Senator Ted Kennedy

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isbn号码:9780393055689

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_]june ]8, 1964. Midafternoon. The filibuster droned on, but

its end was near. The great debate had been going on for

eighty-two days. The issue was an omnibus civil-rights bill,

the most sweeping ever proposed. Unlike most civil-rights

bills, this one was going to pass the Senate--and without

being watered down to meaninglessness. President Lyndon

Johnson had pledged it as a tribute to his predecessor, the

slain John Kennedy. Senator Edward Kennedy sat in the

presiding officer s chair in the Senate as Senator Richard

Russell of Georgia, leader of the Southerners opposing the

bill, made his last speech. Russell s time was almost up. The

Senate had voted cloture--limiting debate to one hour per

senator--for the first time ever in a civil-rights fight. Russell

and others believed that the Senate was a unique forum of

the sovereign states, and that no limits of any kind must ever

be applied to a senator s right to speak. So June 1964 was a

turning point in the history of the institution that had been

called, not only in jest, the South s revenge for Appomattox.

Russell was characteristically a courteous gentleman, even

in defeat. But not today. His last speech was full of invective

and bitterness.