Word: dirksen
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...Dirksen jabbed an index finger at his colleagues on both sides of the aisle. His voice rose to a slightly higher pitch, taking on an extra tone of persuasiveness. The Senate, he said, had a "covenant with the people. For many years each political party has given major consideration to a civil rights plank in its platform. Were these pledges so much campaign stuff, or did we mean it? Were these promises on civil rights but idle words for vote-getting purposes, or were they a covenant meant to be kept? If all this was mere pretense, let us confess...
...Vote. It was precisely 11 a.m., the time set to vote. While Dirksen was still talking, the presiding officer, Montana Democrat Lee Metcalf, brought down his gavel. "Is it the sense of the Senate that the debate shall be brought to a close?" Metcalf asked and ordered the yeas and nays...
Discussing the period after the civil rights bill first reached the Senate, Dirksen recalls that "We sort of let the thing simmer and jell, waiting to see what would happen. We knew that we could expect a freshet of long speeches. We knew that for about 30 days nothing would happen...
Critical Eye. Now it was up to the Senate?and even among Senators favoring civil rights there were some grave reservations. Everett Dirksen, for one, had been following the course of the House civil rights measure with a close and critical eye. Says he: "I kept annotating it and making a list of prospective amendments." In early...
February, just before the House passed the bill, Dirksen entered Washington's Sibley Memorial Hospital for treatment of a bleeding ulcer, took along his own dog-eared copy of the measure and began to rewrite it. He kept at it during a week's recuperation at Broad Run Farm, his redwood-and-field-stone ranch house in suburban Sterling...