A Tale of Two Freedom Fighters

On June 19, 1964, one year from the day President John F. Kennedy introduced it, the Civil Rights Act won final approval in the United States Senate, clearing the way two weeks later for President Lyndon Johnson's signature. The vote in the Senate was 73 to 27, several votes clear of the two-thirds needed to break a filibuster by Southern Democrats. Because of the split in his own party, Johnson needed overwhelming support among Republicans to pass the bill. They delivered in the final tally, with 27 Republican senators voting for the legislation, against just 6 opposing it. It was a bipartisan achievement, not unusual in an era when such coalitions were needed to pass important legislation.

There were stalwart and eloquent advocates on both sides of the issue. Johnson used his bully pulpit, and the memory of Kennedy, to rally support for the bill. Sen. Hubert Humphrey was an effective floor manager for the legislation. Minority Leader Everett Dirksen marshaled support among Republican senators, declaring in debate that, "The time has come for equality of opportunity in government, in education, in employment. It will not be stayed. It is here." Southern Democrats, led by Strom Thurmond and Richard Russell, fought a last-ditch battle to hold off or weaken the bill via legislative machinations and a record 75-day filibuster. In the end, a majority of Americans agreed with Sen. Dirksen: The time had come to end the South's racial caste system.

Nicholas Buccola writes in One Man's Freedom: Goldwater, King, and the Struggle over an American Ideal that the battle that led to the Civil Rights Act is well captured in the personal lives and public careers of two protagonists: the Rev. Martin Luther King, who led the civil rights movement at the time, and Sen. Barry Goldwater, one of six Republicans to vote against the Civil Rights Act and Republican nominee for president in 1964. Buccola, professor of government at Claremont McKenna College, writes that these two leaders battled over the essential meaning of freedom in a constitutional republic dedicated to "liberty and justice for all."

King maintained that government power should be used to guarantee freedom not only for American blacks, but for all citizens. He expected that federal power, unleashed by the Civil Rights Act, would advance the cause of freedom. Goldwater argued for the reverse: that freedom requires limitations upon government, and a large zone in which people are free to do as they wish. From his point of view, the Civil Rights Act empowered the federal government to interfere with vital constitutional freedoms.