Everett Dirksen

Everett McKinley Dirksen (1896–1969) was an American politician from Pekin, Illinois, who served as Senate Republican Minority Leader from 1959 until his death in 1969. Celebrated for his gravelly bass-baritone voice, tousled hair, and flowery 19th-century rhetorical style, he was affectionately dubbed 'The Wizard of Ooze' and 'The Grand Old Orator'.

Dirksen was the indispensable legislative partner to Presidents John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson. In June 1964, when Southern segregationist senators staged a fifty-four-day filibuster against the Civil Rights Act of 1964, Dirksen rallied twenty-seven conservative Midwestern Republicans to vote for cloture, quoting Victor Hugo on the Senate floor: 'Stronger than all the armies is an idea whose time has come'. His bipartisan leadership was equally essential in passing the Nuclear Test Ban Treaty (1963) and the Voting Rights Act (1965).