Joseph R. Biden Jr. has sought to distance himself from two segregationist senators whose names he invoked on Tuesday as he recalled a time of “civility” in the Senate.

Instead, Mr. Biden, the former vice president, emphasized his relationship with a prominent liberal, Senator Edward M. Kennedy of Massachusetts, and highlighted his disagreement with the segregationist senators, James O. Eastland of Mississippi and Herman E. Talmadge of Georgia.

“He’s the guy who got me on the Judiciary Committee,” Mr. Biden said of Mr. Kennedy at a Maryland fund-raiser on Wednesday. “And we had to put up with the likes of, like, Jim Eastland and Hermy Talmadge and all those segregationists and all of that. And the fact of the matter is that we were able to do it because we were able to win — we were able to beat them on everything they stood for.”

“We in fact detested what they stood for in terms of segregation and all the rest,” Mr. Biden continued. “And because of Teddy letting me become chairman of the Judiciary Committee in 1982, when he moved on to take on Health and Human Services, we were able to do so much. We restored the Voting Rights Act. We did it, and over time we extended it by 25 years, not just five years.”

Here is a guide to the context and accuracy of his remarks.

His place on the Judiciary Committee

Mr. Biden’s remarks that Mr. Kennedy “got me on the Judiciary Committee” are at odds with his previous remarks and the historical record, though Mr. Kennedy paved the way for Mr. Biden’s eventual chairmanship of the committee.

Before Mr. Biden had been sworn in as a senator from Delaware in 1973, he wrote to Mr. Eastland with a ranking of his preferred committee assignments, listing the Judiciary Committee, which Mr. Eastland led, at No. 2. In his 2007 book, “Promises to Keep: On Life and Politics,” Mr. Biden recounted that he had “badly wanted” to serve on the Judiciary Committee and made an effort to get to know Mr. Eastland.

“I think he was flattered by the deference I showed him,” Mr. Biden wrote in his book. “At the end of my first term, Eastland gave me a spot on Judiciary.”

After joining the Judiciary Committee in 1977, Mr. Biden wrote Mr. Eastland asking to become the chairman of the National Penitentiaries Subcommittee. Later that year, he sent Mr. Eastland a letter seeking the chairmanship of the Criminal Laws and Procedures Subcommittee.

Mr. Biden was a “favorite” of Mr. Eastland’s in the Senate, according to the book “Big Jim Eastland: The Godfather of Mississippi,” by J. Lee Annis Jr.

“Aware that Biden shared his opposition to busing and admiring that he had contemplated resigning his seat to take care of his two surviving sons, Eastland took an interest in him,” Mr. Annis wrote, referring to the 1972 car accident that claimed the lives of Mr. Biden’s first wife and daughter.

When Mr. Eastland retired from the Senate in 1978, Mr. Kennedy took the chairmanship of the Judiciary Committee for two years. But after Democrats lost 12 Senate seats in the 1980 elections and became the minority party, Mr. Kennedy yielded the ranking position on the committee to Mr. Biden.

Mr. Biden then assumed the chairmanship of the Judiciary Committee in 1987, after Democrats recaptured control of the Senate, as Mr. Kennedy opted to lead the Labor Committee.

His record on desegregation, busing and civil rights

Mr. Biden accurately noted that he presided over the renewal of the Voting Rights Act in 1982 for 25 years as the top Democrat on the Judiciary Committee, and fought for years to extend and expand the law, which protected racial minorities from discrimination at the voting booth. He was a liberal on most civil rights issues, but he was also a leading opponent of integrating schools through busing from the 1970s to 1980s, though his efforts largely failed.

In 1975, Mr. Biden supported a sweeping antibusing measure offered by Senator Jesse Helms of North Carolina, a conservative who opposed civil rights, and also offered his own less stringent antibusing amendment to an appropriations bill.

Mr. Biden introduced another proposal in 1976 that blocked the Justice Department from seeking busing as a desegregation tool, and co-sponsored an amendment in 1977 that limited federal funding of busing efforts. He continued his efforts that year with a bill curbing court-ordered busing and thanked Mr. Eastland for attempting to bring his legislation to a vote in a letter uncovered by CNN.

In February 1982, he voted for an amendment to a Justice Department appropriations bill described as the “toughest antibusing rider ever approved by either chamber of Congress.” A month later, he voted in favor of another amendment that allowed the Justice Department to participate in litigation “to remove or reduce the requirement of busing in existing court decrees or judgments.”

A spokesman for Mr. Biden said that he had always supported integration, but did not think busing was the right mechanism to achieve it, and thought it placed an undue burden on the African-American families. The spokesman also pointed to comments from Mr. Biden in 1975 calling for housing and employment integration, and in 1986 pressing Justice William H. Rehnquist on civil rights and integration.

Mr. Biden has spoken against busing as ineffective and needlessly divisive. In his 2007 book, he recounts telling constituents that “I was against busing to remedy de facto segregation owing to housing patterns and community comfort, but if it was intentional segregation, I’d personally pay for helicopters to move the children.”

But he also signaled a more philosophical disagreement with busing, for example, remarking that busing “is a rejection of the whole movement of black pride” in a 1975 interview discovered by The Washington Examiner.

Beyond busing, Mr. Biden clearly supported civil rights throughout his career in the Senate and before.

As a young man, Mr. Biden took part in anti-discrimination sit-ins in Delaware and supported public housing while serving in local elected office. His campaign noted, as part of his Senate record, that he sponsored legislation in 1975 that prohibited creditors from discriminating against applicants based on race, voted in 1983 in favor of creating Martin Luther King Jr. Day (which Mr. Helms opposed) and played a leading role in saving and restructuring the Civil Rights Commission after President Ronald Reagan fired three of its liberal members. Mr. Biden continued to co-sponsor updates to the Civil Rights Act and anti-lynching legislation and spoke out against apartheid in South Africa.

His colleagues in the Senate

When Mr. Biden joined the Senate in 1973, the presence of Southern Democrats in the chamber had waned.

But given the role of seniority in the Senate, long-serving Southern Democrats still held many of the most important positions — bolstering his claim that he and other liberals had to “put up” with segregationists.

In addition to leading the Judiciary Committee, Mr. Eastland was president pro tempore, putting him third in line to the presidency. Mr. Talmadge led the Agriculture Committee.

Other Democratic senators from Southern states had similarly powerful perches. John L. McClellan of Arkansas led the Appropriations Committee, John C. Stennis of Mississippi led the Armed Services Committee, John J. Sparkman of Alabama led the Banking Committee, Russell B. Long of Louisiana led the Finance Committee and J. William Fulbright of Arkansas led the Foreign Relations Committee.

In 1956, all of them except for Mr. Talmadge, who was not yet a senator, signed the “Southern Manifesto” opposing the Supreme Court’s decision in Brown v. Board of Education, which ruled that racial segregation in public schools was unconstitutional.

Mr. Biden sought to forge relationships across the ideological spectrum, from Mr. Kennedy to Mr. Eastland.

He recalled in his 2007 book the advice of Senator Mike Mansfield of Montana, the Democrat and majority leader instrumental in enacting civil rights legislation, not to question the motives of their colleagues — “the single most important piece of advice I got in my career,” he wrote, which led him to his “unlikely” relationship with Mr. Eastland.

“To this day, if I need help on an issue I really care about, it’s not always enough to bring along my political allies,” Mr. Biden wrote, “sometimes I need the support of people who fundamentally disagree with me on 80 percent of the questions we decide.”

Astead W. Herndon and Sheryl Gay Stolberg contributed reporting.

Thomas Kaplan is a political reporter based in Washington. He previously covered Congress, the 2016 presidential campaign and New York state government. @thomaskaplan

Linda Qiu is a fact-check reporter, based in Washington. She came to The Times in 2017 from the fact-checking service PolitiFact. @ylindaqiu

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