Civil Rights Hero, Unrepentant Racist, or Race Traitor

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Could Lyndon B. Johnson have been all these things? It depends on who you ask. To the hardline segregationists of the south, LBJ, once one of the stalwarts of white supremacy, who fought every piece of Civil Rights legislation ever to move through Congress during his tenure as a Representative from Texas, was a Race Traitor. To the black people who worked for him or interviewed him, LBJ was an Unrepentant Racist who once told his chauffer to never expect to be called by his first name and to get by pretending to be a piece of the furniture. (Parker, Robert; Capitol Hill in Black and White; Dodd, Mead & Co; 1986) History treats LBJ as a Civil Rights Hero for switching sides and helping pass the Civil Rights Act of 1957 (which he referred to as the n****r bill), and then as President signing the Civil Rights Act of 1964, and the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Historians are quick to point out that LBJ would never have signed these bills had Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr and the movement he led not forced his hand. LBJ kept making empty promises to MLK, time after time, until time ran out for him and LBJ either got those bills passed and signed them, or face a second civil war. Perhaps the most despicable thing LBJ ever did was get J. Edgar Hoover, leader of the FBI, to fake a tape of Dr. King with another woman and have it delivered to Coretta, in an effort to discredit Dr. King and sabotage the Civil Rights movement. So, was LBJ an Unrepentant Racist? Almost certainly. Was he a Race Traitor? From the point of view of the segregationists and white supremacists in the south, he was. Was he a Civil Rights Hero? Not of his own free will, perhaps, but the bills he signed into law, and the actions that followed, set the stage for the greatest advances in Civil Rights here in the United States since emancipation. On this day when the US celebrates the life, work, and legacy of Dr. King, I feel it is only appropriate to take a look at the man whose actions in response to Dr. King's work helped Dr. King change a nation.