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Senator Russell began contesting civil rights legislation as early as 1935 by participating in the filibuster of anti-lynching legislation. The tactic employed by Russell and his colleague in the Southern Bloc was to contest civil rights legislation on constitutional grounds, claiming, for example, that equal opportunity legislation would deny the fundamental right of an employer to hire whomever they pleased. Almost all of the files deal with race relations in the United States, particularly those involving legislative action during Senator Russell's career in the Senate. It covers topics such as antilynching bills, the Fair Employment Practices Committee, integration, and other civil rights bills from 1948 until 1964. There are also records related to other topics such as cloture, the literacy voting bill, the poll tax, school prayer, and other, indirectly related topics. The series includes correspondence, background reports used for legislative review, miscellaneous materials related to civil rights issues, reports, memoranda, bills, and articles. The correspondence reveals much of the public's reaction to proposed civil rights legislation. A fairly complete statement of Senator Russell's views on integration is located under Civil Rights Integration, Pro-Georgia to McCarter and dated 28 June 1963. Civil rights are covered in other parts of this collection. For example, the Speech/Media series contains Senator Russell's public expressions. A less obvious source of information is a folder, History 1960, located in the Personal series. Most of these items are in response to the 1960 civil rights legislative fight. One should also refer to the Dictation series, Civil Rights for Senator Russell's consolidated remarks on the various issues involved in the debate. Materials are also available in the Political series and the General series.