LBJ addressing Congress, in front of Vice President Hubert Humphrey
(left) and Speaker of the House John McCormack
March 15, 1965, 60 years ago: President Lyndon B. Johnson speaks before a Joint Session of Congress, on the need for a Voting Rights Act.
The speech comes 8 days after "Bloody Sunday," when demonstrators attempting to march from Selma, Alabama to the State capital in Montgomery were beaten by local police. Having gotten the Civil Rights Act of 1964 passed the previous summer, and with the biggest majorities that the Democratic Party has had since the 1937-38 session, Johnson now knew it was time to act.
As as a native of Texas, he had previously resisted advances in civil rights. At the time, it was a requirement for a Southerner who wanted to stay in office. But after he became the Senate Majority Leader in 1955, he began to open up to the idea. He was one of the few Southern Senators who refused to sign the Southern Manifesto of 1956.
In a speech written by Richard Goodwin, one of the few White House employees he had kept from the John F. Kennedy Administration, he said:
There is no Negro problem. There is no Southern problem. There is no Northern problem. There is only an American problem...
Our mission is at once the oldest and the most basic of this country: To right wrong, to do justice, to serve man...
What happened in Selma is part of a far larger movement, which reaches into every section and State of America. It is the effort of American Negroes to secure for themselves the full blessings of American life. Their cause must be our cause too.
Because it is not just Negroes, but, really, it is all of us, who must overcome the crippling legacy of bigotry and injustice.
Johnson then leaned forward slightly, to make his point more deeply, and said, "And we shall overcome." He emphasized the word "shall."
The inclusion of that last line bolstered Johnson's status within the Civil Rights Movement. It showed that this 56-year-old white Southerner was completely serious about making sure that black people were going to get the right to vote.
The line came Pete Seeger's civil rights folk anthem. Seeger stated he first heard the line sung by striking African-American tobacco workers in the 1940s.
John Lewis, who had been one of those beaten at Selma, watched the speech with Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., and said that King wiped away a tear when Johnson uttered the phrase.
The Voting Rights Act of 1965 was introduced into Congress 2 days later. The Senate passed it on May 26. The House of Representatives passed it with amendments on July 9. A conference committee worked out the differences on July 29. It was passed by the House, 328-74, on August 3. It was passed by the Senate, 79-18, on August 4. And on August 6, 1965, LBJ signed it into law.
It was the high-water mark of American liberalism, and of Johnson's Administration, coming just 7 days after he signed Medicare and Medicaid into law. Just 5 days after he signed the Voting Rights Act into law, a race riot broke out in the Watts section of Los Angeles. It wasn't the first such riot, but nor would it be the last. Meanwhile, people began to realize that the Vietnam War was not coming to an end.
From November 22, 1963 to August 6, 1965, a span of 622 days, Lyndon Baines Johnson did more good as President than most others who have held the office have done, even if given a full 8 years. But from 1967 onward, he has been remembered as "The Vietnam President" first, and the pro-civil rights and anti-poverty President second, if that. It's been 60 years. It's time to remember the good he did.
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