. it's an interesting distinction, but i think that there's credit to go around, and nice to give

it to the people who are forgotten. >> oh, wonderful. could you talk for a couple minutes about this interesting question for us today about the breakdown of opinion on civil rights among the legislators? as you pointed out, in fact, it was a republican issue in a lot of ways. this was a period of change. >> it was a period of change, and in the aftermath of the period of the law, he worry he gave it out to the republicans for a generation, and the republicans over that period went gradually, but steadily, from being the party of lincoln to the party of white backlash, and it's, frankly, there's still southern democrats in congress who are just republicans now, and the republicans, faced problems at the national brand as we saw in 2008 and 2012, and the republican nominee nearly lost, you know, the republican incumbent nearly lost, and all the things that helped the republicans in the midterm year that their individual districts where the big worry is getting primary from the tea party or

the right hurt them at the national level, and in some real way in the past 250 years the parties flipped their roles on race and civil rights and a host of things. >> not only president johnson, but president kennedy did too, i think, one of the many virtues of the book, you captured kennedy's ambivalence, not morality, but how much progress could be made in civil rights and political concern. tell us about -- >> i think it's very interesting. it's indisputable he temperized for a long time and came slowly to the cause. what i set out to find and give credit to a wonderful journalists, nick bryant, called "the bystander," but how many black people or what kind of black people had kennedy known before he was president? the answer was his two valets, and he didn't really have any exposure in the 1960 campaign, a black dentist in san francisco

asked him how many black professionals he knew, and he didn't know more than five to call by their first name, but promised to get better about it. one of the moving things that happened to him in the crowded first two years of the administration was he had an unbelievably fast education on the topic, and by the time he finally plo lly proposed the bi radicalized, but made aware of how unfair the situation was, how insidious it was, and what black people had to bear in life, and when he made the speech proposing the bill, he decided to do it on such short notice that the text was not finished, and he went on the air. can you imagine the president beginning on live television with the most important speeches of the entire presidency and it's not finished? the last two and a half minutes, he adds libs, and you can tell because he circles back to points made before, but the advantage of that, and he was such, as we know, commandsing, you know, presence, is that he spoke extemporaneously, and not

just off the cuff, but from the heart in saying things like this just seems to be an elemental right to me, and it was confe conversational and had the effect of being more powerful. another thing, his speech writer had strong language like saying things like zest pools of segregation exist all over the country. kennedy changed it to area, and he said, a revolution is at hand, and kennedy said, a great change is at hand. it was a revolution for me as what a great editor can do. in this case, the president was the editor. >> so interesting. of course his transmission completed by connor, the events everyone saw at the time, hard not to take a position given what you talk about and most people know about. >> exactly. he shocked the civil leaders in the white house that day, you shouldn't be so harsh on bull connor, and there was a sharp intake of breath, until he said,

after all, he's done more for civil rights than anyone. they then relaxed. >> you captured the complexity of lyndon johnson, a flawed person, but contributed greatly to progress in this area. tell us how he approached this question, and talk to us about what he did to get the bill past. >> you know, in popular myth, the bill is seen as a result of king's and morals and legislation skill. johnson brought to bear tremendous knowledge how the senate worked, lobbied members to vote for cloture, bring the debate to a close, but i think it's also the most important thing to remember is how careful he was not to be too heavy-handed because he knew it could backfire. early in the vice president si, he tried to win the right to preside over the caucus, and they resoundingly rejected the idea and humiliated by it. you tell from the secret white house tapes they made, that he's

going nuts about the pace that the senate debate is taking under the leadership of the majority leader and the democratic floor leader on the bill, and he wants them to go hold run the clock sessions, and, you know, make the senate come in pajamas, and they think that's impractical, and if they talk themselves to death, exhaust all argue arguments, the energy of the debate will change and swing around and the pro-civil rights forces have the advantage. president johnson deserves all the credit he gets, but he deserves it because he held himself and tremendous impulsiveness and tremendous ego in check, and he never waivered from saying we have to pass the strongest possible bill, the bill pending in the house at the time of the president's death. we're not going to wheem and deal and compromise, not do all the things i'm known for, but pass the strong bill. >> of course, the core of the book is the legislative process from enter duction of the bill toot passage, and there's so

many wonderful vip yets and aspects of that, that process you described, and it's a torturous process, and in the future, how do you compare it to today, but first, talk about the process. >> so many things could have gone wrong, in the house judiciary committee, the most liberal in the party tried to load the bill up, relieved to have an actual bill they loaded up with provisions. for example, they wanted to apply to state and local elections, have strong employment discrimination measures that they said, oh, this can't pass the full house much less pass the senate. one of the last things kennedy did in terms of legislative negotiations was to very adroitly in contrast to the reputation as not being a very good legislation craftsman, he really rained that in and got the committee to pass a bill that was strong and had teeth in it and would be enforceable, but not such a christmas tree of

things that it would all fall apart. that's one thing in the process. when the bill got to the house floor, the challenge was not to keep it from being too strong, but keep it from being weakened on the floor, and because they conducted debate in what's known as the committee of the whole, votes were not recorded by and large, and the only way to know how someone voted was to be there physically and watch, and except for reporters, no one could take notes on paper in the house gallery so the forces led by clarence mitchell and others devised a system of gallery watchers, the segregationists called them vultures, but they had to sit there and keep notes in their head who was voting how, what amendment, and in the precell phone era, had to round up family members to make sure enough were on the floor at any one time to defeat hostile legislative mischief, s test test textiles

who is still alive fighting all the fights, would sit in a telephone tree and they heard something was happening on the floor, they would physically go run office to office, going come on, and after three days of this, they said, you don't have to come, i'm coming. she felt guilty when it was over, she stayed up baking sugar cookies with chocolate frosting and equal signs. >> is it accurate to say this was maybe one of the first modern lobbying efforts? >> i think in that way it was a very much one of the first grassroots lobbying efforts and crucial part i did not talk about yet is the ground swell of religious interfaith support for the bill, and across all denominations, and it was applied not willie-nilly, but in a targeted way. the northern and eastern democrats knew that labor unions

could play a role because politicians in those states were motivated by things like organized labor, but in the midwest and plain states, republicans disproportionally, those movements did not have the same, and, in fact, could have backfired, and those members had no large black constituenciecon but had methodists,p baptists, d they lobbied senators one by one, and, you know, day after day with their law school classmates from notre dame or their bishops, and muttering in the cloak room one day after taking a vote to procedurely support the bill, i hope that satisfies the two bishops who called me last night, and it was saltier than that, and that was a remarkable application of strategic lobbying that, in some ways, continued the next year

with the voting rights act. we have not seen it again. we tend to think of religious activism being the political right, but this was the last full firing of the religious left. >> tickets to the senate, a lot of interesting characters too. tell us about senator dirksen who you knew. >> yeah, well senator dirksen is irresistible. he was known as the wizard of ooze. he had a magnificent his diet cigarettes male ox and bourbon. he once described the rub lickating lube lickating properties and he kept a clock in his office where a lot of negotiations took place and every hour was marked five so it was always an appropriate time for a drink.

the deputy attorney general told me the challenge in negotiating in the evening was to get his agreement fons on any of the amendments because while legislative language could be redrafted once without changing its meaning to do it a second time was much harder. so that was one colorful character. >> but he comes along. >> he comes along. his interest was -- from the very beginning he said i'm for this accept for public accommodations and employment discrimination which is really the heart of the bill but his concern was he recented very deeply that he did not get more credit with black voters in illinois for having a civil rights record. he was always against the poll tax, lynching. way back in the 30s when he was a freshman member of congress. his home state of illinois already had strong anti-discrimination statutes on the books.

as a good mid-western conservative, he did not want a second layer of federal bureaucracy to go in and pester businessmen. he had a they of little changes but the big change he made was giving states that had their own effective anti-discrimination laws first crack at enforcement before the federal government would come in and the southern earns correctly surmised that this would be the affect of making the law focus almost completely on legal segregation in the south not de facto segregation like in philadelphia or chicago and also a it was a zrib ra drib raet effort to round up support. >> when we talk about grid lock

and how difficult it is to get anything done in 1964 that you wrote so well about. the process was not so pretty in 1964. >> it wasn't pretty but it wasn't so visible either. i know it sounds strange as a journalist but this story is a great testament to the uses of secrecy a lot of these negotiations happen between closed doors. because of the senate refused to consider the bill or take it seriously, they had to create a kind of ad hawk committee made up of lawyers, friendly senators, interest group who's could behind close doors hammer out a compromise. the interesting thing is several people who participated in those sessions most were in their late 20s or early 30s. the ones that were staill alive a glow comes into their eyes.

people could test their assumptions and throw out a or go on the evening news or repeat the tired old talking points to satisfy the base in a fundraising letter. i think there is a lot to be said for the smoke-filled room or the alcohol-filled room, but that was one part that i definitely contrasted to today. >> maybe also we should go back to reporters have to write things down, they can only be there live and they have to write things down? >> it's always better to see it yourself. >> i think we're going to have some questions, so as we go over the questions the audience had, do you want to tell the story you told me before you got out here about robert ales. >> in light of the author who wrote about the 1