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Related Link: Civil Rights Act of 1964
credit: U.S. Senate Historical Office
On June 19, 1964, senators finished their final speeches in favor of and against the civil rights bill. Senate leaders Mike Mansfield (D-MT) and Everett Dirksen (R-IL) spoke last before the historic vote was taken. The final tally was 73 in favor and 23 against. As Senator Winston Prouty noted, "History will long remember the sturdy stewards of this undertaking--Dirksen, Mansfield, Humphrey, Kuchel, and all the rest--but the journey will go on. Indignities will not end In this generation, nor in the next, but let it go out to all the world that we have begun their undoing."
