This module contains three parts, a prerequisite, and a conclusion; you should complete only those sections requested by your instructor.
Overview
Prerequisite
Activity One: (In-class assignment) For a sense of how the MFDP issue vexed Johnson, listen to the clips below (each is under 2 minutes), four excerpts of a conversation between Johnson and Georgia governor Carl Sanders, perhaps the leading Southern moderate officeholder of 1964. As the reading above noted, Johnson had arranged for a "compromise" under which the segregated Mississippi regular delegation would be seated, and two members of the MFDP would be seated as "honorary" at-large delegates. Speaking for the MFPD, Fannie Lou Hamer announced that the MFDP didn't come to the convention site in Atlantic City (the "original Bay of Pigs," said one press wag) to "sit at the back of the bus." But even the moderate Sanders thought that LBJ had gone too far in the compromise.
Discussion Questions:
Activity Two: (Blackboard assignment) Read the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Text Questions: What are the act's most important features? How did the act's authors hope to use the law to achieve equal rights for all? What sorts of problems were not addressed or anticipated by the act? Source Questions: In terms of historical skills, how does analyzing a government document differ from analyzing telephone calls between key policymakers? What are the strengths and weaknesses of each as a historical source? You should post at least twice, with the second post at least 12 hours after the first, and to include responses to the arguments of the other posters. Activity Three: (Writing assignment) Listen to President Johnson's complete conversation with Sanders (mp3 file), along with this conversation between President Kennedy and Mississippi governor Ross Barnett (mp3 file) during the crisis over the admission of an African-American, James Meredith, to the University of Mississippi. Compare and contrast the approaches of Kennedy and Johnson to the issue of civil rights. Be sure to consider the following issues:
Presidential biographies are among the most common, and popular, type of political history, and presidential historians have to balance the sometimes competing needs of presenting a faithful portrayal of the President's personal life with an understanding of his public policies. Striking this balance can be especially difficult when dealing with the tapes, since the recording systems often picked up unusual and perhaps atypical moments in a President's life that under any other circumstances never would have been retained. How much attention should historians devote to the private traits of 1960s chief executives? Keep this question in mind when listening to the following two calls: the first, between Lyndon Johnson and Joseph Haggar, in which the President ordered some slacks, giving some very specific tailoring advice; the second, between Richard Nixon and the late New York senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan, at the time US ambassador to the UN, in which Nixon discussed his theories on the capacities of different races for effective governance.
Resources
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