Meanwhile, in Washington, D.C., Senator Everett Dirksen of Illinois all but crushed hopes of passing the fair-housing provision of the president’s new civil rights bill, telling a group of religious leaders from Chicago that he deemed a ban on racial discrimination in housing unconstitutional because it interfered with the rights of property owners. “You wouldn’t want me to throw my conscience in the Potomac River, would you?” Dirksen asked.
