from los angeles, i am tavis smiley. tonight, a conversation with new york times writer clay risen, and his latest work is called "the bill of the century: the epic battle for the civil rights act.," and it sheds to on how some legislation got to be a very divided and contentious congress. we are glad you could join us for our conversation with clay risen, coming up right now. ♪

>> and by contributions to your pbs station from viewers like you. thank you. ♪ tavis: 50 years ago this summer while the struggle for civil rights was going on, congress passed one of the most important pieces of legislation this country has ever seen. the civil rights act of 1964 required an army of dedicated advocates to succeed, and this tells that story in dramatic detail. it is by the new york times writer clay risen. on theood to have you program, sir. >> thank you. tavis: and congratulations.

>> thank you. whether or not you can this, that a bill like this could get through congress today. >> i think it is a good question. i think it is also important to remember that the single moral imperative was the civil rights act. as important as things like health insurance and immigration reform are today, and i think there are moral components, civil rights, the ending of this segregation, that is something for 100y have put off years, and dr. king had spent a decade already pushing for it throughout the south, and i think you have to look at that singular sort of urgency before you can question whether it could happen today. tavis: so to your point, i will ask you to a compact that.

-- to unpack that. the moral imperative, maybe there is something in that answer that is informative for us to wrestle to the ground these issues today that have a moral component to them. >> i think you have to start with the work that was being done by dr. king, and not just dr. king but the whole breadth of the civil rights movement, going back decades before the law was passed in it is funny, when you look at what was happening, the kind of mood of the country, the mood of the movement at the beginning of that year, the beginning of 1963, people work fairly pessimistic. they did not believe that john f. kennedy would do anything. he had really dragged his feet. they did not believe the country was ready for something momentous, but then you have birmingham, and birmingham was not only in itself an important thing that had to be answered, but it also raised important issues, not just for the country but for the world. eagles on tv and on the front

pages of newspapers children being attacked by dogs, and not only did people have concerns about the children but they understood this is why we have to do something, because we live in a world, we live in a country where this is ok for some people, and we need to stop pretending that states and local comenments, the south will around, and we need federal legislation to do something, and that convinced not just liberals, not just john f. kennedy, but conservative republicans in the midwest you had really resisted civil rights legislation up to that point to get behind comprehensive action, and i think that is what really brought it to the four. -- the foare. clay, let me put some more detail on this timeline. it is important for me and i think for the audience to understand what was actually happening during this period, so you are right. let's back up. 1963, those in the movement are

concerned about whether jfk really does have what it takes, i will put it that way, to really get behind this legislation and push it through, and then you advance to the summer of 1963, the march on washington, just to put it into context, into your point, you have the 16th street bombing of , andhurch in birmingham all of this happens literally weeks later, and then days later, not even a month later, you have a bombing at a church where these four little girls are killed, and then weeks later, jfk is assassinated, and then you are into 1964, and lyndon johnson is president, and i am only putting it on the table to get a sense from you as to how you think all of these -- i hate this phrase -- these momentn a row lead to a where lbj can galvanize the congress and galvanize the congress to do something in

memory of jfk, in memory of these four little girls -- i am just trying to set the stage of the better. >> right. legislation, we look back and we think, of course, the country was going to come around to civil rights legislation, but there are lots of things this country has not come around to do, health insurance being one, so, yes, it is absolutely a matter of these contingent events. we talk about contingency. had something not happened, something else would not have happened. had birmingham not happened, if the march on washington had not been the momentous occasion that it was, and, unfortunately, had kennedy not become assassinated, i do not think we would have had that alvin i think that we had. much: contingent is so better than ducks in a row. i was reaching and could not find it. i will take contingency. let's stay with that though. tell me then, and you go into

some of this in the text, tell me than how brilliant lbj was in using this moment, kennedy's assassination, to galvanize congress, to galvanize the country to actually do something in his memory, because it was good the way he played that politically. >> absolutely. when he came into office, unfortunately the way he came into office, he knew the first thing he had to do was address the country and address on risk, so you had a speech before the joint session of congress, televised live, and the very first thing he said was in memory of jfk, we need to pass civil rights legislation. the timel rights, by he was assassinated, civil rights was very important to kennedy, but johnson took it up a notch, and he said, this is the single legacy of john f. kennedy, and i do not know that kennedy himself would have said that, but it is true he did a lot to get that bill going, and he and bobby kennedy deserve

credit for that, but johnson was able to bring it together in that speech. if anyone wants to understand what is the brilliance of rhetoric in the moment of crisis, go back and look at footage. you can see it on youtube, the footage of that speech, and johnson knocked it out of the park. he went back and said, regardless of where you are, regardless of where you're part of standing is, regardless of where you are in the country, you need to understand that we are in a moment where we need to act on this, and that did an enormous amount in moving the bill forward. people often assume that johnson's greatest achievement was behind closed doors, and what he was doing, pushing senators, congressmen one way or another. i do not think there is a lot of evidence to show that he did that. i think he understood that the ball was in good hands with the guys in the justice department, with hubert humphrey. what johnson did, and what his real genius was, was to use that

platform of the presidency, the presidency coming after kennedy to repeatedly hammer this issue and to make sure that it was presented as something that everyone had to get behind. he was not out there pushing one side of our -- for the other. he did a little of that, but now he was saying, we are behind this area now, let's do something about it. tavis: this comes in this text, and certainly in other texts, with respect to john and robert kennedy, they both started out on the wrong side of civil rights, the wrong side of history, and i get tired of people who try to make them iconic. a did do all right, but they started out on the wrong side, and that is ok, because we can all be redeemed, and by the time bobby kennedy died, he was there, but people did not see the kind of commitment that he could have put. in fact, august 1963, kennedy is

in the white house watching the march on washington, and he will not even show up because he is afraid of how it will turn out, so when johnson picks it up, it is in some case a tribute to kennedy, but i do not think we should overstate that. >> you are right. you can never answer the question, what would kennedy have done, but i believe kennedy was moving in a direction that was more supportive of civil rights. it was his idea to finally pull the trigger, so to speak, and move forward on this legislation. i think bobby kennedy deserves a lot of credit for pushing his brother in that direction, but you're absolutely correct. i do not think that kennedy would have been as stalwart behind the full bill the way that johnson was. i think kennedy may have accepted some compromises. i do not want to speculate, but i think it is, again, a contingency. tavis: so put the cover of the book back up, because i love

this photo. it is an iconic photo. lbj turning around and handing a 10 to dr. king, a pen that he has used seconds earlier to sign the civil rights act of 1964, and i want this up because even though they put this picture on the cover, as they should have, but inside the text, you make the argument that in some case, johnson and king get more credit than they deserve, and maybe i am not phrasing that the way you would, but the point is they were not the only ones that had a major effort in making this pass, but in major history, it is lbj and mlk do almost single-handedly made this happen. >> absolutely. i do not want to diminish what they achieved with this bill. i think that is very important, but it is like saying you'll armstrong is the first man to walk on the moon, and you forget that thousands of people worked behind him to get him there. look at birmingham. the reason why kennedy was worried about what happened in birmingham was not just

, and form but the fear that fear to be realized, they were making that happen. they very much responded to king and said, let's do birmingham here, and that put a real sort of real spin on kennedy's fear. want tothese, i do not save bit players, because everyone is important, but you cannot really understand that story until you understand the role he played, but at the same time, guys who were very much in washington, part of washington, but who were representing the whoment, clarence mitchell, was the super lobbyist. he is remembered as being one of the greatest lobbyists of all time. he was the head lobbyist of the naacp. he could go in, a black man, into the office richard russell, the most stalwart segregationist, head of the

southern democrats, sit down and have a conversation, and they respected each other and disagreed, and i am sure at the end of the day, mitchell did not like him, but they could talk, and the things that he did to push it forward and get people to support stronger versions of the bill, that is absolutely vital. you have to understand that. you also have to understand the thousands of people he came to washington to meet with the representatives, to write letters, the church leaders, the labor leaders who organized in their cities and in their towns to bring constituents to washington, to push and to show that this was a public movement. it is one thing for johnson to say the public is behind this, but it took the public to push them to do it, and you had by the time the filibuster is on, you had senators saying, my mail is going 10-1 in support, and that kind of expression of public support for the legislation, it was absolutely vital, and i think that you

missed that if you only look at iconic figures. tavis: what is fascinating to me about that story, clay, is that there are two or three issues that come to mind, and let's start with immigration, where members of congress are getting the same kind of mail, snail mail, the same kind of e-mail, and they are being lobbied in the same way, and you see the president to some degree putting this issue on the docket, and we see marches and protests across the country, but to this moment, they have not been able to turn that into any kind of comprehensive legislation, so beyond the push of the people, give me some sense of what was happening with these individual senators, certainly those from the south, and even some from the north, but those that had been anti-civil rights legislation, what was it that if not lbj'shem, work? >> certainly, the seven senators were not interested, even the

ones that became more progressive over, like william fulbright. they did not vote for the bill, but these conservative republican senators from the midwest, it was not that they were against civil rights so much, they were against big government. they saw bills like this as big government. and mostly, they did not have black constituents. you talk about iowa in the 1950's and 1960's, there just were not a lot of black people there, so it did not have that moral urgency, and they were perfectly willing to make deals with the seven senators, and there was a coalition for a long time between seven senators and midwesterners. they basically had an agreement. we will vote against civil rights if you vote against big government plans, and what the movement did, and also i would say johnson and really across the pro-civil rights axis, let's say, they were able to convince the senators and representatives that that could no longer be the

deal, that there was a moral urgency, and you saw this happen when church members, when rabbis and priests from their states would go to either their offices in washington or meet them when they came back to visit their districts and sit down and say, look, we have to do something, and i know you are a good wrist in man. we need to understand that this is a -- they would appeal on blatantly religious terms, -- you are a good christian man. you have to at least understand that it is morally wrong for this country to sanction jim crow segregation, and this, over time, really pushed people, especially when they saw the settlers -- the southerners stonewalled. there is no mind, greater coalition of americans

that push to get the civil rights bill passed. i have seen nothing like it since. it is a one-of-a-kind coalition, and yet it happened in an america that was pretty starkly divided between black and white, and now here we are in the most multicultural, multiracial, altiethnic america ever, with black man sitting in the oval office, and that might be part of the problem, push back here, but we cannot get anything comprehensive push through this congress even though in 1964 they did remarkably well. >> well, i would say that one of the things that we face today is that people learned lessons of that time, so, yes, you have a lot of pro-immigration reform activists, but you also have a team reform and an anti-immigration reform. i do not want to say just the tea party, who have learned the same lesson, and they are pushing in the other direction, and you just cannot have lobbying in washington. you just cannot have movements

in the streets. you have to have a combination of the to, and you see that and oneg on both sides, of the reason we see this happening is that voices get drowned out, and who is the bigger group? the same as volume? people can yell loudly, and they may not represent the largest group of people. that is very hard for a lot of politicians to figure out, and i think that is what is the sticking point right now. tavis: how would you assess the role that the media has played in this? because now we have all types of media outlets and cable stations, certainly more than the three networks that were back in 1964. give me some sense of what the media did or did not do. how complicit were they, how helpful were they in raising this issue? >> they were very. actually, they were not very helpful for a long time. they do not put the issue on the front burner.

of course, the black newspapers at the time which were much larger and much more far-reaching than they are today, they, of course, were tracking it for a long time, but it was not really until birmingham and you saw it starting to appear on front pages of newspapers, on the nightly news, but from then on, it really took off, and what is interesting, you have a younger generation of reporters. he is retired now, but roger mudd, a young washington correspondent at the time, he understood the importance of this issue, and he not only did a very long broadcast of the march on washington but later , multiplebroadcast daily broadcasts during the senate filibuster, and while keeping with a level of objectivity make sure people understood the importance of what was going on, guess i think for particularly a lot of white americans, obviously, even ones that were sympathetic to the civil rights, it took things

like earning him, and it took coverage of birmingham to make them understand that this was not just some other issue. this was not on the same issue as agriculture subsidies or foreign policy. this was something that had to be dealt with right at that mudd andnd guys like others made sure it was constantly out in front of people, and they could not get away from it, and along with everything else, that help to keep civil rights in the front of everybody's mind. good: even legislation as as the 1964 civil rights act, everything does not get in, so what was left out of this legislation? what did it not do? >> part of the deal he signed the civil rights act was an agreement pushed by northern representatives and senators that the bill would not really touch issues of de facto segregation, right, so the build issues, andegal

they dealt with discrimination and it did not do in housing discrimination. , and there were a lot of people and that not touch it andconsidered an left out, they do not recognize they were making a zero-sum decision. they thought they would deal with this next. and the 1965 voting rights act, incredibly important, but the housing and civil rights act, it did not really do that much, and

the war on poverty was not nearly as big as people knew it needed to be, and i think that, unfortunately, is a consequence of that decision. i do not know if it could have been another way, but it was definitely one. tavis: let me circle back to lbj, because with this iconic legislation, i am reading a lot of this, where people are challenging, certainly biographers and others are challenging us to re-examine our assumptions about lbj, what we think about lbj. so right on what he did right and so wrong on what he did wrong, and he could not have been more wrong on the vietnam question, and he could not have been as right on civil rights. i circle back to this because i , and you could put

abraham lincoln into this, but i do not know if a more courageous act has been committed. they said on tape, we knew he was writing off the south for his party for decades to come. he knew that his supporting this was the right thing to do on the one hand, but he knew he was destroying his base. any like to say that he was and he did not have a future in the democratic party, that white southerners, and i think you saw that in advance, and there are a lot of things that they said in the years leading up to at that point in that direction, and i think he

saw a different type of future. there is a lot of forward thinking liberals at the time that were saying, one way or another, black america is going to become part of the mainstream, and that is the base of the democratic party, and you can see a future, or they can see a future. the black labor coalition, a bride of coalitions that you can see coming out, where the south in terms of that conservative point of view was not something that the democrats wanted to keep around. that was not something that johnson wanted to keep around,, and it was something that did not have a future itself, so, yes, i think he saw it as a bittersweet victory. tavis: he was courageous. >> and he was getting support for other things it wanted to do.

and this is an important first step for the war on poverty, social security expansion, the things that we praise him for getting through in the next couple of years. tavis: for obvious reasons, clay risen calls that the bill of the century, the epic battle for the civil rights act in 1964. clay risen, good to have you on the show and the text, and thanks for coming by. tavis: thanks for watching. as always, keep the faith. >> for more information on today's show, visit tavis smiley at pbs.org. tavis: hi, i'm tavis smiley. join me next time for a conversation with the real life of hotel were wanda, paul rusesabagina, and that is next time. we will see you then.

>> and by contributions to your pbs station from viewers like you. thank you. ♪ >> be more. >> be more. pbs.

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