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A dream day had turned into a nightmare. In two separate hotel rooms in Dallas, the President of the United States, John Fitzgerald Kennedy, and the Governor of Texas, John Bowden Connally fight for their lives following a shooting while the President, Governor, Vice President Johnson, Senator Yarborough and their families ride through Dallas.

In the late hours of the evening, word leaks out that Governor Connally, despite the best efforts of his doctors, had died from bullet wounds to the arms, chest, and legs. A distraught Vice President Johnson openly weeps at the loss of one of his closest and oldest friends. No word is sent about the President, other than that he is in critical condition, and hovering between life and death.

All across the country, business grinds to a halt as people await news on their fallen leader. In the late afternoon of the next day, it is reported that the President, although alive, was in weak condition, and would return to the White House to rest.

On November 26, the President is seen returning to the White House, appearing worn and haggard. In a statement to the press, the President jokes about the assassination attempt, attributing his wounds to his forgetting to duck. He announces that he will spend the next several weeks recovering, and will most likely return for his State of the Union address.

On January 8, 1964, President Kennedy, for the first time since the assassination attempt, appears before Congress. He starts off by paying tribute to the late Governor Connally, calling him “A truly great American.” He asks the Congress to pass his Civil Rights Act, which had been bottled up in the Rules Committee by Chairman Howard Smith (D-VA), since before the assassination attempt. “It is an unholy calumny that some Americans, because of the accident of birth, are not able to seek the fullest opportunities that the good Lord has offered to them.”

The day following the speech, the President gathers a meeting of top Congressional leaders in the House and Senate, as well as Vice President Johnson, to discuss how to get the Act out of Smith’s committee. At the suggestion of Congressman Emmanuel Celler (D-NY), the House would be presented with a petition to discharge the bill from the Committee. Only if a majority of members signed the discharge petition would the bill move directly to the House floor without consideration by Smith's committee. Despite reservations about the effectiveness of the petition, Kennedy tells Celler to introduce it.

For several weeks, the petition languishes in Congress, with some members refusing to go against typical procedure and sign the petition. However, after an intense lobbying campaign by Vice President Johnson, as well as massive letter writing campaign by constituents, Congressman begin signing on. In order to avoid the embarrassment of the petition, Smith agrees to discharge the Act on February 19. On March 1, by a vote of 290-130, the Act passes, and is sent to the Senate.

Following the Senate vote, Kennedy meets with Majority Leader Mike Mansfield (D-MT), to try and find a way to avoid the Act being bottled up in the Judiciary Committee. After several days, Senator Hubert H. Humphrey (D-MN), comes up with a novel solution. Instead of initially waiving a second reading of the bill, which would have led sent it immediately to Judiciary, Mansfield would give the Act a second reading, which he did on March 27.

Mansfield proposed that, in the absence of precedent for instances when a second reading did not immediately follow the first, that the bill bypass the Judiciary Committee and immediately be sent to the Senate floor for debate. Despite several Southerners wanting to filibuster the motion, Senator Richard Russell (D-GA), decides to let the Act come to the floor, which it does on April 8.

As long expected, the South filibusters, with Senator Russell declaring, “We will resist to the bitter end any measure or any movement which would have a tendency to bring about social equality and intermingling and amalgamation of the races in our states.” The longest speech of the filibuster is given by Senator A. Willis Robertson (D-VA), who speaks for 19 hours and 28 minutes.

On the June 25, Senators Everett Dirksen (R-IL), Thomas Kuchel (R-CA), Humphrey, and Mansfield introduce a substitute bill, hoping to attract enough Republican votes to end the filibuster. The strategy works, and on July 8, after a 13 hour speech by Senator John McClellan (D-AR), the Senate agrees to grant cloture, by a vote of 70-30, the first time cloture had ever been imposed on a civil rights bill. Three days later, by a vote of 72-28, the Senate passes the Civil Rights Act of 1964; it is passed by the House on July 9, and the next day, in a grand ceremony, President Kennedy signs the legislation. During the ceremony, though, Vice President Johnson remarks to an aide that, “We have lost the South for a generation.”

With the legislation finally passed, President Kennedy begins, in earnest, his campaign for reelection.
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