The Bill of the Century: The Epic Battle for the Civil Rights Act
So here’s the thing: when most of us think about the 1964 Civil Rights Act, we think about two people: President Lyndon Johnson, who was instrumental in moving the act through Congress, and Martin Luther King Jr., who stirred the public’s passion and moral conscience and helped break down the long-standing resistance to equal-rights legislation. The actual story, Risen writes in this insightful book, is a bit more complex. Yes, Johnson and King were key players in the passage of the bill, but they were not the only ones; the efforts of a variety of people, including religious leaders and politicians, civil rights leaders, even union leaders, should not be forgotten. As Risen says: The Civil Rights Act is often explained like a one-man play, when in fact it had a cast of, literally, thousands. The author explores the years leading up to the 1964 bill, including the creation of earlier civil rights acts (such as, for example, the 1957 civil rights act, which then senate majority leader Lyndon Johnson worked to whittle the bill to a nub before allowing it to pass) and John F. Kennedy’s efforts to create stronger and more comprehensive legislation (in part due to violent response around the country to earlier anti-discrimination legislation). The book is about a massively influential civil rights act, to be sure, but it’s also about the many people who worked hard to set the stage for its passing . . . people who, as the author rightly points out, have been moved to the historical background, while the roles of Johnson and King have been inflated in the public’s memories. --David Pitt