The night of Barack Obama’s acceptance speech at Invesco appropriately coincided with both the 45 anniversary of Dr. Martin Luther King’s “I have a dream” speech and the 100th birthday of former President Lyndon Baines Johnson.
As it should have, King’s anniversary got a full bore salute, featuring two of King’s children, as well as Civil Rights pioneer John Lewis.
Johnson’s birth got a two minute voice-over in the early afternoon.
Given the tragedy of the war in Vietnam, echoed as it is today by our War in Iraq, I suppose fans of Johnson should feel thankful he got even that.
Luckily, Robert Caro was around to fill the void, with an article in Wednesday’s Times, chronicling the crucial roles played by both King and Johnson in bringing us to the moment at Invesco:
“The heroism of the march at Selma, the heroism all across the South, the almost unbelievable bravery of black men and women — and children, so many children — who marched, and were beaten, and marched again, for the right to vote, created the rising tide of national feeling behind the passage of civil rights legislation, the legislation not only of 1965 but of 1964 and 1957. That feeling did so much to make the legislation possible. It has taken me scores of pages in my books to try to describe that heroism, and all of them inadequate. But it also took Lyndon Johnson, whom the black leader James Farmer, sitting in the Oval Office, heard ‘cajoling, threatening, everything else, whatever was necessary’ to get the 1965 bill passed and who, with his legislative genius and savage will, broke, piece by piece, in 1957 and 1964 and 1965, the long unbreakable power of the Southern bloc.
‘Abraham Lincoln struck off the chains of black Americans,’ I have written, ‘but it was Lyndon Johnson who led them into voting booths, closed democracy’s sacred curtain behind them, placed their hands upon the lever that gave them a hold on their own destiny, made them, at last and forever, a true part of American political life.’
LOOK what has been wrought! Forty-three years ago, a mere blink in history’s eye, many black Americans were unable to vote. Tonight, a black American ascends a stage as nominee for president. ‘Just give Negroes the vote and many of these problems will get better,” Lyndon Johnson said. “Just give them the vote,’ and they can do the rest for themselves.
All during this long primary campaign, after reading, first thing every morning, newspaper articles about Barack Obama’s campaign for the presidency, I would turn, as part of the research for my next book, to newspaper articles from 1965 about Lyndon Johnson’s campaign to win for black people the right to vote.
And I would think about Johnson’s great speech, when he adopted the rallying cry of black protest as his own, when he joined his voice to the voices of all the men and women who had sung the mighty hymn of the civil rights movement. Martin Luther King cried when he heard that speech. Since I am not black, I cannot know — cannot even imagine — Dr. King’s feelings. I know mine, however. To me, Barack Obama is the inheritor of Lyndon Johnson’s civil rights legacy. As I sit listening to Mr. Obama tonight, I will be hearing other words as well. I will be hearing Lyndon Johnson saying, ‘We shall overcome.’” —Robert Caro in the NY Times–8/27/08
Lovely.
During our ugly primary campaign, Hillary Clinton was unfairly taken over the coals for citing the necessity of Johnson’s role in passing the Civil Rights and Voting Rights Acts. In the low point of his campaign, Barack Obama called her remarks “unfortunate.”
Much of the historically ignorant press echoed such nonsense, and the foul stench of the blogosphere was far, far worse. At one point, my fellow Room 8 blogger, Rock Hackshaw , actually compare Johnson’s role to the one played by FW De Klerk in ending apartheid.
How vile.
De Klerk was a pragmatist cutting his losses. Johnson, who spent his life accumulating the chips of power, was finally cashing in his winnings.
With the nomination of Obama, it is not only King who has finally seen his dream from the mountaintop, but Johnson as well.
This time, let us not forget that.