Last week the civil rights filibuster became the longest in Senate history,* and Minnesota Democrat Hubert Humphrey, the bill's floor manager, was mad. "The whole procedure is disgusting," he cried. "All that is being accomplished here is a display of adult delinquency. Any intransigent minority can run the Senate if a majority stands around with jelly for a spine."
Humphrey put the blame not on bill-stalling Southerners, whose "obstructionist tactics were to be expected," but on Senators who profess to support civil rights but are opposed to shutting off the Southerners by cloture. Humphrey demanded that "the Senate start to act like...
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