Was LBJ the best civil rights president we ever had?

[book_worm]

"One hundred years ago the slave was freed. One hundred years later the Negro remains in bondage to the color of his skin. The Negro today asks, "Justice." We do not answer him--we do not answer those who lie beneath this soil--when we reply to the Negro by asking, "Patience."...To ask for patience from the Negro is to ask him to give more of what he has already given enough...The Negro says, "Now." Others say, "Never." the voice of responsible Americans--the voice of those who died here and the great man who spoke here--their voices say, "Together." There is no other way."
LBJ in a Memorial Day Address in Gettsyburg, PA, 1963.

"Those Harvards think taht a politician from Texas doesn't care about Negroes. In the Senate I did the best I could. But I had to be careful. I couldn't get too far ahead of my votes. Now I represent the whole country, and I have the power. I always vowed that if I ever had the power I'd make sure every Negro had the same chance as every white man. Now I have it. And I'm going to use it." LBJ in a taped conversation with JFK aide Dick Goodwin, shortly after assuming office.

Johnson: Why don't you let the negros vote?

George Wallace: I don't have that power, Mr. President. Under Alabama law, that belongs to the county registers.

Johnson: George, don't you shit me. Who runs Alabama? I had on the TV this morning and I saw you and...you was attacking me, George.

Wallace: Not you, Mr. President. I was speaking against federal intervention.

Johnson: You was attacking me, George...George, you and I shouldn't be thinking about 1968. We should be thinking about 1988. We'll both be dead and gone then. What do you want left behind? You want a great big marble monument that says, "George Wallace: He Built"? Or do you want a little piece of scrawny pine laying there that says, "George Wallace: He Hated.""
(From The White House Looks South by William E. Leuchtenburg)

"You didn't wait for the times, you made them." Thurgood Marshall to Lyndon Johnson, 1969

"I don't know when he got religion or how he got it, but he really understood what was bugging poor people and black people." Robert Weaver, LBJ's Secretary of HUD, the first African-American to serve in the cabinet.

At Johnson's final public appearance in December 1972 at the LBJ Library at a Civil Rights Symposium, Julian Bond, who had been denied his seat in the Georgia Legislature for opposing the Vietnam War pursued by Johnson, might have been expected to sound a different note. But Bond remembered fondly teh years when a "human-hearted man had his hands on the levers of power. O, by God!, do I wish he was there now!"

[saracat]

1. Yes. Period. No one was better.

[Selatius]

2. No one came closer since LBJ.

And he tried to offer many people help, see his Great Society programs, but I still think he was a bastard for escalating the war and was a dirty Texas oilman with connections to KBR, now a subsidiary of Halliburton.

[Faygo Kid]

3. Probably yes. For him to address Congress and say, "We Shall Overcome" was stunning.

He put his muscle behind the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Yes, LBJ with all his faults got it right here. And a note about Lincoln, before he is ripped on this post: His Emancipation Proclamation remains a stunning act of political courage for the times, and his Gettysburg Address redefined the "new birth of freedom" of a nation. But for sheer, raw brilliance cutting to the heart of what the Civil War and the struggle for freedom was all about, check out his Second Inaugural. Wow.

". . .Fondly do we hope, fervently do we pray, that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away. Yet, if God wills that it continue until all the wealth piled by the bondsman's two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid by another drawn with the sword, as was said three thousand years ago, so still it must be said "the judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether.". . .

[daninthemoon]

4. Yes, so far. There is still lots of room for someone to step up and

improve/surpass even what he did. Time's a wastin.

[gateley]

5. Yes. What progress he was able to make and get the ball rolling. nt

[TreasonousBastard]

6. Just about the only one. n/t

[bemildred]

7. Lincoln ought to get some credit. nt

[OmmmSweetOmmm]

8. Yes, and correct me if I'm wrong, didn't Humphrey do a lot of the work to get legislation passed? nt

[book_worm]

10. Yes, Hubert was LBJ's chief Senatorial aide in getting the Civil Rights Act of 1964

passed.

[OmmmSweetOmmm]

18. A fact that seems to have been lost down the memory hole. You never here about

HHHs hard work in regard to this. So sad.

[Fierce]

16. Yes. HHH was the best civil rights president

we never had.

[OmmmSweetOmmm]

17. I think so too. eom

[LWolf]

9. "You didn't wait for the times, you made them."

What a contrast.

[Canuckistanian]

11. I don't think it would have gone as far without the Kennedys

Both John and Bobby set the tone. Not to take anything away from Johnson, but the momentum was started under JFK's administration.

But then again, the country was more than ready for it.

Eisenhower could have acted against racial discrimination and could have had partial success.

He refused.

[book_worm]

13. perhaps not

but in truth JFK was reluctant to push civil rights in his first two years. But in the summer of '63 thru much prodding from RFK and LBJ he moved decisively.

[flashl]

12. Yes, and his helper Lady Bird

First Lady Lady Bird Johnson, as part of her beautification efforts at the time, denounced the names of parks, canyons, and, rivers that began with "N-word". She asked both the U.S. Board on Geographic Names and the U.S. Forest Service to change these sites to something more appropriate.

[Thothmes]

14. Depends on who's Civil Rights you are talking about

Suspect a lot of folks in Viet Nam would wholeheartedly disagree with this statement

[RB TexLa]

15. I'd agree. And you have to put President Grant with him.