THE WALLS OF JERICHO
                                       
Lyndon Johnson, Hubert Humphrey,
Richard Russell, and the Struggle
for Civil Rights

  BY ROBERT MANN
  HARCOURT BRACE, $32
  
      ISBN 0151000654
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.
   
   
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   Wyatt Wells is an editor at the Andrew Jackson Papers at the
   University of Tennessee in Knoxville.