Everett Dirksen

Everett McKinley Dirksen (January 4, 1896 – September 7, 1969) was a Republican U.S. Congressman and Senator from Illinois. He helped pass the Civil Rights Act of 1964, raising civil rights legislation above the state level, where it had remained blocked for decades. He later offered his support for the Open Housing Act of 1968, another landmark piece of Civil Rights legislation. Pragmatic and broadly non-partisan, he shifted from being a major Republican critic of Truman and confidant of Eisenhower to become an ardent Republican supporter of LBJ. He was one of the Senate's strongest supporters of Johnson's expansion of the Vietnam War.

Further reading

• Dirksen, Everett McKinley. The Education of a Senator. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1998.
• MacNeil, Neil. Dirksen: Portrait of a Public Man. New York: World Publishing Company, 1970.
• Dirksen, Louella Carver, with Norma Lee Browning. The Honorable Mr. Marigold: My Life With Everett Dirksen. Garden City, NY: Doubleday and Company, 1972.