Everett Dirksen

The Republican minority leader from Illinois delivered the votes that broke the months-long Southern filibuster against the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the first successful cloture vote on civil rights. Dirksen negotiated amendments in his office that let conservative Republicans support the bill, then declared on the floor that it was 'an idea whose time has come'. He did the same for the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Without his bargaining the bills would have lacked the two-thirds then needed for cloture.