Martin Luther King Jr. Day

MLK was a great man. He fought for Civil Rights, against the wishes of Southern and border state Democrats - who filibustered Civil Rights legislation. Robert Byrd, a former KKK Klansman and current U.S. Democratic Senator filibustered Civil Rights legislation for 14 hours alone.

The landmark Civil Rights Act of 1964 was created to protect voting rights—basically establishing them for the first time for many Southern black people—eliminate discrimination in public facilities and federally assisted programs, extend the Commission on Civil Rights, and create the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. On the 56th day of a filibuster intended to block the bill's passage, Byrd spoke for 14 hours and 13 minutes, concluding at 9:51 a.m. on the morning of June 10. Georgia's Richard Russell continued after Byrd stepped down from the podium, but he was cut off by a cloture vote.

Strom Thurmond holds the current filibuster length record in history. It was against Civil Rights legislation in 1957. At the time, Strom Thurmond was a Democrat.

Strom Thurmond's famous filibuster followed an eight-day filibuster by Georgia senator Richard Russell that resulted in watering down that year's civil rights bill, removing its enforcement provisions. As Jack Bass and Marilyn W. Thompson describe the situation in their book Ol' Strom, even though the bill was pretty much defanged, Thurmond was still hell-bent on fighting it. Southern Democrats agreed not to run an organized filibuster; they left it up to individual members to take up the battle. Thurmond decided to fight on alone, and to prepare himself, he took steam baths every day to dehydrate his body so it could absorb fluids without his having to leave the Senate chamber for the bathroom. On the day he was scheduled to start speaking at 9 p.m., he took another steam and told his staff to get ready. He was going to discuss provisions requiring trial by jury. (Civil rights advocates didn't like this, because Southern juries were practically all white.) Thurmond began speaking at 8:54 p.m. and didn't quit until 9:12 the next evening. It was the longest filibuster in Senate history.