What Passage of the 1957 Civil Rights Act Teaches About the Legislative Process

Anyone wanting to learn more about how legislative bodies work should read "Master of the Senate" by Robert Caro. The book is the third volume in a series about the career of Lyndon Johnson. As a lobbyist, I read the book for the insights contained therein. It didn't disappoint. 

I wrote the following freelance book summary (I know...kind of sick!) after reading the book a couple of years ago. And there's a tie-in to the Illinois General Assembly. I thought I would post the summary here for anyone with an interest. It's a lot shorter than the 1,232 page book!

The year was 1957 and Senator Majority Leader Lyndon Johnson was caught between the horns of a dilemma. The time had come to pass civil rights legislation through the United States Senate, but the hurdles appeared absolutely insurmountable.   

Several years earlier, Lyndon Johnson had gained notoriety for assuming the position of Senate Majority Leader and, for the first time in the annals of Senate history, turning that position into a meaningful platform for power and influence. For the first time, the Senate Majority Leader exercised some degree of influence over a committee structure run by independent and powerful chairmen accountable to only their own parochial ideologies and political interests. What Lyndon Johnson achieved through a combination of shrewdness, persuasiveness, and in some cases downright trickery was a measure of control over which Senators received key appointments and which bills were permitted to advance. This power allowed Johnson to create order within the senate calendar and efficiently move previously stalled legislation through the chamber. More importantly, it positioned him to reward or punish senators for their obedience or recalcitrance to his ambition of using his accomplishments in the Senate to achieve the presidency. This power to reward and punish bestowed even greater power into the hands of the politically skillful Majority Leader. 

Despite being at the pinnacle of his power in the Senate, it appeared inevitable that Johnson was headed toward a catastrophic failure in maneuvering the Senate to conform to the growing drumbeat for civil rights legislation. Failure to act threatened the emergent reputation of the Senate as a body finally freed from prior decades of calcification and gridlock. It would also prove catastrophic to the presidential ambitions of Lyndon Johnson as he sought to transcend perceptions that he was a regional politician beholden to southern interests. As 1957 wore on, the politics involved in moving a civil rights bill through the Senate appeared bigger than Lyndon Johnson and his Texas-sized yearning for recognition as a national leader. 

A growing national awareness of civil rights abuses in the southern states had brought the issue to a head during the Eisenhower presidency.  Much of the nation was demanding federal action to guarantee basic legal rights for African Americans living in the south. The chief impediment was the deft tactical use of the filibuster by southern Senate Democrats. The immediate dilemma for Lyndon Johnson was how to move a civil rights bill through the Senate while avoiding a southern filibuster. It seemed an impossible task. 

Johnson worked to win over southern Senate Democrats by urging them to recognize that passage of a civil rights bill would actually preserve the cause of states’ rights as well as the electoral future of the Democratic Party. He advanced these arguments by pointing out that the power of the southern bloc was waning. Southern Democrats were losing northern allies and might no longer be capable of successfully maintaining a filibuster in the face of a cloture vote. Johnson also warned that the Republicans were on the verge of co-opting the cause of civil rights and would use the issue to gain and solidify national power. Using these arguments, Johnson was able to prevail upon his southern colleagues to compromise by agreeing to allow a weak, watered-down civil rights bill to be debated in the Senate without a filibuster. They would still remain free to vote against the bill. 

While seemingly a breakthrough, the pacification of the southern Senate Democrats created another vexing problem that threatened to undermine the entire endeavor. The large coalition consisting of civil rights leaders along with northern Republicans and Democrats would not accept a weak civil rights bill. After years of being flummoxed by southern filibusters, a frustrated and vocal civil rights coalition would accept nothing less than sweeping civil rights legislation. And Majority Leader Lyndon Johnson was caught in the middle with the knowledge that he simply had to move a civil rights bill through the Senate. Doing so was in the interest of his country, his party, and his personal political ambition. 

After several advances and setbacks, the Senate eventually passed legislation that gutted a raft of proposed federal protections favored by the civil rights movement while ensuring only that the federal government would guarantee voting rights. Much to the consternation of civil rights supporters, a trial by jury amendment was added to avoid a filibuster by making the bill more palatable to southern Senators. Lyndon Johnson was able to convince his northern Senate colleagues and civil rights leaders that passing a watered-down bill was preferable to passing nothing at all. The details and complex political maneuvering that achieved the eventual solution are fascinating in their own right. Interested readers can learn more by reading “Master of the Senate,” which is the third volume in Robert Caro’s series covering the life of Lyndon Johnson. 

The story about the passage of the nation’s first significant civil rights legislation is a classic story about how legislative bodies function in the face of outside pressure and expectations. Except for rare occasions, accomplishing legislative change is difficult and more often then not disappointing. Disappointment and anger are magnified when the expectations of those on the outside are incompatible with what actually happens on the inside. Those on the outside often have idealistic expectations. With respect to the Illinois General Assembly, they ask, “Why doesn’t the General Assembly just recognize what is necessary and do the right thing?” Those on the inside are compelled to abandon idealism in favor of cold, hard numerical pragmatism. Leaders in the General Assembly ask, “How can we get 60 votes in the House and 30 votes in the Senate on a controversial bill?” Doing so often entails amending a bill to make it acceptable to enough legislators to move it forward, yet dissatisfying to many of their constituents. 

The moral of the story is that, when pursuing legislative solutions, it is often a mistake to allow the perfect to become the enemy of the good. Incremental progress is preferable to principled stands that yield nothing in return. Lyndon Johnson knew that the 1957 Civil Rights Act was far weaker than what was demanded by civil rights leaders and a majority of his Senate colleagues. He also knew that a crack in the damn would eventually lead to a flood. The flood arrived with the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1965. This notable achievement of comprehensive civil rights legislation was pushed through Congress and signed into law by none other than President Lyndon Johnson.

“It is the politician’s task to pass legislation, not to sit around saying principled things.”

-- Senate Majority Leader Lyndon Baines Johnson --