I think the nation as a whole is often very critical of Lyndon Johnson. Many of us bitterly turn up our noses, especially us baby boomers, because of Vietnam. “Hey Hey LBJ. How many kids did you kill today?” still rings in my mind. Others dislike Johnson because of his “Great Society” and perceived abuses some saw. You know, welfare mamas driving Cadillacs. LBJ was rough around the edges and often came across as getting his legislative way bullying his “bourbon and branch ” buddies in to going along with him. He had a long senate history and knew how to call in favors. He lacked the charisma of Kennedy and was very often resented by everyone, especially his own party.
LBJ has been short-changed in many respects. He probably did more for civil rights than any other president. It wasn’t Kennedy. It wasn’t Lincoln. It was LBJ. Sadly, the Democratic Party doesn’t claim his civil rights achievements for the most part.
According to the Miller Center:
After winning reelection in 1964, President Johnson realized the need for significant voting rights legislation, but, as he explained to Martin Luther King, Jr., he felt that such a bill would hold up the passage of other programs in his domestic program. Still King and other civil rights leaders sought ways to bring the issue of voting rights to the attention of the American people.
Selma, Alabama, provided the perfect opportunity for civil rights organization such as the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) and the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) to stage a nonviolent campaign on the issue of voting rights. The city of Selma had 15,000 African Americans of voting age but only 355 were registered to vote. Furthermore, the city’s board of registers used blatantly racist tactics to keep African Americans off the voting rolls. SNCC and SCLC leaders decided to lead a march from Selma to Montgomery, the capital of Alabama, to protest the gross disenfranchisement of African Americans.
On March 7, 1965, more than 500 marchers attempted to cross the Edmund Pettis Bridge, when state troopers confronted them and demanded that they turn around. The marchers halted facing the troopers, and the troopers advanced on the marchers, attacking them with nightsticks and tear gas. SNCC leader John Lewis was clubbed in the head and suffered a skull fracture. Images of the attacks on the peaceful marchers were broadcast throughout the country, and the incident became known as “Bloody Sunday.” Two days later, Martin Luther King, Jr., led a group of protestors on another march from Selma. When police confronted them, however, they knelt in prayer and turned around.
In his address to Congress on March 15, President Johnson used stirring oratory to create support for voting rights legislation. He spoke of events in Selma as a historic moment and continually pressed the right to vote as a fundamental American right, proclaiming, “Every American citizen must have an equal right to vote.” He stressed that denying the right to vote to African Americans cheapened the ideals of America for everyone. (Click here to read and listen to his speech in its entirety.)
The Voting Rights Act passed both houses of Congress with bipartisan support. On August 6, 1965, President Johnson signed the Voting Rights Act. The act outlawed practices, such as literacy tests, that had been used to keep African Americans from registering to vote. The Justice Department gained the power to intervene where discriminatory practices had kept less than 50 percent of eligible voters from registering to vote. If this intervention failed to fix the situation, federal registers could take over the local voting systems.
President Johnson, the master legislator, pushed for the passage of a strong bill to end the disenfranchisement of African Americans in the South. Together with the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Voting Rights Act effectively ended the systematic segregation of the South.
For someone who only served one full term, LBJ got a great deal accomplished. I find it remarkable that this man continues to be under-sold.
Here are just a few of his accomplishments:
Johnson signs the Elementary and Secondary Education Act. April 11, 1965
Johnson signs legislation creating Medicare and Medicaid. July 30, 1965
Johnson signs the Voting Rights Act into law. August 05, 1965
Johnson nominates Thurgood Marshall to Supreme Court. June 13, 1967
Johnson has not yet gotten his “just rewards” regarding civil rights.
The strength of this LBJ speech draws much from his background. If a Kennedy, Roosevelt (either one) or Eisenhower had given the same speech, some its force would have been lost. But LBJ was very much part of the culture he was trying to dismantle. That makes the moment particularly moving and adds credibility to his commitment.
Great analysis, Scout. I am not a Johnson fan. Too much lost in the 60’s aka Vietnam. I wasn’t even all that opposed to the war. People didn’t like LBJ in any sense over Vietnam.
I will never forget the night he came on and announced he would not seek (nor accept) re-election. I was out with my significant other at the time. Parking by the river and drinking beer as I recall….and both of us cheering. He was a vet even.
Retrospectively, LBJ really got the short end of things. I can’t decide it it was the times or if he really was contemptible. He had a nice wife and daughter(s). I have only met Linda Robb.
LBJ made my skin crawl because of Viet Nam. Our generation lost too much, and America’s security interests were not clearly gauged by this man. I didn’t think it possible that any American president could ever come even close to that level of hormonal blunder. Then W kind of put it in perspective and showed me that short memories are a major American problem.
But on the civil rights issues, LBJ stepped up.
He made my skin crawl too. IN fact, I thought I was rather nice about him in my post. Doing it made my skin crawl. He really wasn’t a very nice person, I don’t think.
Nixon didn’t make my skin crawl as much.
We have had some real losers in there. It amazes me that people are having such a reaction to Obama. I ate lunch with a person today who tried telling me that Obama wasn’t born in the United States. I told her I didn’t know she was a birther. She had no \clue what I was talking about.
Yeah, I remember that son of a gun. I voted for him in 1964 in the blush of my youth, in an African village, with an on-time absentee ballot (believe it or not). You remember that campaign. Goldwater the warmonger. Little girl picking flowers with a nuke explosion in the background.
Less than two years, and I was in Vietnam.
I thought the little girl and the flowers was the Tricky Dick election.
Ha. I probably would have voted for Barry but I wasn’t old enough to vote then. I have no idea who my parents voted for. They never told. I know they considered themselves Democrats but don’t take that as a positive sign.
Wolve – Goldwater’s 64 campaign was my first taste of national campaign work. Had I known you were out there, I would have tried to reach you before you cast that vote. Of course, given the outcome, we needed more votes than yours.
Kudos for voting, however, particularly at such a geographic remove.
Now I know you were too young to have voted in that election, Scout….wink wink nudge nudge…since I am just a tad older than you are.
That guy LBJ tore up almost four years of my life. I got back at him though. I ran off with one of his military nurses. She was a keeper. Still got her.
I was considerably too young to vote – in those days, the voting age was (inexplicably, given the draft age) 21. But I was old enough to drive (just barely) and lick envelopes.