am of his slain predecessor and to end
the long rule of Jim Crow in many areas of the country. He let it be
known that he would accept no watered-down law.

I made my position [on the civil rights bill] unmistakably clear:
We were not prepared to compromise in any way. "So far as this
administration is concerned," I told a press conference, "its
position is firm." I wanted absolutely no room for bargaining....
I knew that the slightest wavering on my part would give hope to
the opposition's strategy of amending the bill to death.[23-20]

[Footnote 23-20: Lyndon B. Johnson, _The Vantage
Point_ (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston,
1971), p. 157.]

Certainly this pronouncement was no empty rhetoric, coming as it did
from a consummate master of the legislative process who enjoyed old
and close ties with congressional leaders.

Johnson was also philosophically committed to change. "Civil rights
was really something that was, by this time, burning pretty strongly
in Johnson," Harris L. Wofford later noted.[23-21] The new President
exhorted his countrymen: "To the extent that Negroes were imprisoned,
so was I ... to the extent that Negroes were free, really free, so was
I. And so was my country."[23-22] Skillfully employing the wave of
sympathy for equal rights that swept the country after John Kennedy's
death, President Johnson procured a powerful civil rights act, which
he signed on 2 July 1964.[23-23]

[Footnote 23-21: Interv, Bernhard with Wofford, 29 Nov
65. Special Assistant to Presidents Kennedy and
Johnson, Wofford was later appointed to a senior
position in the Peace Corps.]

[Footnote 23-22: Johnson, _Vantage Point_, p. 160.]

[Footnote 23-23: PL 88-352, 78 _U.S. Stat._ 241.]

The object of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was no less than the
overthrow of segregation in America. Its major provisions outlawed
discrimination in places of amusement and public accommodation, in
public education, labor unions, employment, and housing. It called for
federal intervention in voting rights cases and established a
Community Relations Service in the Department of Commerce to arbitrate
racial disputes. The act also strengthened the Civil Rights Commission
and broadened its powers. It authorized the United States Attorney
Ge