"Senator Byrd's final year in Congress would be 1965. His final battle was against the Voting Rights Bill of 1965. The Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr., had dramatized the issue by leading a march from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama, to protest exclusion of blacks from voting. President Johnson used the momentum to seek immediate passage of a bill that would require Federal intervention in States that used poll taxes, literacy tests, and other means to exclude black voters. Byrd considered the bill "vicious" and "iniquitous in effect and contemptible in design." In August, over his protests, the bill was enacted."
Quote Details
Added by wikiquote-import-bot
Unverified quote
0 likes
Democratic Party (United States) politiciansMembers of the United States SenatePublishers from the United StatesPeople from West VirginiaGovernors of Virginia
Original Language: English
Available Languages (1)
Revision History
No revisions have been submitted for this quote.
Categories
Harry F. Byrd
Harry Flood Byrd Sr. (June 10, 1887 – October 20, 1966) was an American newspaper publisher, politician, and leader of the Democratic Party in Virginia for four decades as head of a political faction that became known as the Byrd Organization. Byrd served as Virginia's governor from 1926 until 1930, then represented it as a United States Senator from 1933 until 1965. He came to lead the "[[w:conservative coalition|conserv
23 quotes on TrueQuotesView all quotes by Harry F. Byrd →
Related Quotes
"I favor a strong military but, if wartime spending is to be made a part of our budget in peacetime, and continued for…"
"If we can organize the Southern states for massive resistance to this order... the rest of the country will realize t…"
"At the dedication of the Shenandoah National Park [July 3, 1936], President Roosevelt, [Secretary of the Interior] Ha…"
"There are gentle men in whom gentility finally destroys whatever of iron there was in their souls. There are iron men…"
"Byrd evinced no particular proclivity to endorse a state antilynching law in the wake of Raymond Bird’s death. But wh…"
"Finally, on January 16, 1928, Byrd asked the Virginia General Assembly to declare lynching “a specific State offense”…"
"Incontestably what runs Virginia is the Byrd machine, the most urbane and genteel dictatorship in America. A real mac…"
"Senator Harry F. Byrd incarnates the cavalier-First-Family-of-Virginia tradition, except in one important particular.…"
"Byrd interested himself in politics early, and he became a state senator and then in 1926 governor of Virginia. He is…"
"I construe my election as a mandate to me as a businessman to institute the best methods of efficiency and economy in…"