Lyndon B. Johnson and the Civil Rights Act

There is a picture of President Lyndon B. Johnson preparing to sign the Civil Rights Act on July 2, 1964 at History.com.  Johnson is seated in front of probably 80 political and civil rights leaders.  Look at the body language of the group.  Look at their faces.  The tension in that room is still palpable these 52 years later.  There isn’t a smile in the bunch.  People are seated in closed, legs crossed positions with hands clasped tight in their laps.  Many heads are down.   There are only three people looking directly at President Johnson: Lady Bird (in red, God bless her) is on the far left, and Senators Everett Dirksen (R-Illinois) and Hubert Humphrey (D-Minnesota) both of whom guided the bill through the Senate are seated in the center.  

            This momentous moment was not accompanied with jubilation.  The bill had been born—in large part—of the assassination of President John F. Kennedy.  Kennedy had made passage of the bill one of the key parts of his 1960 campaign.  Since Kennedy neither trusted nor wanted much association with Johnson he had appointed him chairman of the President’s Committee on Equal Employment Opportunities.  This might sound complimentary but it was, in fact, brilliant political theater.  If the bill failed, Johnson (a southerner and a Texan) would be given the blame.  If it succeeded dissenters would be told to blame Johnson.          Of course, the assassination changed the entire dynamic.  To the shock of many, President Lyndon Johnson said that Kennedy’s Civil Rights Act would not only continue it would be passed. 

Johnson was a disciplined old school politician.  He had been in the Senate long enough to know how it worked.  Both sides made compromises.  No one got everything they wanted, but they all got something. Everyone felt they had drawn some concession from the other side.  Everyone had skin in the game.  It was just a beginning.  Everyone knew it, but they also knew that it was a step that needed taking.   

            Nor was there any lack of cynicism in creating this landmark legislation.  Johnson’s comment to Democratic colleagues after signing the bill was “We have just guaranteed the Negro vote for the next 100 years.”  It wasn’t altruism incarnate, but it was the right law.  If what you want is purity, go into theology.  Washington makes sausage.

            A half a century later, we have seen a terrible warping of the message of the Civil Rights Act.  Instead of equal opportunity we see politicians touting Black privilege.  Instead of raising people out of poverty we see welfare in all its forms being used as a sop for votes.  Instead of better education we see standards being lowered and indoctrination being used like a chapter out of the communist playbook. 

            I believe the somber expressions on the faces of those present when the Civil Rights Bill was signed were because they knew of the danger for abuse.  None of them were cockeyed optimists.  They saw humanity as it is, not in some utopian fantasy.  For all of that, there was the hope for change.  The time, the bill and the goal were right.  They knew that future opportunists might hijack the process but could not hijack the intent. 

            We truly need to get back to the intent of the Civil Rights Act which is equal opportunity.  For those who may have drunk too much of that far left Kool-Aid that does not mean the right to first place.  It means the right to try, the right to fail, and the right to succeed or not as one’s talents dictate. 

            Keep that faith.