Lyndon Johnson and Civil Rights

 

 

 

 

KC Johnson

Brooklyn College

Signing the 1964 Civil Rights Act

President Johnson in center; Martin Luther King, Jr. directly behind him
Photo from LBJ Presidential Library

This module contains three parts, a prerequisite, and a conclusion; you should complete only those sections requested by your instructor.

Part One In-class assignment: LBJ tapes at 1964 Atlantic City Convention
Part Two Blackboard assignment
Part Three Out-of-class writing assignment
Part Four Conclusion

Overview

During his 5-year tenure as president, Lyndon Johnson secretly recorded around 642 hours of phone conversations and (in 1968) cabinet meetings. The bulk of the available tapes come from 1964 and 1965, the years of his greatest political and legislative triumphs. This unit will use clips from some of these recordings to glimpse inside the White House in 1964 and 1965, when LBJ was making some of his key decisions--regarding civil rights politics and policy; Vietnam and foreign affairs; or his 1964 reelection bid.

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.

  • We pick up the conversation several minutes in, after Governor Sanders' complaint (mp3 file) about the compromise plan. Click here for a transcript to the clips.

  • When Sanders offers a legalistic argument (mp3 file) against seating the MFDP, Johnson exhibits rare (private) emotion.

  • Fed up with Sanders' recalcitrance (mp3 file) , the President launches into a series of sarcastic barbs against the Mississippi all-white Democratic delegation. 

  • Sanders then protests that the Mississippi and Alabama delegations are complaining (mp3 file) about having to take a loyalty oath to the party's nominee. The "John" in the call refers to John Connally, Texas governor.

Discussion Questions:

  • What does this conversation say about the political obstacles that Johnson faced in championing civil rights?

  • What were Johnson's principal arguments in attempting to persuade Sanders to back his MFPD compromise?

  • Some historians have faulted Johnson for approaching a moral issue (seating of the integrated MFPD delegation) in a pragmatic manner. Do you agree with that criticism?

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:

  • How each man conceived of the power of the presidency;

  • The implications of the different personal styles of JFK and LBJ;

  • The degree of leverage possessed by the figure on the other end of the line (Barnett and Sanders);

  • The similarities and differences between civil rights as a national issue in 1962--before Birmingham and the March on Washington--and 1964.

Conclusion

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