Special Projects Related to Dirksen
Abraham Lincoln and the Illinois Congressional District
As part of the Bicentennial Celebration of Abraham Lincoln, the Dirksen Congressional Center is pleased to present a version of the Lincoln legacy through the eyes of two members of Congress, Everett McKinley Dirksen and Robert H. Michel, who later represented the central Illinois congressional district that once sent Lincoln to the House of Representatives.
Find this project at: http://www.dirksencenterprojects.org/lincoln/index.htm.
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Civil Rights Documentation Project
The landmark civil rights legislation of the mid-1960s has attracted considerable scholarly attention, deservedly so. Much of the analysis has centered on the social and cultural conditions that gave birth to the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
As valuable as the emphasis on the civil rights movement has been, an equally vital chapter has been neglected—the story of the legislative process itself. The Civil Rights Documentation Project provides a fuller accounting of law-making based on published sources and the unique archival resources housed at The Dirksen Congressional Center, including the collection of then-Senate Minority Leader Everett McKinley Dirksen (R-IL), widely credited with securing the passage of the bills.
Intended to serve the needs of teachers and students, the Civil Rights Documentation Project demonstrates that Congress is capable of converting big ideas into powerful law, that citizen engagement is essential to that process, and that the public policies produced fifty years ago continue to influence our lives.
Find this project at: http://www.civilrightsactof1964.org.
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Everett Dirksen: A Favorite of Editorial Cartoonists
Editorial cartoonists loved Everett Dirksen (1896-1969)—his position of influence as Minority Leader in the Senate (1959-69), his way with words, and, of course, his distinctive appearance. Over the years, Senator Dirksen’s staff compiled a scrapbook containing more than 300 editorial cartoons. Topics covered include Vietnam, civil rights, Republican Party politics, the Nuclear Test Ban Treaty, reapportionment, Taft-Hartley 14(b), school prayer, Dirksen’s recording career, Senate procedures, congressional pay, presidential appointments, and Dirksen’s legacy. Naturally, cartoonists also used these topics to depict Dirksen’s relationship with President Lyndon Johnson, with his Democratic colleagues in the Senate, and with the Supreme Court. In addition, cartoonists sent Dirksen between 50 and 60 original sketches on equally diverse topics.
Among the scores of cartoonists represented in the collection are Herblock, Gib Crockett, Hugo, Bill Mauldin, Gene Basset, Pat Oliphant, Al Capp, Wayne Stayskal, Jim Berry, Guernsey LePelley, Tom Engelhardt, Paul Conrad, and Jim Berryman.
The editorial cartoons and related lesson plans from The Dirksen Center will teach students to identify issues, analyze symbols, acknowledge the need for background knowledge, recognize stereotypes and caricatures, think critically, and appreciate the role of irony and humor.
Find this project at: http://www.dirksencenterprojects.org/cartoons/index.htm.
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Everett Dirksen as Candidate, 1926-1968
Everett McKinley Dirksen’s name appeared on the ballot in 26 elections beginning with his election to Pekin’s City Council in 1926. There followed nine primary and eight general elections to the U.S. House of Representatives as well as four primary and four general elections to the U.S. Senate.
The purpose of “Everett M. Dirksen as Candidate” is to present an overview of his electoral record, something historians have neglected. The brief narratives for each election include links to a small set of illustrations drawn from the campaigns.
Find this project at: http://www.everettdirksen.name/dirksencandidate.htm.
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Everett Dirksen’s Opponent in 1950: Scott W. Lucas, The Nation’s Number One Senator
The 1950 campaign for the U.S. Senate in Illinois pitted Republican challenger Everett M. Dirksen against incumbent Democrat Scott Lucas, Majority Leader of the U.S. Senate. The Illinois Democratic State Central Committee produced a 16-page, professionally illustrated, full-color, cartoon-style brochure on Lucas's behalf. Even today, it is an amazing piece of campaign literature complete with headings set apart from cartoon frames filled with action scenes and dialogue presented in bubbles. The span of subjects is equally impressive. They include depictions of Lucas's ancestors; his early years of a hard-scrabble existence; his education, law practice, and public service; his election first to House, then to Senate, and finally to his leadership position; and his stance on issues.
Lucas, not Dirksen, could afford the extravagance of such a brochure. In selecting this option, the campaign reviewed several examples of comic books, including one devoted to Harry Truman's life and career. They even consulted research on the effectiveness of comic books. For example, a study entitled, "Adult America's Interest in Comics," reported these findings: four out of every five urban adults read comics; the reading of comics was widespread among all levels of society; people who read comics generally spent more time listening to the radio, read more magazines, and attended more movies than people who did not; a much higher percentage of adults with a college education read comics than those limited to a grade school education; one out of four adults was a present reader of comic books.
Lucas's campaign selected Commercial Comics, Inc. to produce the piece. The contract called for a press run of one million at a cost of $13,250. The shipment weighed 50,000 pounds and occupied 1,600 cubic feet.
Find this project at: http://www.dirksencenterprojects.org/lucasbrochure/index.html.
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Facing the Post-War World: Everett M. Dirksen Abroad, 1945
On February 21, 1945, then Congressman Dirksen set out on a world trip that would take him to twenty-one countries, logging 32,000 miles. This was not an ordinary junket. Dirksen traveled on behalf of the House Committee on Appropriations to inspect American embassies, reconstruction agencies, intelligence services, and the armed forces. He had a bird’s-eye view of Europe and the Middle East as World War II neared its end.
His stops included London, Algiers, Tunis, Cairo, Bombay, Calcutta, Delhi, Karachi, Teheran, Baghdad, Tel Aviv, Jerusalem, Palestine, Beirut, Damascus, Ankara, Istanbul, Athens, Rome, Florence, Paris, Rheims, Augsburg, Dachau, Wiesbaden, and Leipzig, among many others.
The Dirksen Center has created a Web-based feature that will give you an idea of what Dirksen’s trip was like and how it affected his thinking about the state of the world in 1945. This Web presentation consists of the introduction, a timeline of Dirksen’s trip with links to selective, digitized trip log entries and letters home, and a set of seven “anchor” documents with accompanying study questions. The historical documents are drawn from The Dirksen Congressional Center’s archival holdings.
Find this project at: http://www.dirksencenterprojects.org/1945trip/index.htm.
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Joint Senate-House Republican Leadership Minutes, 1961-68
The minutes of the Republican leadership during the presidential administrations of John Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson. In their original state, each session’s minutes generally include attendance, brief summaries of topics discussed, and background “fact sheets” for statements at press conferences following the meetings. The digitized document presented here include only the formal minutes. The press conferences following the leadership meetings achieved fame as the “Ev and Charlie” and “Ev and Jerry” shows. For audio samples and curricular materials associated with a small sample of these minutes, please visit “The 1960s: A Multi-Media View from Capitol Hill” at http://www.dirksencenter.org/emd_audio/index.htm.
The Gerald R. Ford Library has digitized nearly 2,000 pages of documents related to Republican congressional leadership meetings with President Richard Nixon, 1969-73 at: http://www.fordlibrarymuseum.gov/library/document/hartmannp/rleaders.asp
Find this project at: http://www.everettdirksen.name/guides_emd/Minutes1961-1968/index.htm.
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Promoting the Marigold as the National Floral Emblem
Everett Dirksen’s well known fondness for the marigold took root in 1959 as a result of David Burpee’s persistent efforts to persuade the senator to sponsor legislation naming it the national floral emblem. As CEO of the W. Atlee Burpee Co., seed growers extraordinaire, Burpee used the full range of lobbying techniques in his ultimately unsuccessful campaign.
Find this project at: http://www.everettdirksen.name/promotingmarigold.pdf.
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Republican Congressional Leadership Press Statements
Background of the Joint Senate-House
Republican Leadership Press Statements
Republican Leadership Press Statements
Background of the Joint Senate-House Republican Leadership Press Statements
The first session of the 87th Congress witnessed a Republican innovation in leadership that had a very unifying effect. Early in January 1961, shortly before the end of his administration, President Dwight Eisenhower summoned to the White House the Republican members of Congress who had regularly attended his Tuesday morning congressional leadership meetings, including Everett Dirksen, Minority Leader of the Senate.
After discussion, the group reached the following conclusions:
1. The Republican leaders of the Senate and the House would form a joint group, to be known as the Joint Senate-House Republican Leadership, with the chairman of the Republican National Committee to act as presiding office (a practice soon abandoned), to hold meetings approximately once a week, after which the Senate and House leaders, as spokesmen, would hold a joint press conference for the newspaper, periodical, TV and radio correspondents. These sessions became known first as the "Ev and Charlie Show" and then the "Ev and Jerry Show" after Dirksen, Charles Halleck, and Gerald Ford.
2. When desirable, other appropriate GOP leaders would be invited to meet with the Joint Senate-House Republican Leadership.
3. For the purpose of coordinating the effort, stimulating research, and carrying out other administrative duties, President Eisenhower suggested the joint leadership be provided with a staff.
The innovation here was the decision to set up a "joint" Senate-House leadership, a key strategy as the Democrats took over the White House and became the center of media attention accordingly. For Republicans, the hope was that the party would speak with a unified voice and that different points of view between the House and Senate might be worked out more effectively.
The first meeting of the Joint Senate-House Republican Leadership occurred on January 24, 1961. A staff consultant was retained and, as a result of experience gained in the first few weeks, an effort was made to give the meetings a more formalized voice. This led to preparation at the meetings of formal statements to be issued at the press conferences before submitting to questions from correspondents.
From the leadership meeting of March 23 forward a record of formal statements was kept and published at the end of each session as an official document of the Senate. Each document contains the formal statements but not the question-and-answer transcripts, most of which are part of the Dirksen Papers.
The Joint Senate-House Republican Leadership meetings ended in 1968 after the election of Republican Richard Nixon to the White House.
Republican Leadership Press Statements
The following table links to scanned versions of these documents.
The date in brackets is the date the original document was printed.
| Date | Subjects |
Atomic bomb, aid to depressed areas, aid to education, Berlin crisis, tractors for Cuba, feed grain and farm program, conduct of foreign affairs, the Hanford Project, threat of inflation, Red China and the Outer Mongolia question, government spending, trade behind the Iron Curtain, structural unemployment, and wage-hour issues. |
|
Civil rights, Cuba, the economy, the 87th Congress, Billie Sol Estes, feed grain program, conduct of foreign affairs, investigation of the press, the "Liberal Papers," medical assistance for aged, nuclear test ban, presidential promises, spending, steel prices, and the tax cut. |
|
Balance of payments, basic issues, Cuba, executive usurpation, farm program, conduct of foreign affairs, foreign aid, legislative progress, managed news, nuclear test ban, political outlook for 1964, spending, GOP task force, tax cut, unemployment. |
|
Communist bloc trade, Cuba, Democrats' domestic record, the economy, the farm program, conduct of foreign affairs, threat of inflation, nuclear control, nuclear test ban treaty, poverty, presidential campaign, reapportionment and the Supreme Court, spending, Vietnam. |
|
Cuba, the economy, education, commentary on the 89th Congress, conduct of foreign affairs, the "Great Society," Latin America, "peaceful coexistence," poverty, reapportionment, Republican Coordinating Committee, Taft-Hartley 14(b), unemployment, United Nations, Vietnam. |
|
Budget, minority party's role in Congress, the "credibility gap," public trust, national economy, farm prices, foreign aid, All Asian Conference,trade with communists, Vietnam, inflation, costs of living, public confidence in Lyndon Johnson, Medicare, War on Poverty, wage and price controls. |
|
Budget, East-West trade, clean elections, cost of living, "creative federalism," crime in America, the farm problem, foreign trade, housing bill, inflation, law and order, poverty program, Punte del Este, revenue sharing, state of Congress, systems management. |
|
Credibility, defense, the farm problem, federal spending and taxation, foreign policy, law and order, the Middle East, the Republican Party. |
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As Senate Minority Leader: Assessment by His Colleagues
Read how 27 Republican senators evaluated Dirksen's leadership.
Find this project at: http://www.everettdirksen.name/dirksen_leadershipsenators.pdf.
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The 1960s: A Multi-Media View from Capitol Hill
The 1960s: A Multi-Media View from Capitol Hill is a rich online environment that supports the learning and teaching of the public policy challenges resulting from those tumultuous times using a unique body of records housed in The Center’s historical collections—the minutes and press conferences (both print and audio) of the Joint Senate-House Republican Leadership, 1961-69.
Following the election of John F. Kennedy to the White House in 1960, congressional Republicans sought a new venue to communicate their principles and positions to the public. At the suggestion of out-going President Dwight Eisenhower, they created a new policy-making group called the Joint Senate-House Republican Leadership. This group held weekly meetings when Congress was in session to discuss important legislative matters and to formulate party policy. Following most meetings, Senate Minority Leader Everett M. Dirksen and House Minority Leader Charles Halleck (and later Gerald R. Ford) appeared together in a press conference designed to provide Republicans with an effective opposition voice.
Over the course of the decade, these press conferences became popular news events, widely covered by the print and nonprint media and achieving a cult status comparable to C-SPAN today. They became known as the “Ev and Charlie Show” and the “Ev and Jerry Show” when Jerry Ford replaced Halleck as House Republican leader in 1965.
The 1960s: A Multi-Media View from Capitol Hill:
Find this project at: http://www.dirksencenterprojects.org/emd_audio/index.htm.
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