The Bill of the Century: The Epic Battle for the Civil Rights Act
Clay Risen, 2014
Bloomsbury USA
320 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781608198245
Summary
The Civil Rights Act of 1964 was the single most important piece of legislation passed by Congress in American history.
This one law so dramatically altered American society that, looking back, it seems preordained—as Everett Dirksen, the GOP leader in the Senate and a key supporter of the bill, said, "no force is more powerful than an idea whose time has come." But there was nothing predestined about the victory: a phalanx of powerful senators, pledging to "fight to the death" for segregation, launched the longest filibuster in American history to defeat it.
The bill's passage has often been credited to the political leadership of President Lyndon Johnson, or the moral force of Martin Luther King. Yet as Clay Risen shows, the battle for the Civil Rights Act was a story much bigger than those two men. It was a broad, epic struggle, a sweeping tale of unceasing grassroots activism, ringing speeches, backroom deal-making and finally, hand-to-hand legislative combat.
The larger-than-life cast of characters ranges from Senate lions like Mike Mansfield and Strom Thurmond to NAACP lobbyist Charles Mitchell, called "the 101st senator" for his Capitol Hill clout, and industrialist J. Irwin Miller, who helped mobilize a powerful religious coalition for the bill. The "idea whose time had come" would never have arrived without pressure from the streets and shrewd leadership in Congress—all captured in Risen's vivid narrative.
This critical turning point in American history has never been thoroughly explored in a full-length account. Now, New York Times editor and acclaimed author Clay Risen delivers the full story, in all its complexity and drama. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—ca. 1979
• Where—Nasville, Tennessee, USA
• Education—B.A., University of Chicago
• Currently—lives in Brooklyn (New York City), New York
Clay Risen is an editor at The New York Times op-ed section. Before that, he was an assistant editor at The New Republic and the founding managing editor of the noted quarterly Democracy: A Journal of Ideas. His recent freelance work has appeared in such journals as The Atlantic, Smithsonian, and The Washington Post.
His first book, A Nation on Fire: America in the Wake of the King Assassination (2009) was hailed as “compelling, original history” (Peniel Joseph) and “a crucial addition to civil rights history” (Publishers Weekly, starred review). He is also the author of American Whiskey, Bourbon and Rye: A Guide to the Nation’s Favorite Spirit (2013) and The Bill of the Century: The Epic Battle for the Civil Rights Act (2014). (From the author's website.)
Book Reviews
[I't took just over a year of negotiations and compromises, both inside and outside of Congress, for the bill to become law. Risen does his best to infuse drama into a story that is already a matter of the historical record. Fortunately, Risen is adept at weaving in juicy snippets of conversation and his fluid prose mutes some of the wonkiness in the political-process narrative.
Publishers Weekly
Arguably, Risen's most important contribution is revealing that J. Irwin Miller and the National Council of Churches—tireless lay and ministerial advocates—served as the act's moral conscience, and that it likely would not have passed without the resulting groundswell of public support. Risen adds deputy U.S. Attorney General Nicholas Katzenbach to the roster of unsung heroes. —Karl Helicher, Upper Merion Twp. Lib., King of Prussia, PA
Library Journal
A journalist's in-depth, behind-the-scenes account of the unsung congressional and White House heroes who helped the Civil Rights Act become the law of the land.... It makes for scrupulous accuracy but also slow, labyrinthine reading. Well-researched but sometimes tedious.
Kirkus Reviews
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