Andover - Harvard Library
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Timeline: 1965
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| January 1965 | |||
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January 4. When the second session of the 89th Congress convened
on Monday, January 4, 1965, the Democrats were flying high. President
Lyndon Johnson had trounced Republican Barry Goldwater in the presidential
election two months before, bringing along huge Democratic majorities
in the House and Senate. The Republicans lost 38 seats in the House. In
the Senate, which is where my story this evening takes place, the Republicans,
led by Illinois Senator Everett McKinley Dirksen, lost two seats. The
president's party held a 68 to 32 majority. Democrats outnumbered Republicans
in the House 295 to 140. |
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In his State
of the Union address, President Johnson described his goals for the
"Great Society," by the improvement of the quality of life in
America "The Great Society asks not how much but how good; not only
how to create wealth but how to use it; not only how fast we are going,
but where we are headed. It proposes as the first test for a nation: the
quality of its people." |
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January 11. Dirksen laid out the legislative agenda for his constituents
in a television
broadcast. After explaining the trials of Vietnam, he continued with
these words: "Now when it comes to the domestic scene, all seems
to be beer and skittles, apple pie and honey, and yet it is not quite
that sweet." As examples of the bitters, he enumerated the gold problem,
medicare, aid to education, excise taxes, farm prices and subsidies, and
the public debt - not a word about voting rights. |
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| February 1965 | |||
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| March 1965 | |||
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March 7. "Bloody Sunday." Close to 200 state troopers
attacked 525 civil rights demonstrators in Selma, Alabama, as demonstrators
prepared to begin a march to Montgomery to protest voting rights discrimination.
After President Johnson federalized the state National Guard and sent
another 2,200 troops to protect the marchers, the walk began on March
21, with over 3,000 participating. |
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March 8. U.S. Marines landed in Vietnam. The two battalions were
the first U.S. combat forces in that country. Some 23,000 U.S. personnel
already served in Vietnam as military advisers. |
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March 11. The Reverend James J. Reeb of Boston died in Selma following
a beating. Two other white Unitarian ministers were injured in the attack. |
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March 17. President Johnson submitted a voting rights bill to Congress.
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March 18. The president's proposals were embodied in S 1564, which
was introduced by 66 co-sponsors. In voting to send the bill to the Senate
Judiciary Committee, the Senate added the instruction that the committee
report the bill no later than April 9. Subcommittee No. 5 of the House
Judiciary Committee was called into session to consider the bill (HR 6400)
as well. |
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The Selma-to-Montgomery March for voting rights ended three weeks--and three events--that represented the political and emotional peak of the modern civil rights movement. On "Bloody Sunday," March 7, 1965, some 600 civil rights marchers headed east out of Selma on U.S. Route 80. They got only as far as the Edmund Pettus Bridge six blocks away, where state and local lawmen attacked them with billy clubs and tear gas and drove them back into Selma. Two days later on March 9, Martin Luther King, Jr., led a "symbolic" march to the bridge. Then civil rights leaders sought court protection for a third, full-scale march from Selma to the state capitol in Montgomery. Federal District Court Judge Frank M. Johnson, Jr., weighed the right of mobility against the right to march and ruled in favor of the demonstrators. "The law is clear that the right to petition one's government for the redress of grievances may be exercised in large groups...," said Judge Johnson, "and these rights may be exercised by marching, even along public highways." On Sunday, March 21, about 3,200 marchers set out for Montgomery, walking 12 miles a day and sleeping in fields. By the time they reached the capitol on Thursday, March 25, they were 25,000-strong. Less than five months after the last of the three marches, President Lyndon Johnson signed the Voting Rights Act of 1965--the best possible redress of grievances.
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April 9. The Senate Judiciary Committee reported out a bill that
was substantially stronger than what the administration had requested.
The major change was the addition of a ban on the use of poll taxes in
state and local elections. One major limitation, proposed by Senate Minority
Leader Dirksen, was written into the bill, however. It allowed states
with literacy tests and low vote turnout in 1964 to exempt themselves
from coverage if less than 20 percent of the population was "non-white,"
or by proving in court that at least 60 percent of their voting-age residents
were registered. |
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| On the House side, the subcommittee approved an amended version of HR 6400 and voted 10-1 to send the measure to the full Judiciary Committee. | |||
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April 22. Senate debate on the bill began. |
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April 28. President Johnson sent the first contingent of Marines
to the Dominican Republic to protect Americans during a civil war. To
avert a rebel victory over a U.S.-backed government, the president will
send 20,000 troops. |
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| May 1965 | |||
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May 9. The government announced the total U.S. fighting forces
in Vietnam was 42,400 men. Deployment of another 21,000 U.S. soldiers
will be announced on June 26. |
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May 12. The House Judiciary Committee approved HR 6400, with additional
amendments, by voice vote, and it went to the Rules Committee where it
stalled for three weeks. |
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May 21. A petition for cloture motion was filed in the Senate.
It was signed by 29 Democrats and 9 Republicans-16 signatures were needed. |
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May 25. The Senate adopted a debate-limiting cloture motion by
a 70-30 roll-call vote, setting the stage for passage the following day.
Approval of the cloture motion marked only the second time in history
-- but the second time in two years -- that the Senate had voted to close
off debate of a civil rights issue. |
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| June 1965 | |||
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| July 1965 | |||
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July 6. House debate began. As floor manager for HR 6400, Emanuel
Celler opened debate and said the measure would eliminate the "legal
dodges and subterfuges" possible under existing legislation. He called
the bill "impervious to all legal trickery and evasion." Rules
Committee Chair Smith, a leading opponent of civil rights legislation,
said the bill was an "unconstitutional" vendetta against the
former Confederate states, that it was "dripping in venom,"
and that its effect was to make of the Attorney General a "czar"
with "almost unlimited power to investigate, to prosecute and to
try and convict sovereign states…." |
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July 9. In a roll call vote on passage, the House approved HR 6400
by a vote of 333-85, after beating back one attempt to substitute a bill
which dropped the poll-tax ban. Voting for passage were 112 Republicans
and 221 Democrats. Three southern Republicans and 33 southern Democrats
voted in opposition. |
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| Since the House and Senate versions of the voting rights bill differed -- especially in the House retention of the poll-tax ban -- the measure was sent to a conference committee. | |||
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August 3. The House approved the conference report by a 328-74 vote. |
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August 4. The Senate approved the conference report by a 79-18 roll
call vote. |
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August 6. President Johnson signed the Voting Rights Act of 1965 (S
1564-PL 89-110) The law departed from the pattern of civil rights bills
of recent years in that it provided for direct federal action to enable
blacks to register and vote, rather than the often-protracted individual
legal suits required by previous legislation. The final bill, considerably
broader than the original, also provided additional machinery for dealing
with discriminatory poll taxes, authorized suspension of tests and appointment
of examiners by federal courts in voting rights suits initiated by the
Attorney General, and waived English language requirements for persons
who had completed the sixth grade in a school under the American flag
where the language instruction was other than English. The legislation
brought the federal registration machinery to bear on six southern states
(Al, GA, LA, MS, SC, VA), Alaska, 28 counties in North Carolina, three
counties in Arizona, and one county in Idaho. |
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