LBJ -- his contradictions. Using the n-word frequently, yet without him we would have neither the Civil Rights Bill., the Voting Right Act for blacks, nor a host of other liberal legislation. Which he managed to get passed against all odds, by wining over die-hard segregationist senators. Man of many paradoxes. An ally of Martin Luther King, he also freely told stories that we today would cringe at. Some Republicans of today are using this unseemly side of Johnson as a way to prove that they are the better party on race issues. Dr. Ben Carson has called the Democratic approach (liberalism) just another slavery. So while Pres. Johnson was forced to wheel-and-deal with racist southerners to win passage, the Civil Rights Act made it possible for Johnson to smash Jim Crow. The Voting Rights Act made the U.S. government accountable to its black citizens and a true democracy for the first time. Johnson lifted racist immigration restrictions designed to preserve a white majority – and by extension white supremacy. He forced FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover, then more concerned with “communists” and civil rights activists, to turn his attention to crushing the Ku Klux Klan. Johnson was a product of his times, a man of many contradictions, yet even still, his cumulative achievement in lifting black people and in joining with Dr. King to combat the extremes of racism have left him with a record surpassed only by Abraham Lincoln.
Posted on: Sat, 20 Dec 2014 06:30:12 +0000
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