“It was really a tremendous moment, and a tremendous moment in American history.”
Frank Valeo recalls the historic moment when the Senate finally agreed to cloture on the 1964 civil rights bill.
VALEO: So we thought we had it, and we counted and we came up with sixty-seven or thereabouts. We had Hayden in reserve. Even though he had never voted for cloture, he said he didn't want to vote for it, but if his vote was absolutely essential he would vote for it. He had reached the point where he thought it was the only thing to do. We had Clair Engle of California in the hospital, very seriously ill. We didn't know whether he would be able to come out. There were a couple of dubious votes, but we thought that we had it, and we were ready to make the attempt.
He (Mansfield) put the cloture petition in, and the real ardent supporters were anxious to get on the cloture petition. I think we had to put an extra one in so that they could all sign it who wanted to sign it. But the petition went in, and [Sam] Ervin of North Carolina immediately began to put in dozens of amendments into the hopper so that they would be available by the time the measure came to a vote. And then that day came when it came up for a vote. I had my own list. I was right on the total. I had one switch. I think we got sixty-seven or sixty-eight votes, I'm not sure. I was conservative on that. I think I had one under what we actually had. Clair Engle was the dubious one. He came in. He couldn't talk. I think he’d suffered a stroke or something. He had to be supported on both sides. But you could see from the expression on his face that he was voting yes and it was, I guess, the last great moment of his life. But it was a very moving thing to watch. Hayden was in the backroom, waiting if necessary to give a vote to it.
It was really a tremendous moment, and a tremendous moment in American history, really, because that was decisive. Without that, I don't know where we would have gone as a country after that. But that definitely cast the die. And Mansfield did not even show up for the press. He pushed Humphrey out there and he pushed Dirksen out. And he pushed everyone else, but not himself. I don't even think he was there for the press interview. But that, again, was exactly the style that he worked on anything of that kind.
Well, we had cloture. We didn't have a Civil Rights bill, but everybody knew that was going to be the key to it.
