NPR has a story about who exactly was Russell

npr.org

Sure he had a big part in getting New Deal passed, but also:

Russell was a staunch segregationist, and he used his same mastery of the Senate rules to block civil rights legislation, even keeping an anti-lynching statute from becoming law.

He fought integration in the nation’s military and at federal government agencies. In 1956, Russell was a co-author of the “Southern Manifesto,” which opposed desegregation of public places, and he led the Southern bloc of senators who opposed the Civil Rights Act of 1964, calling it “shortsighted and disastrous.”

Russell even went so far as proposing legislation that would encourage African-Americans to move out of the South.