In the summer of 1963 the junior senator from California began with balance issues and word-finding difficulties.¹⁰ A workup was initiated at both Bethesda Naval Hospital and the now defunct Doctor’s Hospital in Washington, DC, the conclusion of which was a mass in his left cerebral hemisphere.^8,10,20 The onset of Senator Clair Engle’s illness corresponded to a period of great social and political upheaval and change within the United States. More than 16,000 American servicemen were already in Vietnam, while back home President John F. Kennedy would be assassinated in just a few months, Governor George Wallace was attempting to physically block the integration of the University of Alabama, and what would become the Civil Rights Act of 1964 had just been introduced in the House chamber.^6,9,13 The Civil Rights Act of 1964 has proven itself as one of the most important pieces of legislation in American history. Yet Senator Engle’s neurological illness nearly imperiled it. Senator Engle’s decisive vote for cloture, to end the filibuster of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, despite the condition his brain tumor and its treatment had left him in, is one of the forgotten memorable moments in United States political history.

Clair Engle’s Early Life

Clair Engle was born September 21, 1911, in Bakers-field, California, but would spend the majority of his childhood in the central valley of California, primarily Tehama County, where his family moved when he was only 6 months old. He settled on politics as a career early in life. While attending what today is California State University, Chico, he apparently made up his mind to try for district attorney in his home county.⁴ Indeed, in 1934, within a year of graduating from the University of California’s Hastings School of Law in San Francisco, he was elected district attorney in Tehama County. He was just 23 years old. While at law school he met his first wife, Hazel Burney, and they eloped in 1933 just prior to his graduation. He held the office of district attorney continuously, while maintaining his own private law practice as well, until 1942, when he won election as a state senator. He was in the state capitol for less than a year, for in May of 1943 Engle’s representative in the United States Congress unexpectedly died. Engle, a Democrat, won the special election for the long Republican-held California Second Congressional District. The district was a sparsely populated stretch of inner California that was the nation’s second largest congressional district in terms of a geographic size at the time.⁴ His first marriage, to Hazel, yielded a single daughter, Yvonne. The marriage, however, ended in divorce in 1948, and later that year Clair Engle got remarried, to Lucretia Cadwell, who would be an outspoken surrogate and advocate for her husband’s political career for the rest of his life.^10,19 The diminutive Engle (he stood just 5 feet 6 inches tall) earned the nickname “Congressman Fireball” during his time in the lower chamber.^4,19 He was known for his colorful and, at times, aggressive language, once telling a witness testifying before a congressional panel, “I’m sure going to throw a skunk into your henhouse.”¹⁹ He was a tireless campaigner, and such was required for his huge rural congressional district. A private pilot, he flew himself often to various campaign events throughout California. He rose to become Chairman of the Committee on the Interior and Insular Affairs until 1958 when one of the incumbent senators from California declined to run again in favor of seeking the governorship (Fig. 1). During the campaign for Senate his opponent commented on Engle’s billboards, saying, “That picture makes him look like a giant and he’s just a little squirt.” Engle, showing his wit, retorted, “Where I come from, they measure a man from the neck up.”²² He won election to the Senate, where he would serve until his untimely death. In 1960 Engle was briefly considered as a possible vice presidential candidate for John F. Kennedy.²³

Senator Clair Engle’s official United States Senate portrait (in the public domain).

The Civil Rights Act of 1964

The Civil Rights Act of 1964 was the second federal legislative success of the more than decades-long civil rights movement. It had been called for by President John F. Kennedy in a nationally broadcasted address to the nation, prior to his assassination (available at http://www.jfklibrary.org/Asset-Viewer/LH8F_0Mzv0e6Ro1yEm74Ng.aspx). Following the assassination of President Kennedy, President Lyndon B. Johnson strongly supported the bill in an address to a joint session of Congress on November 27, 1963 (available at http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=25988). The act barred discrimination in voter registration, in public accommodations including public transportation, in private accommodations including in restaurants and hotels and led the way to desegregation of public schools.⁵ From the beginning it was clear that passage of the bill was to depend on the Senate. While obscured over the years by the narrative history of civil rights legislation, the bill actually appeared to have large majority public support and easily passed the United States House of Representatives as H.R. 7152 on February 10, 1964. However, the rules of the United States Senate were, and continue to be, much more burdensome than those of the House of Representatives. The filibuster, a process unknown to the House of Representatives or most other national legislative bodies, has been called “the Senate’s most characteristic procedural feature.”³ The rules of the Senate allow a senator, or senators, once they have been granted the floor during a debate to continue talking as long as they wish. In practice it allows opposition senators to continue debate on a bill or other measure they disagree with indefinitely so as to postpone a vote on an issue that has majority support. The rules of the Senate held that debate, and thus a filibuster, can only be limited by a cloture vote. Such a vote required not a simple majority of senators but two-thirds.³ The filibuster was not an idle threat either; in 1944 an attempt to make the Fair Employment Practices Commission, a body designed to prevent discrimination on the basis of race for employers with government contracts, failed when two-thirds of the Senate could not be mustered to break a filibuster of southern Democrats.¹⁷ Strong opposition from a minority faction of the Senate quickly arose to the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Seventeen southern Democrats and a single Republican promised to block the legislation by filibuster.²⁴ While this did not constitute a third of the Senate caucus, many other senators were wary to invoke cloture either out of respect for the idea of unlimited debate or because they themselves did not have full-hearted support of the bill.²⁴ Sixty-seven votes would need to be corralled to end the filibuster and invoke cloture; it would be no small task to get them. What cloture did have was the vote of Clair Engle.

Clair Engle’s Brain Tumor

Ten days later he was back at Doctor’s Hospital where the physicians told him and his wife the pressure was re-accumulating, which was expected.¹⁰ Engle underwent a second craniotomy and tumor evacuation to relieve the pressure the day following his admission.^1,19

In January, Engle had announced, controversially, that he would seek reelection.^10,20 His condition was felt by Democratic leaders and political competitors to be more serious than implied by Engle, his wife, and his supporters. Indeed, the physicians routinely following Engle at Bethesda Naval Hospital had told President Kennedy that Engle’s situation was not good prior to the Kennedy assassination in November.^20,22 Engle’s announcement for reelection consisted of a film, which was highly edited, as the senator’s expressive aphasia, although improved some since the immediate postoperative period, limited him from speaking in complete sentences.²⁰ Likely because of his condition, despite his incumbency, four Democratic candidates dared to challenge Engle in the June 1964 primary, including President Kennedy’s former press secretary, Pierre Salinger.¹⁶

Engle himself, however, would end up not challenging in the primary. Trailing in the polls, and the severity of his condition now clear even to his family, Engle, from his hospital bed 4 days after his second craniotomy, withdrew from the race. Indeed, he appears to have been considering such even prior to his second surgery.²

Although now a lame-duck senator and with his health rapidly declining further, Engle’s role in history was not done, not as the Senate considered the Civil Rights Act of 1964 that spring and summer.

The Cloture Vote

The cloture measure would pass by 3 votes. It was a narrow margin and the first time in the history of the United States Senate that cloture would be invoked on a civil rights bill and only the second time since 1927 on any measure.¹⁴ Engle would return again by ambulance 9 days later on June 19, 1964, when the Senate voted officially to pass the Civil Rights Act of 1964.¹⁹ It was the last time Engle would be on the Senate floor. He died just over a month later, July 30, 1964, at the home he and his wife maintained in Washington, DC.^1,19 He was only 52 years old.

Clair Engle’s Legacy

Senator Clair Engle is a poorly remembered character in American political history; he deserves more credit than that. Despite progress in the interim, to this day primary malignant brain tumors, especially glioblastoma multiforme, carry a limited life expectancy and significant morbidity for most facing them.⁷ Engle’s fight and insistence to be a part of one of the most important pieces of legislation in American history is inspirational and a reminder of what is possible even when facing terminal neurological illness.