Lyndon Baines Johnson

Lyndon Baines Johnson’s organized tactics in the Senate show that the steps he took to pass the Civil Rights Bill of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965 were successful and effective in making real change. When Lyndon B. Johnson first stepped into the role of being the President of the United States, he immediately sought to solve the issue of civil rights for all individuals no matter the color, race or religion they stood in. The way in which Johnson moved forward conducting quick action in passing the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was remarkable. According to LBJ biographer Robert Caro, “To see Lyndon Johnson get that bill through almost vote by vote, is to see not only legislative power but legislative genius” (qtd. in Gittinger and Fisher). This was the time when Johnson wanted to take strong action with the passing of the bill. Johnson himself urged immediate action on the Civil Rights Bill, in his address to the joint session of Congress:
I urge you again, as I did in 1957 and again in 1960, to enact a civil rights law so that we can move forward to eliminate from this nation every trace of discrimination and oppression that is based upon race or color. There could be no greater source of strength to this nation both at home and abroad (qtd. in Gittenger and Fisher).
The Civil Rights Bill first had to go through the House Rules Committee, and Johnson asked them to give the bill a hearing; but the only problem was Chairman Howard Smith refused to give the bill a hearing because he disagreed with the issue. So Johnson called a publisher named Katherine Graham [editor of the Washington Post] telling her to pressure her editors to urge the representatives to sign a “discharge petition.” Blocking the bill by the southerners was the main obstruction. Hubert Humphrey stopped the southerners from using a “quorum call” which made them let the bill through. (Gittenger and Fisher). On June 19 the Senate passed the Civil Rights Bill with votes 73-27 and on July 2 the