20 May 2022 7:24 am
KESSLER WAS A LIAR!Beekeeper » 20 May 2022, 7:01 am » wrote: ↑ The quote appeared for the first time anywhere on page 33 of Ronald Kessler’s book, Inside the White House: The Hidden Lives of the Modern Presidents and the Secrets of the World’s Most Powerful Institution, published in 1995:
LBJ’s comment about black people voting Democrat was supposedly uttered to two unnamed governors traveling with the president on Air Force One, but we only have one source — MacMillan, who claimed he overheard the exchange — and no corroboration from anyone else. And then there’s MacMillan’s editorializing: “It was strictly a political ploy for the Democratic party. He was phony from the word go.” And: “This was the attitude of these people who were championing civil rights.”It’s not just that MacMillan gives the appearance of being a biased witness, but also that his cynical portrait is at odds with historical evidence showing that by the time Johnson took office after JFK’s assassination, he was fully committed to Kennedy’s civil rights legislation. Some of this evidence can be found in LBJ’s oval office recordings, in which he can be heard fighting for its passage. Eric Foner writes in the New York Times Book Review:
Lastly, the historical evidence suggests that far from being concerned about securing future generations of black votes, one of Johnson’s main worries — which, to his credit, didn’t prevent him from pushing for passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 — was losing the votes of white Southerners. His former press secretary, Bill Moyers, recounted this scene in his 2004 book Moyers on America:One example of genuine idealism that does come through in these volumes is Johnson’s commitment to civil rights. When he took office, nobody expected that he would identify himself with the black movement more passionately than any previous president. But from his first days in office he urged black leaders, labor officials and businessmen to lobby Congress for passage of the stalled civil rights bill. He asked Robert Anderson, a member of Eisenhower’s cabinet, to work on Republicans: “You’re either the party of Lincoln or you ain’t…. By God, put up or shut up!”
When he signed the act he was euphoric, but late that very night I found him in a melancholy mood as he lay in bed reading the bulldog edition of the Washington Post with headlines celebrating the day. I asked him what was troubling him. “I think we just delivered the South to the Republican party for a long time to come,” he said