Transcripts For CSPAN3 Civil Rights Act Of 1964 20140703

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 Tribunes 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 were familiar with him because he was the managing editor of t hill newspaper and in 2006 he joined politico. So thats 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 fdrs 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 wasnt 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. Hes 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 didnt 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. Everybodys dead now except andy and me. [ laughter ] and were 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 didnt 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 postditch pat st. Lou post dispatch, they didnt 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 youre looking for a conspiracy theory, which i love, as a 28yearold 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 ive 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 ive 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 arent interested in that. So i had no competition. Thats 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 didnt 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 couldnt go lots of places. You couldnt go into the chamber, you had to wait for the sergeant at arms and stake out a place and then youve 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 didnt 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 84day filibuster he couldnt 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 cant 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 thats 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 id never [ laughter ] id never id never been in a crowd like that. I didnt know what they were going to do. Whether we were going to hold up signs or wave or anything. They didnt they just stood there. Didnt make a sound, didnt deserve anybody. And didnt 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 thats 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 twoweek 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, its 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 theres 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 dawntomidnight coverage. So he said heres the plan, youre going to do a report on the morning news to Television Morning news, noon news, midafternoon news, Cronkite News and good night news and youre going to do a report on every other hourly radio broadcast everyday until we finish. And i said, youre kidding . I said, i mean that sounds like a flagpole sitting stunt. He said no, no, no, this is serious. Were 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 were 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 wed always go up to the white house and try to get a feed or feel from larry obrien 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 id like to introduce myself, im the Congressional Correspondent with the New York Herald tribune, im 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 youll 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 dont 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 hed give me the names and phone numbers of people i ought to check to see how he was and when i got back id 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 wasnt 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 americas 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 werent 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 thats 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 youd get a buzz on when you wrote your story. But dirksens 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 dirksens bill, and thats what he wanted to hear. He had this nasal iowa accent, chairman of the republican policy committee, and wasnt 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 dont know whats 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 reporters notebook, but you could not bring in an artists 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 thats 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 ive not seen printed anywhere, that he was playing with the houses 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 im 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 hed 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 dont think an hour or two went by that i didnt 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, its 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 dont recall ever talking to a press secretary during that whole time, not that i dont have anything against them, i was one myself for a short period, but there werent 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, im like little johnny when the teacher says, johnny, can you spell straight . Johnny says, straight. 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, dont 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, toms come up, and hes not well remembered, i suspect. A lot of people didnt 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 . Hes 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 senators 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 socalled title 267. Senator dirksens 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 wasnt caught up so much just personally in the civil rights movement, didnt know much about it. I was isolated ov ed on the hil. You dont know whats going on in the rest of the country, but i remember aiken kept worrying, was it wasnt 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 dont 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 didnt 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 youd 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 didnt 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 didnt, 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 couldnt 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 wed do next. Just to think about it, you know how hard it is to get 60 for todays 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 dont vote for cloture, well 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, were 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 dont 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 williamss 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 mikes 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 id like to throw the floor up to you and theres a question right here. I had a quick question actually, its 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 legislations 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 its 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 publics 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 didnt have a quorum, youd 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 dirksens 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 im 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 its 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 peoples minds or just in the business of laying out and let them decide for themselves . Its a fine question. Its a narrow question. It is. Yes. One of the things that cbs did for that was to have a clock for a while, wasnt 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 cant 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. Whats 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 youre 27 years old, youre 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. Its hard to do. Its 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 didnt 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 fainthearted 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 dont know. Dont know. Maybe you could answer the question. I dont know. I suspect its impossible to explain the filibuster to anyone else in the world. Even in the United States its 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, everythings 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, thats 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 doesnt 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 . Id have another day, maybe a sunday story, we call a violin to look at the big picture, whats 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, im afraid we havent 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, im 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. Im the chancellor at Rutgers University in camden right across the river and also professor of law and history, and its 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, its a pleasure to be with you. Really, its my pleasure. Were going to talk, and theres 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, its 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 ive been asked that question more than once, and i have an editor, colin murphy, the editor of the atlantic monthly, and hes been off me to write a book that would be manageable, not a tenyear 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. Its always a chapter or section in somebody elses book. Its not a book of its own. I did a little preliminary research and absolutely fascinated to find things didnt 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 didnt 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 dirksens role, and i lost it, but theres a picture of me autographed by dirksen. He was a friend of my grandfathers, 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 centurys old and on going. And ongoing. Wont be done ever probably. Could you tell us a little bit about what you see as major issues in the