Transcripts For CSPAN3 Civil Rights Act Of 1964 20140630

Every sunday you can learn about president s and first ladies their policies and their legacies here on the presidency. Visit cspan. Org history. You are watching American History tv all weekend every weekend on cspan3. 50 years ago, july 2, 1964, president lyndon b. Johnson signed the 1964 Civil Rights Act. Next Senate Historian Donald Richie talks with roger mud and former new york harold tribune harold glass. They recall the debate and passage of the most significant civil rights legislation since construction. This event, posted by the Senate Historical office, is about an our. Good afternoon. It is 12 00. We begin with two very distinguished guests, veteran reporters who covered the Civil Rights Act of 1964. By way of introduction, we are in one of the most historic rooms at the capitol complex. Now known as the kennedy caucus room, it was the room where the earings were held, the mccarthy hearings were held, the watergate hearings were held. This is the room where john f. Kennedy announced his candidacy for president. The room where a lot of nominees have been grilled by committees. There have been a lot of inquisitions here. Today, we are not doing an inquisition. We are doing a conversation. We are very pleased to have andy glass and roger mudd as our guests today. Andy glass was born in warsaw, poland, and arrived in the United States during world war ii. He became a citizen in 1948. He is a graduate of the Bronx High School of science and yale university. N 1960, after he completed his military service, he became a reporter for the New York Herald tribune. In 1962, he was assigned to the washington bureau. In 1963, he became the chief washington bureau. In 1963, he became the chief Congressional Correspondent. Having grown up in new york city and read the New York Herald tribune, i always lamented when the Herald Tribune bolted as a newspaper, went out of business in 1966. But his career continued. He worked for newsweek and reported for the Washington Post. He then came to capitol hill, where he worked for senator hugh scott. The Senate Republican leader. E was a press secretary for senator jacob javitz. And then he went back to journalism. He went to the national journal. More recently, we are familiar with him because he was the managing editor of the hill newspaper and in 2006, he joined politico. Hat is quite a resume. Over time. Our other guest today is roger mudd who was born right here in ashington d. C. He graduated from washingtons lee university, and he took a masters degree at the university of carolina in history. He was studying the relationship of the press with f. D. R. s new deal. At that point, he thought he should get a little experience and see what the press was like. He took a summer job with Richmond News leader. It happened that they owned a Radio Station called wrnj, across the street. That station needed a news director. Instead of going on for a phd in history, he went on to become a broadcast news journalist. He came to washington dc in the 1960s for wtop. Wtop was both radio and television. He was in the same building as he cbs evening news. He moved to the National News in 1961. Some of you may be old enough to remember,in 1961, the National News was only 15 minutes. It was not until 1963 that it went to the standard half hour of programming. In the subsequent years, he became a regular. On cbs. He was the cbs senate reporter. He was covering political campaigns. He was anchoring whenever Walter Cronkite was away. He was a regular feature on the cbs evening news. In 1980, cbs had the equivalent of the war of the roses and he went to nbc and then to pbs. And many of you are much more family with him in recent years as a host on the history channel, on many of their programs. He is also the author of a wonderful memoir that i recommend. It is called a place to be. It is about washington, cbs, and the glory days of television ews. Covering the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Andy and roger, i want to welcome you both and thank you for being here today. You were both members of something called the culture club. I wonder if you could tell me about what the culture club was and how you found yourselves members of it back in 1964 . Thank you for that kind introduction. We invented the culture club. It did not exist until it rose, phoenixlike, from the ashes. The problem was that there was a filibuster. And nothing was happening except a lot of speeches. That we wanted to make news. That did not mean we created news or made it up, but we were like bees going to flowers. Flowers were russell, senator ussell, senator dirks, senator humphrey, mansfield, and others. We went around and ask questions or make comments and said, hey, the majority leader said x. What do you think . At the end of the day, roger had a good story for the news and i had nothing to write for the and i had something to write or the Herald Tribune. There were five of us. Roger and myself, peter, unfortunately, and Ned Kenworthy of the new york times. Peter was the Senate Correspondent for the baltimore sun. Peter was a correspondent for the baltimore sun. Ned kenworthy of the new york times. And john hayward, he created and ran, as it were, the culture club. Everybody is dead now except andy and me. And we are headed there. We traveled in a pack. Journalism does not prohibit you, to a certain extent, sharing stuff. So we tried to keep independent of each other, but at a press conference, the sender would say, oh god, here they come, the ulture club. It is interesting that not every news outlet, not every newspaper, had a fulltime reporter assigned to cover the filibuster in the civil rights ill. We did not have anybody from the Washington Post with us regularly. Robert albright was assigned to the story, but we never saw him. The big newspapers, the chicago tribune, the st. Louis postdispatch, it was not that there were noshows, it was that they did not think the story deserved its own coverage, which the culture club was doing. But it was my first introduction to covering something that important day in and day out. Nd i learned as much about the senate and the vanity of the senate and the dependence on the staff members. Some senators were stupid and some were bright. In between, there were a lot of senators. [laughter] but it was an education for e. You are looking for conspiracy theories, which i love. A 28yearold reporter who was getting won by line every day in the New York Herald tribune. Think about what the Herald Tribune was. It was competing with the times, but it was basically a liberal epublican newspaper. The owner was this guy named john hays whitney, a friend of resident eisenhower and former ambassador to king james in london. Very much interest in seeing this legislation succeed. He was married to i think her name was paley. Her sister was married to the head of cbs bill daley. Bill daley. Bill paley. And roger stood out among the thee networks and was getting a lot of air time. I wonder now, 50 years later, whether paleys sister had something to do with having all of this happen. [laughter] what was i going to add . The problem is you have a thought and when your time comes, you have forgotten what you are going to say. It will come. I stood out not because of anything i had done especially, because i was the only one. I had no competition. Of the three networks, abc was kind of the weak sister there. And nbc over cbs, we always called nbc the National Biscuit company. [laughter] they sat on their elbows and smote their pipes and did wonderful, stylish stories the second day. They were bad losers on the first day. And if you were in the news business, you wanted to anyway, i had been up a week or two, row down on the elevator with bob mccormick, the nbc correspondent on the hill. I overheard him sniffing about cbs coverage, saying, our people are not interested in hat. So i had no competition. What were the challenges for Tv Correspondents to cover the senate . In the 1960s. In particular, the civil rights, but also just in general . How easy or how hard was it for ight Tv Correspondent . The main stuff was behind closed doors, as you could imagine. The cameras were not welcome, except in certain places. The cameras did not get into the house until 1979. And not into the senate until 986, i think it was. I thought when cameras finally got into the chambers, the world of reporting would really hange. For the first time, the public would be able to sit in and watch what happens on the floor. As you know, not a lot happens on the floor. [laughter] so, it was difficult just to know where to go. You could not go a lot of places. You could not go into the chamber. You had to wait before the sergeant of arms would stake out a place, and then you had to grab them as they came in. So it was hard work. A lot of times, most times you came up empty handed, because they didnt want to give away what was going on behind closed doors until they could nail down the changes and the eam amendments to title 9, to title 6, to title 2. If i could add to that, my clear regulation recollection was that roger was an expert at an establishment spot. He would go outside the capital, but stand in a place where the viewer would know exactly where he was in front of the senate, on those capitol steps. E would stand in a place where the day the crunch came, which was in late june of 1964, senator russell made a point that, when roger was going to cover the vote, which was the crucial vote that ended the 84day filibuster, he could not do it on the capitol grounds. My recollection was that they kicked you off and you had to go across the street. M i right . You were kind of right. The first week, i broadcast from the steps. The southern senators got to build small, my boss, my bureau chief, and said, we cannot have hat. So i moved across the street from where the park is, where the little retaining wall is. That is where i set up. I remember, about the second week, i came down the steps to do the 9 00 feed for the Morning Television show and there was a crowd of tourists waiting for e. And i never i never i never been in a crowd like that. I did not know what they were going to do. They just stood there and did not make a sound, did not disturb anybody. After i had finished, they came up, can you sign my guidebook . So andy, it was before the vote that i was moved across the street. He day of the vote, we had a big the Art Department on of cbs had set up an easel, a chart of all the senators and their names. That is how we did the last outing. This was one of the longest debates that took place in the history of the senate. I went back and was reading some of your stories about it. In march of 1964, you started one of your stories, the talk begins. All it took to get a civil rights debate going was a twoweek discussion about whether or not to debate. That was just to get it to the floor. What were the complications of keeping that story on the front page . Good question. Actually, there were two filibusters. It was a mini filibuster that would decide whether or not to send the bill to the Judiciary Committee, which was then hidden by james 0. Eastland of mississippi. And it would have died there. Or to use some competition some complicated formula to get it to the floor, which would be the strategy that senator mansfield and senator humphrey ecided on. So that was a debatable manner matter and they debated that for a couple of weeks and they finally brought it to the floor. And then they have, i believe, for the historians in the room, it is still the longest single filibuster in senate history. 84 days. As we said earlier, it was a tretch to try to write about it. One day, i wrote, senator long always came back and talked bout part of the bill where i think they had to have female riests or something. And so i wrote for the tribune the next day, you could just about get away with this, senator long, who had dined well, but not necessarily wisely went off on that and then i wrote about it. I also had a great advantage over the new york times. It was still arcane, the motion on the floor, the previous otion. The Herald Tribune was very good about that kind of stuff. I would just write, a parliamentary hassle ensued. Nd that was the end of it. But the times, which was the paper of record, really had to explain how it all happened. There is a slogan that reporters love congress but their editors hate congress, because so much of the story is timetables, moving from the subcommittee to the full committee. You had your report not only once a day, but many times a day. How did that come about that you were on the steps every day and how did you ever find enough to say . I was assigned by the newlyarrived president of cbs ews, a volcanic man named fred friendly. He thought that the whole issue of civil rights deserved total dawntomidnight coverage. So he said, here is the lan. You going to do a report on the morning news, noon news, midafternoon news, cronkite news, good night news, and you are going to do a report on every other hourly Radio Broadcasting every day until we finish. I said, you are kidding. Sounds like a flagpole sitting stunt. He said, no, we are serious. So i say, ok. E came up to me to make it sound interesting when knighted 5 of the story was not interesting. When 95 of the story was not interesting. Like he said, a parliamentary assle. So i wandered around, getting to know people. Dding to know staff, senators. Some of the senators did not trust me because they thought i was working for a big, liberal network where they wanted to cut the south back to stature. It was not until they realized after a week that i was not ulling my punches, i was doing oth sides. The first date we broadcast, i had humphrey out. I made sure, before i ended, tomorrow night, were going to have richard russell. So it was very balanced. Finally, the southerners began to trust me and i began to get calls from their press secretary, do you want to come over and meet . I think we could keep the story going and doing profiles of the key actors, senator dirks and senator cagle. You mentioned majority leader mansfield. Of course, we would always go up to the white house and tried to get a feel for larry obrien. Even the president , who was accessible on the story. One day, i went to see james. O. Eastland, figuring my colleague required some overage. By the way, over 84 days, it was always with senator russell and mr. Glass. So i went to see the chairman of the Judiciary Committee to convince myself i was the Congressional Correspondent of the New York Herald tribune. I am sure you know, a big flag of mississippi, american lag. After about five minutes of a monologue, he had a cigar in his mouth and said, sonny, you stick around here for 20 years and maybe you will understand how this place works. That was the interview. Later, we became more friendly and he invited me for a weekend to his plantation in sunflower ounty. Had a great time into below. In tupelo. So things change. I do not think i have ever covered a senator as interesting as richard russell. Publicly, he was a very remote, dignified man. Privately, he was as generous a friend as you could have. It took him a year before he called the roger. And he never called me roger in public. It was always private. I would go down to georgia on occasion on political trips. I would go see him before i went to tell him he was going. He would give me names and phone numbers of people. When i got back, i would get a call, come see me. Ell me what you found out. He was always generous in that way. I never thought he told me before the filibuster began, in so many words, that there was not anything else he could do. He knew he was beaten, i think, before it started. And i asked him, is there nothing you can offer americas black population. He said, all i can offer is hope that we can get through this difficult period. That told me that he knew he was going to get defeated. I thought the main conflict was not between dirks and humphrey versus russell, but between humphrey and dirks and whether those two leaders could craft a bill that would pull along enough republicans to break the ilibuster. My take on it was a little different. I always thought the big 17, whose picture is over there, including john tower and robert byrd of west virginia, honorary southerners not always honorary. [laughter] and then there were also spies. The two spies were fulbrithe and smathers who were going to these southern meetings, southern caucus, whatever they call it, and leaking the stuff to humphrey. But my feeling, and i wrote at the time, was that it was a rope dope ropeadope strategy. There was a hope, if thats the right word, that the country was very much united that this ideas time has come, would turn because there would be a summer of violence by what were then called negroes, and the country would lose interest in the bill. That is why it was being stretched out, hoping that something would happen to change the chemistry. I thought that finally, the real problem my real problem was to stay sober whenever dirkson said come in the back room, i want to talk to you. Because you would get a buzz on. Dirksons problem was with the clique of the senator from New Hampshire and others. He was jealous of dirkson, who had a big ego. Getting those people to come along was a great hate. He guy who did it was hubert because hubert would go on meet the press and say come of this is ever dirksons bill. He has this sort of nasal, iowa accent. He was chairman of the Republican Policy Committee and was not a very good spokesman on television