Flashback: The longest talking filibuster in Senate history, 24 hours and 18 minutes, was Strom Thurmond’s filibuster against the Civil Rights Act of 1957
Fix Our Senate: McConnell’s lie “is particularly brazen and will only embolden the growing number of Americans committed to eliminating this ‘Jim Crow relic.’”
Washington, DC — Today during a press conference, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell responded to a question from Spectrum Congressional Reporter Eva McKend about the filibuster and its history by saying “Actually, historians do not agree. [The filibuster] has no racial history at all. None. So there’s no dispute among historians about that.” This is categorically false and yet another example of how Sen. McConnell is growing increasingly nervous that his favorite tool of partisan obstruction will soon be taken away from him.
Fix Our Senate Spokesperson Eli Zupnick gave the following statement in response:
"Senator McConnell sees the growing momentum to eliminate the filibuster and is now resorting to flat-out lies in his desperate attempts to maintain his favorite weapon of partisan obstruction. We knew that Senator McConnell would do everything he could to lie and spread misinformation about the filibuster, but saying that a tool repeatedly and famously used to block civil and voting rights bills has ‘no racial history’ is particularly brazen and will only embolden the growing number of Americans committed to eliminating this ‘Jim Crow relic.’”
Additional Background
There is a long and shameful history of segregationists and racists using the filibuster to block necessary progress on key civil rights issues. From 200 anti-lynching bills to broad civil rights packages, segregationists constantly abused the rules in order to prevent much needed progress. The longest talking filibuster in Senate history, 24 hours and 18 minutes, was Strom Thurmond’s filibuster against the Civil Rights Act of 1957.
For the 87 years between the end of Reconstruction and the passage of the 1957 Civil Rights Act, the filibuster prevented civil rights bills from passing – including several civil rights bills that had majority support in the House, majority support in the Senate and support from presidents of both parties. Until 1964, civil rights bills were the only category of bills routinely stopped by the filibuster. As Ezra Klein notes, “Filibusters were rare in the midcentury Senate, but when they happened, it was primarily for one purpose: the preservation of racial segregation, hierarchy, and violence in the South.”
Even the Civil Rights Act of 1964, one of the most important pieces of civil rights legislation in American history, was blocked by a filibuster for more than two months before enough Republicans crossed the aisle to break the minority party’s blockage. This was the first time that cloture had ever been successfully invoked to bring up a vote on civil rights legislation. But the attempts at filibustering civil rights legislation did not end there. The Fair Housing Act of 1968 was also delayed by the filibuster, as was the Voting Rights Act of 1965 and its extension in 1970.
Fix Our Senate is a campaign and coalition fighting for the broken Senate to be fixed so that the newly-elected government can get to work cleaning up President Trump’s messes and tackling the major challenges facing families, communities, and the country. Our highest priority is the elimination of the legislative filibuster, an outdated Senate rule that has been weaponized and abused by Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell to block overwhelmingly popular legislation supported by a majority of elected senators.
Fix Our Senate coordinates work with allied organizations and advocates, serves as a resource for research and messaging guidance, communicates to key audiences directly and through the media, and uses any and all tools at our disposal to educate and persuade senators, candidates, and the public about the need for reform.