The Soul of America by Jon Meacham

Author:Jon Meacham
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
Published: 2018-05-08T04:00:00+00:00

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And of Lyndon Johnson’s. In the months after the Kennedy assassination, the new president pressed his old colleagues on Capitol Hill to give the civil rights bill a full and fair trial. President Johnson asked King to come see him in the Oval Office on Tuesday, December 3, 1963. LBJ spoke of the minutiae of reform—he needed to force the legislation out of the Southern-controlled Rules Committee in the House with a “discharge petition,” a device that would put the bill on the floor for a vote. Johnson was understandably consumed with the maneuver. Without it the bill would die a procedural death; with it progress was possible. “He made it very clear he wants the civil rights bill out of the Rules Committee before Christmas,” King told reporters afterward. “He means business. I think we can expect even more from him than we have had up to now.”

The day before his meeting with King, Johnson had also made himself clear in a telephone conversation with Washington Post publisher Katharine Graham. “Now every person that doesn’t sign that petition has got to be fairly regarded as being anti–civil rights,” Johnson had said. “I don’t care if he votes against the bill after he gets a chance to vote on it….But I don’t think any American can say that he won’t let ’em have a hearing either in the committee or on the floor. That is worse than Hitler did. So we’ve got to get ready for that and we’ve got to get ready every day. Front page. In and out. Individuals. Why—are—you—a-gainst—a—hearing? And point ’em out and have their pictures and have editorials and have everything else that is in a dignified way for a hearing on the floor.”

Johnson went to work on members of the House and, after victory there in January (when the Rules Committee forwarded the bill to the full House) and in February (when the House passed the legislation), he shifted his energies to his former colleagues in the Senate. He needed sixty-seven votes in the upper chamber to invoke cloture and cut off the Southern-led filibuster.

“They tell [this] story [about] the difference between Kennedy as president and Johnson as president,” recalled James H. Rowe, Jr., an old FDR hand:

A senator would come to Kennedy and say, “I’d love to go along with you, Mr. President, but it would give me serious trouble back home.” Kennedy would always say, “I understand.” Now Johnson knew damn well the senator was going to tell him that, and he never let the senator get to the point of his troubles back home. He would tell him about the flag, and by God, the story of the country, and he’d get them by the lapels and they were out the door. That’s why he got so much done so fast. Roosevelt would do that, too. He would do it, let’s say, with more charm than Johnson, but they’d get the same results. They’d get what they wanted.

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