Politics
Voting Rites
Thirty-five years ago this month, with Selma, Alabama, erupting in violence over the issue of race, LBJ changed the course of history
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The night that the bill became law, with the 1964 presidential election just four months away, Johnson realized how his leadership might destroy the Democratic party in the South. Sitting on his bed among newspapers that chronicled the day's historic event, he told Moyers, "I think we just delivered the South to the Republican party for a long time to come." In November Landslide Lyndon received 61 percent of the popular vote, more than any other candidate in the twentieth century. But despite his victory over Barry Goldwater, it was already clear that LBJ's premonition was coming true. Goldwater, who had opposed the Civil Rights Act of 1964, carried only six states. One was his home state of Arizona. The other five were Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, and South Carolina.
As Johnson prepared for his first full term, he focused on problems that would affect the nation by the year 2000. He formed task forces to provide solutions to such problems as funding for education and inadequate health insurance for the elderly. He deliberately stayed away from civil rights, even though he wanted a voting rights bill. "He believed there needed to be a pause in the effort," says Johnson biographer Robert Dallek. "He worried that the Civil Rights Act of 1964 would produce violent opposition in the South, though he was wrong on that count: Violence never materialized." Still, in December he privately instructed Attorney General Nicholas Katzenbach to begin looking into legislation that could be introduced when the time was right. "I tried to slow him down," Katzenbach recalls today, "but he wanted his own civil rights bill." With Katzenbach working behind the scenes, LBJ waited for a reason to move forward.
Martin Luther King, Jr., gave him one. On the day after the presidential election, King told the New York Times that he was ready to organize marches across the South in an effort to secure black Americans the right to vote. In Mississippi only 6 percent of eligible blacks were registered. In Alabama only about 20 percent were registered, but in Selma, it was fewer than 1 percent; for that reason, the city would become a focal point. Starting in January, black protesters met with violence at the hands of white police officers, and they were arrested in great numbers. Newspapers tallied the results: "Dr. King and 770 Others Seized"; "520 More Seized." One state trooper reportedly told a marcher, "Sing one more freedom song and you are under arrest." On the day King was released from jail, an ad written in his voice appeared in the Times: "There are more Negroes in jail with me than there are on the voting rolls."
By February King was urging Johnson to act, but the president moved cautiously. Johnson knew that back-to-back civil rights bills could cause an electoral backlash, not only in the South but across the rest of the country. And despite calls for federal troops to protect the protesters, he stood firm: sending soldiers in would cause the Democratic party to lose every white Southern vote. Johnson argued that the Civil Rights Act of 1964 needed time to work, but he said that Congress would receive a voting rights bill by year's end.
That timetable quickly changed. On February 26 a black protester died after being shot by a state trooper in Selma. March 7 brought Bloody Sunday, and two days later a white minister sympathetic to the civil rights movement was beaten by a white mob; he died the next day. Selma came to a boiling point, and Johnson was criticized for his slow reaction by the same activists he wanted to help. He knew he had to act; with Wallace in line, it was finally time. "Johnson was a great believer in timing," says Valenti. "After Selma, he seized that moment like a trout going after a fly."
In his address to both houses of Congress on March 15, LBJ said, "What happened in Selma is part of a far larger movement which reaches into every section and state of America. It is the effort of American Negroes to secure for themselves the full blessings of American life. Their cause must be our cause too. Because it's not just Negroes, but really it's all of us, who must overcome the crippling legacy of bigotry and injustice." Appropriating the language of the civil rights movement itself, he added, "And we shall overcome." Congress responded with a standing ovation.
The Voting Rights Act passed the Senate on May 26, the House on July 9. On August 6 Johnson signed it into law. In typical fashion, he did so in the same room in which Lincoln had signed the Emancipation Proclamation. So many people wanted a pen commemorating the day that LBJ used different ones for different parts of the letters in his name. And for good reason: The bill was in many ways more important than the Civil Rights Act. It suspended all literacy tests in seven of the former Confederate states and placed federal examiners in counties where black registration was below a prescribed level. For Johnson, it became the centerpiece of the Great Society, a sign that he could accomplish anything. Even Vietnam seemed, at that point, winnable.
The optimism would soon shatter. After the Civil Rights Act was enacted the previous year, Johnson had told civil rights leader Roy Wilkins, "Our troubles are just beginning. I guess you know that." He'd feared widespread violence by whites in the South. Though it never happened then, rioting broke out in the black Los Angeles neighborhood of Watts five days after Johnson signed the 1965 bill. When it was over, more than thirty people were dead and six hundred arrested. "Johnson was shocked by it," says Dallek. "That was one thing that pained him throughout the administration. He kept saying, 'Look at everything I've done for black Americans. Why are they doing this to me?'" As riots spread to cities like Detroit and Newark, he wasn't the only one to sense a shift in the content and direction of civil rights. In 1964 only one third of all Americans thought that racial change was coming too fast. Two years later, 85 percent did.
Yet Johnson ultimately accomplished what he wanted. Morally, the nation is united on much higher ground than anyone ever could have imagined. Economically, integration has been a boon to all Americans; one need only look at cities like Atlanta for proof. Politically, the impact of the Voting Rights Act cannot be overstated. By the end of 1966, only four states in the South had fewer than 50 percent of eligible blacks registered. By 1968 registration averaged 62 percent. Furthermore, in the sixties, only a few hundred blacks had been elected to public office; now about nine thousand hold office, thanks in some part to the creation of safe minority districts that almost guaranteed a black candidate could win election.
Most interesting of all, at least as far as the White House is concerned, the electoral power of the South is more certain than ever. Before Johnson, no Southerner had been elected president since before the Civil War, yet three of the six men who succeeded him have Southern roots. "I don't think you could have had another Southern president without the Voting Rights Act," says Katzenbach. "You needed it to legitimize Southern politicians in the North." The 2000 race proves the point: Front-runners George W. Bush and Al Gore each hail from former Confederate states. It's a situation that would no doubt make Johnson proud — except for the fact that the candidate from Texas is a Republican.
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