The day after the Nitze vote, President Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas, Texas. Thurmond expressed the view that a conspiracy would be found by investigators to have been responsible for JFK's death. Vice President Lyndon Johnson ascended to the presidency and began a campaign to pick up where Kennedy left off and secure passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965 which angered white segregationists. These laws ended segregation and committed the federal government to enforce voting rights of citizens by the supervision of elections in states in which the pattern of voting showed black people had been disenfranchised. Many Democrats strongly opposed these laws, including Senator Robert Byrd, who filibustered the Civil Rights Act for 14 hours and 13 minutes on June 9 and 10, 1964.