EDITOR’S NOTE: Informer editor Andrew Perzo is on vacation and will return Jan. 1. Today’s column features a question and answer that first appeared in 2009.

Recently we witnessed President Obama signing a certain bill into law. Can you explain to us why he used at least five different pens to sign it?

Certainly.

Presidents have long signed treaties, executive orders, and high-profile and historic pieces of legislation using many pens, which are then given to prominent guests, bill supporters and others present at signing ceremonies.

When he signed into law the Civil Rights Act of 1964, President Lyndon Johnson used scores of pens, which he then handed to several congressmen, the attorney general and civil rights leaders.

“With seventy-five pens, President Johnson signed the bill. He handed the first pen to Everett Dirksen, the second to Emanuel Celler and William McCulloch. He gave six pens to Robert Kennedy, recognizing the contributions of his Justice Department team,” Nick Kotz writes in the book “Judgment Days: Lyndon Baines Johnson, Martin Luther King Jr., and the Laws That Changed America.”

“He handed pens to the leaders of the major civil rights organizations, without whose efforts there would have been no law. Martin Luther King Jr., Roy Wilkins, James Farmer, Whitney Young, and A. Philip Randolph each came forward to shake Johnson’s hand and receive a pen.”

‘Ink for Jack’

A few years earlier, civil rights activists had given their pens — some say by the hundreds, some by the thousands — to Johnson’s predecessor, John F. Kennedy, in an effort to press him to fulfill a campaign pledge to end housing discrimination “with a stroke of the presidential pen.”

But the initiative, dubbed “Ink for Jack,” proved only partly successful. Kennedy, worried about the short-term political consequences of such a move, put off acting for almost two years. And when he did, the resulting executive order impressed few people.

“Ostensibly banning racial discrimination in federally supported housing, Kennedy’s housing order pertained to less than 3 percent of existing housing and only an estimated 20 percent of new construction,” writes James W. Hilty in “Robert Kennedy: Brother Protector.”

“It forbade the Federal Housing Administration to insure mortgages for builders who refused to sell to minorities, but, pursuant to a Justice Department recommendation, the prohibition did not extend to private financial institutions.”

The Ink for Jack pens, along with dozens of mailed-in ink bottles, were purportedly placed — on Kennedy’s order and as they came in — atop the desk of the person who had come up with the “presidential pen” phrase.

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The Informer answers questions from readers each Sunday, Monday and Wednesday. It is researched and written by Andrew Perzo, an American Press staff writer. To ask a question, call 494-4098, press 5 and leave voice mail, or email informer@americanpress.com.

President Barack Obama. (ASSOCIATED PRESS)