In the novel that I, Maya Logan read, author Todd S. Purdum tells the story of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 as he recreates the legislation and the men that made it possible. Todd S. Purdum graduated from Princeton University and is a senior writer at Politico and a contributing author at Vanity Fair. He also worked with the New York Times for twenty-three years, where he covered politics and also served as a diplomatic correspondent and Los Angeles bureau chief (“Todd S. Purdum”, 2015). An Idea Whose Time Has Come and A Time of Our Choosing: America’s War in Iraq are his only two novels. In my opinion, this novel shares some interesting insight about the Civil Rights Act and how many people were actually involved to pass this piece of legislation.…show more content… He mainly focuses on Representative Bill McCulloch, who was the ranking Republican on the House Judiciary Committee. He was an important member of Congress and met a few times with the attorney general to discuss the bill. Purdum reports that McCulloch was “a long time avid supporter of civil rights, even though he preferred the term “equal rights” (Purdum, 2014, pg.118). McCulloch supported the 1957 and 1960 civil rights bills, and was very dismayed when they were bargained away in the Senate (Purdum, 2014, pg. 119). Purdum reports that McCulloch knew that if President Kennedy’s bill suffered the same fate, House Representatives would oppose it when it came back to the House for approval, and no civil rights bill could pass either house without substantial Republican support. Purdum states that Martin Luther King reached out to President Kennedy for crucial support after the bombing of the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama. Purdum also states that Kennedy responded saying “he was equally powerless to curtail black demonstrations”. On October 1, Emanuel Celler began to go through the amended civil rights bill, accepting amendments from liberal Democrats and Republican alternatives (Purdum, 2014,…show more content… He describes the acceptance of the new law as “swift and widespread” (Purdum, 2014, pg. 329). Purdum explains the Civil Rights Act did not finish the job of assuring equality for all Americans before the law. He provides evidence including the bloody protests in Selma, Alabama demonstrating the lack of access to the ballot by African Americans. Lyndon Johnson responded to the Voting Rights Act of 1965, which barred states from imposing any “voting qualification or prerequisite to voting” and ended poll taxes and literacy tests in the US (Purdum, 2014, pg. 330). Purdum further explains that the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965 were “the most important laws of the twentieth century” (Purdum, 2014, pg. 331). He also states that he felt “the United States involvement in the Vietnam War would destroy Lyndon Johnson’s presidency” (Purdum, 2014, pg. 333).
One place that Todd Purdum fell short was his lack of information about Lyndon Johnson’s involvement with the African American community in the novel. African Americans, such as Martin Luther King, played a crucial role in President Johnson’s decision to go forth with the bill. The book is full of reasons why the bill was successful, but is very biased when it discusses the influential people that were involved. Purdum mostly discusses the legislatures and congressmen that were influential in the success of the Civil Rights Act of
