The Walls of Jericho

Lyndon Johnson, Hubert Humphrey,
Richard Russell, and the Struggle
for Civil Rights

By Robert Mann
Harcourt Brace, $32

ISBN 0151000654

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Review by Wyatt Wells

Racial segregation made its last stand in the United States Senate. Using filibusters, Southern senators were able to defy popular pressure and block meaningful civil rights legislation during the 1950s. In 1964 and 1965, however, Congress finally passed sweeping measures dismantling the system of segregation that made Southern blacks second-class citizens. Robert Mann's book The Walls of Jericho tells the story of the extended legislative struggle over civil rights.

Mann concentrates on the roles of three senators: Richard Russell of Georgia, Hubert Humphrey of Minnesota, and Lyndon Johnson of Texas. Russell led the Southern forces. A man of great talent, Russell enjoyed enormous respect among his colleagues but emerges as a tragic figure who spent the best years of his public life in a losing struggle for a bad cause.

Hubert Humphrey was an appealing combination of flexibility and principle who mastered the fine art of fitting in without selling out. In contrast, Lyndon Johnson was a strange combination of brutish power-lust and genuine concern for the downtrodden. He and Humphrey engineered the passage of the 1964 and 1965 civil rights bills.

Mann does a fine job explaining and imparting drama to important but arcane subjects like cloture votes and quorum calls. The author has a wonderful feel for the temperament and history of the Senate, which almost becomes his fourth character.

Wyatt Wells is an editor at the Andrew Jackson Papers at the University of Tennessee in Knoxville.

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