S[quote=“Sniffit, post:18, topic:14885”]
Others want to ignore that component completely and argue against Califano by pointing out that Johnson never specifically suggested Selma or saying things that evince the resentment I’m talking about, like “whatevs, MLK didn’t need Johnson to tell him what to do” (which of course is a bit of a straw man compared to what Califano seems to really be arguing after you strip away the reductionist click-bait headlines that painted him as saying Johnson deserves all the credit).
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Califano, and I quote: ¨In fact, Selma was LBJ’s idea…¨. Nothing too reductionist click-baity about it. And it’s not butt-hurty to point out that King & Co. did not need Johnson to direct them- they’d been directing themselves just fine for years.
Edit: Sniffit, just read if you haven’t already, Taylor Branch’s ¨Parting the Waters¨. If you can come away from reading that and not be incensed by Califano’s attempt to make it out like Johnson and King were like the Two Amigos, or that Johnson was somehow providing the intellectual or practical advice for the civil rights movement, I’d be surprised.
Umm, 'cos it doesn’t change what I’m talking about?
In fact, Selma was LBJ’s idea, this is what galled me and others
he considered the Voting Rights Act his greatest legislative achievement,
and I salute him for that*
he viewed King as an essential partner in getting it enacted yes, but King and Co. were working on a lot of other things that Johnson was not on board with
— and he didn’t use the FBI to disparage him. no, he just didn’t or couldn’t stop the FBI from doing so
Look, if in fact the movie suggests that LBJ wasn’t for the VRA, or that he was totally hostile to King, or suggests that Johnson sicced the FBI on King, I’ll disagree with the movie. I haven’t seen it yet, but the Johnson hagiography in the first clause of the sentence gives me pause as to the veracity of his criticism of it.
“And in fact, there’s nothing I can see in the transcript Califano links to that even suggests that Johnson originated even indirectly the March on Selma.”
I think you, and the director of this film need to go back to remedial reading & comprehension, because you both very clearly misunderstood the point mr. califano was actually making in that statement. he wasn’t referring to the city of Selma per se, he was referring to the march itself, whatever city Dr. King chose to use as the “worst” example. if it had been Huntsville, just insert Huntsville, in all the places Selma is used. perhaps mr. califano could have been a little clearer in his description, but it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to understand the (very) simple point he was making.
the march on (insert your worst southern city here) was a concept, not a directed event in a specifically pre-identified city. that was the point mr. califano was making. I guess the next time he writes a column, he’ll have to consider dumbing it down, so the short bus riders will get it.
the bottom line: were it not for LBJ’s political acumen and legislative tenaciousness, many of those bills might never have passed. had they passed, it would have taken much, much longer. LBJ knew who had all the skeletons in congress, and which closets they were hidden in. he used that knowledge to twist arms, that JFK couldn’t, or at least couldn’t have as quickly. frankly, I wouldn’t mind having a modern, progressive democrat LBJ in the white house right now, he wouldn’t have let the republicans get away with stopping up the works for the past 6 years, as Pres. Obama has been more or less forced to do. it isn’t that Obama lacks the smarts or political chops, what he lacks is the institutional knowledge that LBJ absorbed, during his many years in congress. you just can’t replace that kind of experience with book learning, regardless of how smart you are.
Someone being sympathetic to a cause isn’t the same as someone organizing it.
The people in NY and Ferguson protested without help from outsiders at first. Sure, they have political help now, but to give too much praise for people that respect the cause, even later join the cause, isn’t right.
LBJ is not the reason MLK marched. He could have approved or disapproved and the march would have still happened. Had he disapproved things would/could have gotten worse.
If you knew much about the way Hoover ran roughshod over everyone, you wouldn’t be suggesting that Johnson was ‘letting’ him do anything. Hoover’s command of politics and the hidden secrets of the powerful meant that Johnson could do little more than obstruct.
Personally, I think you should quit harping on the 'It was LBJ’s idea…" line. I read the Califano piece and I took that statement in the same way he made it on NPR. “Selma” is a euphemism for the worst place in America in terms of voting rights. That King chose that exact city is beside the point. LBJ was cooperative in developing the strategy that Selma represented.
In the end, we can all agree that LBJ was no saint, but, then again, neither was King. However, both were transformative figures who took huge risks and paid high prices to do what they thought was right. If LBJ’s strategy didn’t always mesh with King’s, it often had to do with political realities more than a desire to hold back on civil rights. He was fighting a much wider war and needed to massage a reluctant congress to put the great society on his desk. If that meant occasionally opposing the timing of King’s actions, it didn’t necessarily signal a weak commitment to civil rights. It was pragmatism.
Remember, Johnson knew what passing the civil rights law would do to his party. He handed the Presidency to Nixon and set in motion the political realignment that put conservatives in power for most of the next half century. But it was the right thing to do.
Is it so hard to accept the idea that a white Southern President could have been a willing collaborator in bringing equal rights to more citizens? Why is it hard not to see the symbolism of that collaboration? Why does the movement HAVE to be 100% King for it to resonate? For me, the idea that people of all stripes could reject injustice has a lot of power.
LBJ couldn’t stand Hoover. of course, very few people could. he also, like pretty much every president before him, had little, if any control over Hoover. Hoover had been investigating Dr. King, and every other civil rights activist, since long before LBJ was vice president, much less president, LBJ had zip to do with that, and couldn’t stop it. the only thing that finally stopped Hoover was dying. even then, it took another decade or so, before Hoover’s acolytes were finally flushed out of the FBI.
if the director of this movie knows so little about the actual facts surrounding this event in particular, and the civil rights movement of the 60’s in general, they should have had someone doing research, or hired a history professor, who’s specific area was the civil rights movement in the US, as a consultant on the film, to make sure they got basic facts right. there really is no legitimate excuse for this, there are a gazillion publicly available documents that could have been studied, to get this thing right. shame on the director for being lazy.
My, what a lot of “code” in this statement. No African American woman director is going to direct a movie on MLK and civil rights without doing the research. Just common sense.
First of all, I agree with both of these responses to your simple-minded comment. You take one phrase, with no context, from Califano’s column.
He also wrote, “…the film falsely portrays President Lyndon B. Johnson as being at odds with Martin Luther King Jr. and even using the FBI to discredit him, as only reluctantly behind the Voting Rights Act of 1965 and as opposed to the Selma march itself.”
As the others say, to blame Hoover’s horrendous harassment of King on LBJ is ludicrous. It’s well known that Hoover kept files of American leaders’ foibles and made it clear that he’d make them public if anybody tried to constrain his power - and LBJ had plenty of personal foibles.
To doubt Johnson’s sincerity on civil rights is to fundamentally misrepresent 20th century American history. You - and possibly the director of this film - ought to try reading a little.
Oh, so Mr. Califano meant to say : ¨Selma¨was LBJ’s idea
As opposed to : Selma was LBJ’s idea
He was speaking metaphorically! Brilliant! Except that that’s even more insulting, considering the years that King & Co spent strategizing, marching, going to jail, and even dying. Johnson made a suggestion in a phone conversation where he was clearly trying to get King in his corner. I respect Johnson for that, but to suggest that that one suggestion in any way makes him responsible for the civil rights movement is ludicrous, and it was the civil rights movement that was responsible for ¨Selma¨.
And pardon me for taking umbrage to your suggestion that I need lessons in reading comprehension.
Oh, for fuck’s sake. Have you seen the movie, or are you taking Califano’s word for what it portrays? And you must be having an argument with some straw man, 'cos I never expressed doubt about Johnson’s sincerity on civil rights, or blamed Johnson for the FBI’s harassment of King, except to point out that Johnson didn’t- or felt he couldn’t- stop it.
I said very clearly that I hadn’t seen the movie, but yes, Joseph Califano is a person to whom I assign some credibility.
That’s changing the subject, though. You wrote, “I haven’t seen the movie yet, so I can’t comment on what the movie implies, but I do know that the FBI, among other things, sent a letter suggesting suicide to King at the end of '64, and that government surveillance and harassment of King continued to the end of his life. While I don’t think Johnson was directing Hoover to do this, he certainly didn’t stop him.”
That implies both that LBJ was complicit with Hoover AND that he was helping to obstruct the civil rights movement. Quit trying to have it both ways, for fuck’s sake.
LBJ doesn’t encourage them to march, he encourages them to provide examples of literacy tests as a means prohibiting blacks from voting http://www.lbjlibrary.org/press/marches-for-civil-rights. The Johnson statements of January 1965 (audio included) does not show LBJ proposing a march against injustice. If the movie got it wrong then the National Parks Service has gotten it wrong for years http://www.nps.gov/nr/travel/civilrights/players.htm.
Man, that’s the large part of it for sure. I really like Johnson, and think his civil rights stance was laudable, and no doubt sincere. But I know too much of the history of the civil rights movement (and not just MLK- Christ on a stick, I’m of Irish extraction, but I think they should call his birthday of March 17 Bayard Rustin Day) to let someone take away credit due to a people’s movement and give it to a President.
