The Walls of Jericho: Lyndon Johnson, Hubert Humphrey, Richard Russell, and the Struggle for Civil Rights

Robert Mann writes the definitive book on the inner workings of Washington. The story of how the civil rights legislation passed in the mid 60's got its start at the 1948 Democratic convention is compelling. It is difficult to put down once you've started. The characters are larger than life, Humphrey, the passionate and visionary liberal, Johnson the pragmatic magician of the senate and later president, Richard Russell, the dean of the southern conservatives, Strom Thurmond, Richard Nixon, Everett Dirksen all provide color for the book and show the deal making, cojoling and outright intimidation that was used to achieve these milestones in legislative history. Mr. Mann shows the human side of all the players while providing an excellent overview of how legislation is borne, cultivated and finally passed. If you want to understand how the system works, read this book.

The Walls of Jericho offers a riveting, close-up and personal review of the political struggles of the Civil Rights movement, seen through the eyes of three is its major protagonists. Author Robert Mann carries us to know and understand southerner, racist Richard Russell, southerner human rights supporter Lyndon Johnson, and northerner firebrand liberal Hubert Humphrey. We agree with them, or disagree with them, Mann allows us to understand where they are coming from. In the end, they are good men trying to do good things, as they see them to be good. I was emotionally struck in reading about the personal, political, and social interplay.

This is a clear discussion of the process whereby civil rights legislation passed the Senate in the late 1950's and the 1960's, despite the filibusters threatened and actual of the Southern Democratic senators. It could easily have been a book about political re-alignment as well, but it would probably need to be twice as long. Many of the trends that dictated the course of American politics in the 1960's are seen in microcosm in this book - Would the South bolt the Democratic Party? Would the Democrats capture the African-American vote from the party of Lincoln? Could a Southern Democrat win the Whitehouse? Would the Dixiecrats throw the presidency to the GOP? It is an extremely clear narrative, that occasionally looks at the bigger picture of American politics, and records the force of personality in parliamentary politics. It clearly records the seismic changes that the wily and calculating LBJ, as an otherwise unelectable Southern Democrat, wrought to the Democratic Party after President Kennedy's death, in the search for a personal victory in the 1964 presidential election.

Having grown up in Minneapolis, Minnesota, where Hubert Humphrey is remembered and revered, and then living in Atlanta, Georgia for 14 years, the land of Martin Luther King and Richard Russell (and the region of LBJ), I was very intrigued by the subject of this book. I also found it refreshingly evenhanded, yet an intimate and personal view into one of the most important periods of American history, written about a subject that not only is in the forefront of out collective attention, but has been so since before our nation was founded. Not only that, it was a good read, with as much excitement and plot twists as the latest from Grisham. If you are at all interested in Civil Rights, or you just like reading about politics, this is a very good place to start.

Can America's favorite topic of dissent--race--in an historical context be explained rationally and with fairness from all perspectives? Anyone reading this book, which looks at the finely nuanced legislative maneuvers of those who both proposed as well as opposed the major civil rights initiatives of the 1960s in Congress, would have to say yes. Robert Mann, who is also the author of a fine and revealing biography of Louisiana Senator Russell Long, pulls off what seems like the impossible as he serves up deeply sympathetic profiles of Senator Richard Russell, who maintained a last-ditch effort against civil rights legislation, the always-bouyant Hubert Humprey, who was civil right's greatest friend in Washington, and Lyndon Johnson, who, in an act of unheralded nobility, staked his entire presidency upon the passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Act and the even-more politically vital 1965 Voting Rights Act. Most of us know the civil rights struggle from the perspective of the brave activists, inspired by Martin Luther King, who fought for their vision on the streets. Now meet the mysterious and mighty men of Washington who transformed that vision into reality.