Clay Risen

Concocted from a recipe of political players and events so surreal it would give Salvador Dali pause, The Civil Rights Act of 1964 is most assuredly the single piece of legislation with the greatest impact on the United States in my lifetime. Clay Risen’s The Bill of the Century: The Epic Battle for the Civil Rights Act does a wonderful job of bringing the tension between President Kennedy’s assassination in November 1963 and the elections that would follow a year later.

The frequency show more with which the bill flatlined and was close to death during the process was amazing. The fifty years elapsed since the bill's passage has smoothed the story’s rough edges and minimized the significance of all involved, friend or foe. It’s much easier to allow the stereotypes to drive the story, a South doing all it can to remain segregated, a black community that is finally beginning to understand their power and how to use it, and the non-southern white community that falls somewhere between benign apathy and progressive support of the African-American cause. Risen is not satisfied with the usual roles of the players, and, on the whole, does a good job of recognizing contradictions, and eccentricities demonstrated by all involved.

Dr. King, though clearly the most notable African-American of his day, not to mention the most influential Negro voice to ever be heard over the din of American history, was in no way the lone voice. One of the moments that stood out was when Dr. King, Malcolm X, and a host of other black leaders were all in the gallery witnessing the proceedings at the same time. Many in Congress, who would go on to different roles later in their career, can be seen prior to their transformation. Robert Byrd of West Virginia, the last Klan Grand Wizard to serve in either chamber of Congress, fought the bill as though he were Strom Thurmond’s ally. Alabama’s George Wallace found victory not among the racist segregationist he lived among and whose schoolhouse doors he tried to block, but in Wisconsin!

The only bone of contention I have with Mr. Risen’s book is that I felt he did not give enough weight to how important it was to President Johnson that the bill be pushed through by a Southerner. Risen all but ignores the significance this held for Johnson, choosing instead to highlight the hard feelings shared by Johnson, as well as the Kennedy family. President Johnson coldly, almost cruelly, giving one of the pens used to sign the act to Bobby Kennedy as an afterthought.

Clearly the shootings that have dominated the news in recent months remind us that a tremendous amount of work separates us from true justice. Prejudice, anger, and dogma are so combustible and can so quickly consume progress and hope. Mr. Risen’s book reminds us how important it is that we not allow that to occur. show less

A biography of Theodore Roosevelt focusing on the Spanish American War and his association with the famous volunteer cavalry regiment, The Rough Riders.

A blistering condemnation of the War Department for their incompetent efforts at support for the army in Cuba, the American ground forces were saved, it seems, by two main developments. One was a Spanish force more concerned with Cuban rebels than Americans and the other was the amazing effectiveness and overwhelming superiority of the show more American Navy that annihilated the over-classed Spanish Navy in Santiago Harbor eventually causing Spain to agree to surrender the last remnants of it’s once expansive empire.

A realistic depiction of the man and his symbolic place in America during this pivotal time. show less

Detailed legislative history of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, both before and after Kennedy’s death. It was another reminder that powerful racist white Southerners preferred to avoid benefiting their states as a whole if that meant African-American citizens would benefit—see also the current refusal to expand Medicaid in most of those states. Risen argues that Johnson wasn’t as important as some accounts suggest he was; he held back out of fear of being blamed if the bill failed, as it show more still might have at many points, and his advice about how to get the bill through Congress was either already known or ignored. However, Risen does consider the moral force of the President’s endorsement, at a time when reverence for the presidency was at its height, to have been important. I was also unaware that the Southerner who introduced “sex” into the law’s bans on discrimination, though he was trying to mock and stymie the bill, also had a long history of supporting women’s rights, and arguably was serious about barring sex discrimination if the law was going to be forced on the South anyway. show less