By Frances Rice
Senator Everett Dirksen (R- IL) was honored in a Time
magazine article that featured him on the June 19, 1964 cover for his pivotal
role in the passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Act. The Chicago Defender, the
largest black-owned daily in the world, praised Dirksen "for the grand
manner of his generalship behind the passage of the best civil rights measures
that have ever been enacted into law since Reconstruction."
Senator Dirksen was instrumental to the passage of civil
rights legislation in 1957, 1960, 1964, 1965, and 1968. Dirksen crafted the
language for the Civil Rights Act of 1968 which prohibited discrimination in
housing. He fine-tuned the language of the 1964 Civil Rights Bill, which helped
break the filibuster of the Democrat senators. He borrowed justifying language
from the diary of Victor Hugo and said: “it was an idea whose time had
come.” Dirksen argued that a law aimed
at ending discrimination by hotels, restaurants, and other business employers
met the standard set by Hugo.
When President Johnson signed the bill, he handed the
first pen to Dirksen as a token of his appreciation for his critical role in
getting the bill passed into law.
