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Related Link: Civil Rights Act of 1964
credit: “ON-THE-RECORD interview with Senate Majority Leader Mike Mansfield by the Detroit News, the Newark News, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, and the Washington Star,” Mike Mansfield Papers, Series 21, Box 42, Folder 45, Mansfield Library, University of Montana.
Anticipating a lengthy filibuster against the Civil Rights Act in the Senate, President Lyndon Johnson urged Majority Leader Mike Mansfield to break the filibuster by holding the Senate in round-the-clock sessions to exhaust the bill's opponents. Mansfield respected the president's counsel, but he refused to follow his advice. The Senate, he explained to journalists in this interview, is not "a circus or a sideshow." Mansfield was determined to uphold the "dignity and decorum" of the institution.
