“…Mansfield wasn't about to go round-the-clock, and Mansfield told him that he was going to do it his way…. And Johnson deferred to that.”
Frank Valeo recalls Mike Mansfield’s determination not to hold late night Senate sessions during the course of the 1964 filibuster, despite pressure from President Johnson to do so.
VALEO: So the debate droned on from day to day. Russell tried his usual tactics, which was to suggest the absence of a quorum, make it live, count the heads; and fifty-one would show up. Mansfield lengthened the session till about six o'clock in the day, but he would go no later than that. Meanwhile, word would reach us that Johnson was raving: "Why doesn't Mansfield go round-the-clock? Why doesn't he go round-the-clock? That's the only way we ever got civil rights legislation." Well, Mansfield wasn't about to go round-the-clock, and Mansfield told him that he was going to do it his way—or sent word back that it would have to be done this way or it wouldn't be done at all. And Johnson deferred to that.
I don't know whether Johnson understood that this was the only way you could really get a major Civil Rights bill at this point or not. He had in mind the experience by which he'd gotten the initial civil rights bill after many years through, which had something to do with voting rights. But what we were talking about here was a bill which in the case of the expansion of rights was tremendously different. Maybe ten times as many rights were involved in this as were involved in the original voting rights bill. That is not to make light of the voting rights act; that was an important bill and it began to open the gates for what was coming later. But this was a geometric expansion of that bill. It involved public facilities, it involved giving teeth to the voting rights, it involved just so many things that had to be done, and for which the riots were taking place, or were the sources of the riots.
