Seventy-Five Pens and One Promise

On July 2, 1964, President Lyndon B. Johnson sat at a desk in the East Room of the White House, surrounded by senators, congressmen, and civil rights leaders who had labored for years to reach this moment. Before him lay the Civil Rights Act, a bill that had survived a 75-day filibuster in the Senate — the longest in American history — before a bipartisan cloture vote finally broke the obstruction on June 10.…