How the ‘long and stormy’ fight for Fair Housing Act took MLK to Kansas City, K-State | Opinion

In an iconic 1963 photograph, President Lyndon Johnson and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. huddle in the Oval Office for a strategy session over their first civil rights bill. The meeting marks the start of Johnson and King’s consequential but complex partnership. Their collaborative efforts would result in landmark legislation with the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

By April of 1968, however, Johnson and King were keenly apprehensive about the prospects for their third bill. After banning discrimination in schools, public accommodations and the polling booth, the two men had pointed lawmaking efforts toward housing discrimination. The proposed “fair housing” legislation prohibited discrimination in the sale, rental or financing of housing based on race, religion, color or national origin.

After two years of battles with segregationists and states’ rights advocates, that bill’s journey had seemingly come to an unfulfilled end in Congress. As of April 4, 1968, it was stuck fast in a committee chaired by a segregationist who had no intention to allow a vote.

For the outset of the legislation’s fitful trip, a second photograph takes us back to March 1966 inside the White House. Johnson and King sit together listening as civil rights leaders describe housing discrimination’s impact, especially on the Black residents of America’s cities.

Martin Luther King Jr. speech in Manhattan

Kansas City was illustrative as it ranked as one of the nation’s most hyper-segregated cities. Landlords west of Troost Avenue, the City’s notorious racial dividing line, refused to rent to Black tenants. Income and status did not matter — landlords even turned away Kansas City Chiefs players based on race alone.

Homeownership in a good school district west of Troost was even harder to obtain as property deeds often included covenants prohibiting sales to Black homebuyers. Tightening segregation’s screws, Kansas City developer J.C. Nichols also required purchasers in his Country Club District neighborhood to join an association with bylaws that included a white-only clause. Nichols’ model became Kansas City’s worst export as it was adopted in cities across the country.

Facing entrenched residential segregation, Johnson, King and the other attendees of those meetings anticipated a long fight. They went right to work, introducing the Civil Rights Act of 1966 by August.

For the bill’s first House vote, U.S. Rep. Richard Bolling of Kansas City chaired one of the more remarkable debates in congressional history, lasting 12 days. Bolling earned praise for his tough but fair leadership as he persevered and got the bill passed.

In the Senate, however, the fair housing language appeared too watered down for some, too strong for others. It died there and dying with it, King lamented, was a “bit of democracy” and a “bit of justice.”

A second bill, H.R. 2516, struggled mightily for 15 months, slowed by Senate filibusters and House neglect. Yet just when the bill seemed dead in the water, it would get a boost, often from King or Johnson.

On Jan. 19, 1968, King traveled to Kansas City, where a fair housing ordinance had passed, and met with local civil rights leaders such as Chester Owens and the trailblazing journalist Helen T. Gray of The Kansas City Star. King then went to Kansas State University, where his convocation speech underscored that a “great problem facing our nation … is the constant growth of predominantly Negro central cities, ringed by white suburbs.”

“If the pattern continues,” King warned, “it will invite social disaster. The only way this problem can be solved is through strong fair housing bills.”

For his part, Johnson challenged Congress, demanding that leaders stop “fiddling and piddling” with fair housing. To end a filibuster, Johnson even offered to send Air Force One to pick up senators and bring them to D.C. to vote.

But it took a hard-hitting civil rights report to move the needle. Published on Feb. 29, 1968, the Kerner Commission’s Report on Civil Disorders painted a grim picture of race and inequality in America, concluding that the country was “moving toward two societies, one black, one white — separate and unequal” and that segregation must be addressed with a “comprehensive and enforceable federal open housing law.” A bestseller, the Kerner Report spurred the Senate to end its filibuster. After a 71-20 vote on March 11, 1968, the bill finally escaped the Senate.

The bill returned to the House where it was dealt another blow — a referral to the Rules Committee. Chaired by Mississippi Rep. William Colmer, a staunch segregationist, the committee deferred any consideration. The definitive article on H.R. 2516’s legislative history, by future civil rights warrior Jean Dubofsky, states that upon Colmer’s second continuance, “fears had increased that the Senate’s civil rights bill might die in the Rules Committee.”

After assassination, law finally signed

A third photograph, Johnson signing the Fair Housing Act into law on April 11, 1968, brings sudden closure. The president is surrounded by 20 men, including Sens. Walter Mondale and Edward Brooke, two of the bill’s sponsors, and future Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall.

Success at last! But April 11? How was it possible for a bill languishing in the Rules Committee on April 4 to suddenly escape that committee and its pro-segregation chairperson, and then get itself and its Senate amendments debated and passed by the House to reach the president’s desk within seven days?

The answer lies within the signing ceremony photograph and who is not pictured. King is not in it, nor would he ever be in another. He had been assassinated on April 4, and a shocked nation wanted something tangible for its grief and outrage. His death broke the housing bill free as House members — in homage to King’s work, in response to the civil unrest, in remorse and perhaps for justice — demanded action from Colmer and the Rules Committee.

Colmer resisted to the end, but one of his key allies switched his vote and the bill passed out of the committee on April 9, the day of King’s memorial service.

The House scheduled its debate on the Senate amendments for the next day. On April 10, with the House debate kept to one hour, the bill sprinted through a 250-172 vote and straight to a relieved president.

Upon signing the Fair Housing Act, Johnson described its trip as “long and stormy.” While the act has yet to fulfill its promises to the residents of Kansas City and other cities, the work and sacrifice by King and other housing rights heroes who endured that storm continue to inspire many to keep up the fight for fair and equal housing.

Gary Rhoades is a civil rights attorney specializing in fair housing law and an author. He, his wife Christina and their dogs live in Kansas City.