Presidency of Lyndon Baines Johnson, Civil Rights, Great Society, and Vietnam War

Today we will reflect on the Presidency of Lyndon Johnson, as told in Doris Kearns’ award-winning biography. We ponder:

Why did the Civil Rights movement gain traction during the 1950’s? What part did the Supreme Court Brown decision play?

When did the Democrats and Republicans control the House, Senate, and Presidency during the postwar era after World War II?

Did LBJ only support Civil Rights when it was politically expedient during his Presidency, or did he support Civil Rights throughout his political career?

Why did the American presence in Vietnam escalate? Why did LBJ try so hard to win the War in Vietnam, and how did it help doom his Presidency?

YouTube video for this blog: https://youtu.be/lydW8mfpJGQ

YouTube Script with more book links: https://www.slideshare.net/slideshows/presidency-of-lyndon-baines-johnson-civil-rights-great-society-and-vietnam-war/266199192

YOUTH, COLLEGE YEARS, AND LBJ’S RISE TO POWER

Lyndon Johnson’s father was a small-time farmer and merchant who dabbled in local politics. His mother Rebekah encouraged him to excel in school and attend college to make a difference in the world. After being involved in student politics he served as an aide to a local Congressman, he used these connections to head the Texas branch of the National Youth Organization, a newly created New Deal program to employ youth during the Depression. He leveraged that position to campaign hard for his open Congressional seat, and after serving in the House he then won a close race for an open Senate seat. After Eisenhower was elected President, LBJ was elected as the Democratic Minority Leader, and he became the Majority Leader when the Democrats won control of the Senate in the midterm elections of 1954.

Lyndon Baines Johnson, Youth, Schooling, and Rise to Power
https://seekingvirtueandwisdom.com/lyndon-baines-johnson-youth-schooling-and-rise-to-power/
https://youtu.be/hBYD1yDo9eE

NATIONAL ELECTIONS DURING THE POLITICAL CAREER OF LBJ

When reflecting on LBJ’s political career, it is helpful to know when the Democrats and Republicans were in control of the Presidency and Congress. For most of the years LBJ served in public office, the Democratic Party controlled Congress and the Presidency. When General Eisenhower was elected President in 1952 the Republicans gained control of the Senate and the House, but the Democrats regained control of both houses in the 1954 midterm elections, retaining control when Eisenhower won reelection in 1956, and they retained their control even when Nixon won the Presidency in 1968. Also, in 1968 Governor George Wallace bolted from the Democratic Party and ran for President as a third-party candidate.

(Source: Wikipedia Presidential, House, and Senate elections)

LBJ FIRST BECOMES VICE PRESIDENT, THEN PRESIDENT

Why didn’t Lyndon Jonson seek the Presidency in 1960? He told Doris Kearns that he did not believe a Southerner could win the Presidency in that year. Kearns adds that “LBJ wrongly assumed each Democratic Senator controlled the delegates from his state. While John Kennedy and his men crisscrossed the country, winning primaries, attending state conventions, and rounding up delegates, Johnson remained in his office in Washington, expecting somehow to make the right deals with the right people.”

LBJ decided to accept Kennedy’s offer of the Vice Presidency. In part this was because his role would be diminished, he held real power as the Senate Majority Leader because Eisenhower was a passive president, especially permitting LBJ to play a leadership role on civil rights issues. Plus, he felt that he could make the Vice Presidency into a more powerful position. He told a friend, “Power is where power goes.”

In the beginning, John F Kennedy did try to give Johnson meaningful tasks, keeping him informed on major issues, inviting him to staff and Cabinet meetings and press briefings. However, there was friction and a cultural barrier between Johnson and Kennedy’s staff, and Johnson did not want to be in the limelight. He became more and more withdrawn, feeling somewhat isolated. LBJ did not like being only one of many advisors.[1]

This changed completely twenty-two months after the Inauguration when John F Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas, Texas, in November 1963. LBJ took advantage of the national mood that was affected by this assassination.

Addressing Congress, LBJ proclaimed: “No memorial or eulogy could more eloquently honor President Kennedy’s memory more than the earliest possible passage of the civil rights bill for which he fought so long.” “We have talked about civil rights for one hundred years or more. It is time now to write the next chapter and write it in the books of law.”

LBJ continued, “Let us put an end to the teaching and the preaching of hate and evil and violence. Let us turn away from the fanatics of the far left and the far right, from the apostles of bitterness and bigotry, from those defiant of law and those who pour venom into our nation’s bloodstream.”

Later he told Doris Kearns that “martyrs have to die for causes. John Kennedy had died. But his cause was not really clear. That was my job. I had to take the dead man’s program and turn it into a martyr’s cause. That way Kennedy would live on forever and so would I.”

Kearns notes the “agenda that John Kennedy set for his successor: tax reduction, the civil rights bill, federal aid to education, executive action to improve life in the cities, medical care for the aged, and plans for a poverty program.” And LBJ had a decade of experience in coaxing legislation through Congress.

The Republicans nominated the far-right conservative Barry Goldwater for President, resulting in one of the largest landslide victories in history for LBJ in the 1964 Presidential Elections, which had only been surpassed by FDR. This landslide was increased by LBJ’s vigorous campaigning, he really wanted to truly be Landslide Johnson in this campaign, unlike his first Senate campaign which he won by only eighty-seven votes. This landslide also increased Democratic control of both houses of Congress. The Democrats had a two-thirds majority in the Senate, making filibusters against civil rights legislation more difficult.[2]

LBJ LEGISLATING THE GREAT SOCIETY PROGRAMS

LBJ knew that his Presidential honeymoon sweetened by the tragic assassination of JFK would not last forever. He resolved to feverishly pass as much civil rights and anti-poverty legislation as possible, benefiting all classes of society, black and white. LBJ went to Congress to declare an “unconditional war on poverty.” “We declare a war on a domestic enemy which threatens the strength of our nation and the welfare of our people.”

Doris Kearns remembers, “In the first two years of his Presidency, LBJ seemed to be everywhere: calling for new programs and for action on the old, personally organizing his shifting congressional majorities, signing bills, greeting tourists, settling labor disputes, championing the blacks, constantly on the phone to publishers, businessmen, astronauts, farm leaders, in a working day that began at 7 AM when he watched, simultaneously, the morning shows of all three networks and that ended sometime in the early hours of the next morning.”

Kearns noted that the “Great Society offered something to everyone:”
“Medicare for the old, educational assistance for the young, tax rebates for business, a higher minimum wage for labor, subsidies for farmers, vocational training for the unskilled, food for the hungry, housing for the homeless, poverty grants for the poor, clean highways for commuters, legal protection for the blacks, improved schooling for the Indians, rehabilitation for the lame, higher benefits for the unemployed, reduced quotas for the immigrants, auto safety for drivers, pensions for the retired, fair labeling for consumers, conservation for hikers and campers, and more and more and more.” The bureaucracy was so overwhelmed that often the implementation of all these new programs languished. [3]

Originally the signing of the Medicare Bill was scheduled for Washington, but at the last moment LBJ changed his mind and flew to Independence, Missouri to sign the bill so former President Truman could witness the signing, since a similar program had been defeated when he was president.[4]

Kennedy had proposed a major civil rights bill five months before he was assassinated in late 1963, but it was bottled up in the Senate in a filibuster. Martin Luther King had started to turn public opinion with his protests for civil rights in Birmingham and his famous I Have a Dream speech in front of the Lincoln Memorial. When he became President, LBJ knew he would need a Republican Senator to vote for cloture to halt the filibuster, he persuaded Senator Dirksen to be that key vote. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 signed by LBJ in July 1964 included provisions to strengthen voting rights for blacks, desegregate public facilities, forbid discrimination in public accommodations such as hotels, motels, restaurants, and theaters, and strengthen the Civil Rights Commission.[5]

Martin Luther King, Birmingham, Nonviolent Protests v Bombs and Brutality, Biography Chapter 7
https://seekingvirtueandwisdom.com/martin-luther-king-birmingham-nonviolent-protests-v-bombs-and-brutality-biography-chapter-7/
https://youtu.be/5y0v0tYMdy8

Martin Luther King, I Have a Dream Speech, March on Washington DC, Biography Chapter 8
https://seekingvirtueandwisdom.com/martin-luther-king-i-have-a-dream-speech-march-on-washington-dc-biography-chapter-8/
https://youtu.be/IJ64y3nQA4Q

After his extreme efforts to pass the Civil Rights Act of 1964, Lyndon Johnson sensed that the public needed a break before taking up voting rights legislation. The public needed a breather, and the administration would be busy implementing the new law and setting up the new bureaucracy needed to enforce and administer the new laws. But the events in Selma changed this calculus.

Martin Luther King and the SCLC were trying to register voters in Mississippi and Selma, Alabama. Three students had been lynched and buried alive by the KKK for registering black voters. In Selma, Alabama, marchers faced state troopers, some with clubs, others on horsebacks, some with cattle prods, as they attempted on several days, in several attempts, to march from Selma to the capitol city of Montgomery to present a list of grievances to Governor George Wallace. More brutality was reported when local white supremacist thugs beat up some white ministers after they participated in the march, one died in the hospital a few days later.

Martin Luther King, Bloody Struggles in Mississippi and Selma, Lewis’ Biography Chapters 8-9
https://seekingvirtueandwisdom.com/martin-luther-king-bloody-struggles-in-mississippi-and-selma-lewis-biography-chapters-8-9/
https://youtu.be/eMA_7vLYcdM

When Governor Wallace initially sent state troopers to engage those who were marching on Selma, there was intense pressure on Lyndon Johnson to call up federal troops, but he resisted. He sensed that politically this might make Wallace a states’ rights martyr, he sensed it would be better to let the march play out on television.

Doris Kearns explains, “When Johnson finally sent troops to Alabama, the act was generally regarded, not as an imperious imposition of federal power, but as a necessary measure to prevent further violence. By waiting out his critics and letting the TV clips make their own impression on the country, he had succeeded in persuading most of the country that he had acted reluctantly and out of necessity, not because he was anxious to use federal power against a guilty South.”[6]

Selma was great television, and assisted LBJ’s efforts to pass the Voting Rights Act of 1965, which he signed with Martin Luther King and Rosa Parks looking on. This act prohibited state and local governments from passing laws restricting the voting rights of minorities, prohibited literacy tests and other measures limiting the right of blacks to vote, and required federal judicial review of proposed changes to laws regarding voting rights.[7]

Martin Luther King then turned his attention to staging protests in Chicago to publicize the poverty of Northern Negroes and the substandard multistory housing in the big city ghettoes. Johnson coordinated his legislative efforts with these protests to formulate additional civil rights legislation. But Martin Luther King’s life was cut short when he was assassinated in Memphis while supporting the black sanitation workers’ strike. Less than a month after his assassination, LBJ signed the Civil Rights Act of 1968 that forbade racial discrimination in renting or selling homes.[8]

Martin Luther King & LBJ: Great Society, Vietnam, Chicago & Memphis, Lewis Biography Chapters 10-12
https://seekingvirtueandwisdom.com/martin-luther-king-lbj-great-society-and-vietnam-northern-civil-rights-biography-chapters-10-12/
https://youtu.be/IeKssG8mrlk

LBJ pushed the Great Society legislation through Congress in a hurry. Kearns tells us that “between 1965 and 1968, five hundred social programs were created, administered with varying degrees of success. Some programs, such as Medicare and voting rights, succeeded admirably; others accomplished far less than was originally hoped, such as Model Cities and federal aid to education; while others proved self-defeating, such as community action.” “The Great Society was run by a bureaucracy of one million employees, charged with implementing more than four hundred grant-in-aid programs, each involving dozens of institutions.”

In the beginning, Johnson did establish the Program, Planning, and Budgeting System to monitor these programs, and considered government reorganization plans, but these were not effective, as the concerns of the escalating Vietnam War distracted his attention.

LBJ was frustrated by the media attention that the militant blacks, with their strange clothes and threatening demeanor, were attracting, though they appealed to only a small minority of blacks. But what ultimately derailed the Civil Rights programs were the persistent riots that started in Harlem and Watts in Los Angeles in 1965 and that accelerated after the assassination of Martin Luther King in 1968.

Kearns notes that “Watts was the precursor of more than one hundred riots that stretched out for three long summers, leaving 225 people dead, 4,000 wounded, and $112 billion in property damage.” LBJ was frustrated that these rioters would ruin the cause for so many decent Negroes, preventing further civil rights legislation.

But LBJ also understood the root psychology of those who rioted. He explained to Kearns, “God knows how little we have really moved on this issue, despite all the fanfare. As I see it, I have moved the Negro from a D+ to a C-. He is still nowhere, and he knows it. That is why he is out in the streets. Hell, I would be there too. It was bad enough in the South, especially from the standpoint of education, but at least there the Negro knew he was really loved and cared for, which he never was in the North, where children live with rats and have no place to sleep and come from broken homes and get rejected from the Army. And then they look on TV and see all the promises of a rich country and they know that some movement is beginning to take place in their lives, so they begin to hope for a lot more.”

LBJ added, “No matter how well you may think you know a Negro, if you really know one, there will come the time when you look at him and see how deep his bitterness is.”[9]

WAR IN VIETNAM DAMAGES LBJ’S LEGACY

Politicians of LBJ’s generation remembered the lesson of Munich when British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain surrendered Czechoslovakia to Hitler to avoid another costly war. Chamberlain proudly proclaimed, “Peace for our time,” to adoring crowds in London who vividly remembered the nine million casualties in World War I just a few decades ago, when a generation of young men perished in the trenches of France. One year later, Nazi Germany invaded Poland, starting World War II.[10]

Previously, the United States had fought the brutal three-year Korean War ending in 1953 with an armistice, but no peace treaty, with the 38^th parallel separating North and South Korea, which was the boundary line before the North Koreans attacked. Although this was a hard-fought war, it was a popular war, both in America and especially in South Korea.[11]

In contrast, the Vietnam War was more problematic. The geography was more problematic, much of South Vietnam and Cambodia is jungle, jungle where the enemy can easily hide, jungle that is difficult for a conquering army to hold.

The political situation in South Vietnam was also problematic. Under Kennedy, South Vietnam was ruled by the autocratic and devout Catholic, President Diem, who was very unpopular with his mostly Buddhist citizens. Diem made unpopular decisions to fend off the guerilla Vietcong fighters, who had support among rural South Vietnamese peasants, which caused the Americans and many South Vietnamese to lose confidence in him. In the American-approved coup, Diem was executed, embarrassing the Americans. All succeeding governments were successfully painted by the Communists as puppets of the Americans.[12]

If you like, you can read Kearns’ account of LBJ’s lengthy discussion with Senator Fulbright on the choices confronting him in Vietnam in 1964.[13]

LBJ explained to Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara: “If I let the Communists take over South Vietnam, then I would be seen as a coward and my nation would be seen as an appeaser and we would both find it impossible to accomplish anything for anybody anywhere on the entire globe.” “If I let Ho Chi Minh,” leader of North Vietnam, “run through the streets of Saigon, then I would be doing exactly what Chamberlain did before World War II.” “Robert Kennedy would be telling everyone I had betrayed John Kennedy’s commitment to South Vietnam.”

Unlike the domestic issues he addressed in the Great Society, LBJ was out of his depth in Vietnam, forced to rely on the counsel of military leaders who were only capable of a narrow military focus rather than the larger questions of whether we could win politically and diplomatically as well as militarily. Unfortunately, the recent McCarthy hearings had purged many competent voices from the State Department.

His military advisors advised large-scale bombing of the industrial base of North Vietnam, but LBJ chose gradual escalation. He became just as involved in the running of the war as he did when counting votes for Great Society legislation, but having the President participate in granular decisions on where and when to bomb and attack was not helpful in the long run. They fell into the trap of equating victories with body counts. How do you fight hit-and-run fighters in the jungle? The American and South Vietnamese would capture a hill in bloody fighting only to abandon it afterwards, they would enter and exit the battle zones by helicopter. Sometimes whole villages were destroyed. More and more troops were sent to Vietnam until they numbered over two hundred thousand.[14] The number of American soldiers crept up from just 800 in 1960 to 23,000 in 1964 and 185,000 in 1965, and a whopping half a million in 1966, and the casualties and protests increased at the same pace. And unfortunately, among the protestors was Martin Luther King.

Why was LBJ so stubborn in escalating the war? When his biographer Doris Kearns, who was herself a Vietnam War protester, challenged him on his ranch, LBJ shouted at her. “I will not let you take me backward in time on Vietnam. Fifty thousand American boys are dead, nothing we can say can change that fact. Your idea I could have chosen otherwise rests upon complete ignorance. For if I had chosen otherwise, I would have been responsible for starting World War III. In fact, it was the thought of World War III that kept me going every day. I saw how long the war was taking. I knew what it was doing to my Great Society programs.”[15]

The Tet Offensive, where the North Vietnamese Army went for broke in an all-out assault across Vietnam, changed the course of the war. The major cities of South Vietnam, including the capital Saigon, were attacked, as well as rural areas along the entire front. From a solely military perspective, though massive casualties were suffered by both sides, the offensive was a failure. The Communists hoped to spark a national insurrection, but this did not happen as the Allied troops proved far more resilient than expected, and they beat back the communists on the battlefield. The Vietcong guerilla forces were permanently degraded, their ranks were replenished by regular North Vietnamese soldiers.

However, the Tet Offensive was horrible television. The horrible scenes of war were broadcast for all to see. The American people were shocked to see that the enemy could launch an attack into the heart of Saigon, temporarily capturing both the Saigon television station and the American embassy. Furthermore, the South Vietnamese citizens were likewise shocked that the Allied armies could not protect them from the enemy.[16]

Kearns remembers that the sudden success of the Tet Offensive forces against what “appeared to be impregnable areas deep with South Vietnam suddenly exposed the falsity of the administration’s optimistic progress reports. Until Tet, the Vietcong were forced to fight in jungles or villages, striking quickly and moving on, their true vitality hidden and, therefore, more easily concealed from the American people. Now the news of captured cities, and the films of skirmishes shown on the TV screen night after night, exhibited the other side’s strength.” “What happened at Tet taught the American public an entirely different lesson from the one Johnson had intended to convey.” The approval rating for Johnson’s handling of the Vietnam War dropped from 40 to 26 percent in six weeks, echoed by an even greater loss of confidence by the print and television media. Johnson lost credibility, “a majority of people believed he regularly lied to them.”

There were political rumblings. LBJ complained to Kearns, “I felt that I was being chased on all sides by a giant stampede coming at me from all directions. On one side, the American people were stampeding me to do something about Vietnam. On another side, the inflationary economy was booming out of control.” “I was being forced over the edge by rioting blacks, demonstrating students, marching welfare mothers, squawking professors, and hysterical reporters. And then the final straw.” “Robert Kennedy had openly announced his intention to reclaim the throne in the memory of his brother.”

LBJ addressed the American people on television on March 31, 1968, first announcing that the massive bombing campaign against North Vietnam would be unilaterally halted. The truth was that the Air Force was running out of targets. Then he somberly announced, “There is divisiveness among us all tonight.” “I do not believe that I should devote an hour or a day of my time to any personal partisan causes.” “Accordingly, I shall not seek, and will not accept, the nomination of my party for another term as your President.”

After this speech, the North Vietnamese agreed to participate in the Peace Talks, they argued over the shape of the negotiating table for many years, and the War in Vietnam drug on for another seven years, finally ending in 1975. Robert Kennedy was also shot by an assassin. LBJ accomplished as much as he could in his remaining months, though the country was in no mood for further civil rights legislation.

Although Richard Nixon lost several million votes in the final weeks of the 1968 campaign, Hubert Humphrey proved to be a weak candidate. Although Richard Nixon, who had served as Vice President under Eisenhower, was elected President handily, the Republicans did not gain control of Congress.[17]

OTHER RELATED REFLECTIONS

Doris Kearns Goodwin will release an Unfinished Love Story in April 2024 on her and her late husband’s experiences during the pivotal decade of the Sixties.

Martin Luther King was the first celebrity civil rights leader, he was a great orator, and the civil rights protests were great television, and the brutal violence they faced in the Deep South helped shift public opinion to reverse the Jim Crow legal system upholding segregation, discrimination, and denying blacks the right to vote. We drew on Kearns’ biography to emphasize how Martin Luther King and Lyndon Johnson were partners in passing the civil rights legislation, we used different quotes from her in these reflections.

Martin Luther King, Youth and Schooling, Lewis’ Biography Chapters, 1 and 2
https://seekingvirtueandwisdom.com/martin-luther-king-youth-and-schooling-lewis-biography-chapters-1-and-2/
https://youtu.be/_64FMZ6AlEg

Martin Luther King and Rosa Parks, Montgomery Bus Boycott, Lewis’ Biography, Chapter 3
https://seekingvirtueandwisdom.com/martin-luther-king-and-rosa-parks-montgomery-bus-boycott-lewis-biography-chapter-3/
https://youtu.be/TuiyFycWE-U

Martin Luther King, Lunch Counters, Freedom Riders, and Albany, Lewis’ Biography Chapters 4-6
https://seekingvirtueandwisdom.com/martin-luther-king-lunch-counters-freedom-riders-and-albany-lewis-biography-chapters-4-6/
https://youtu.be/_TLt2fQqL4w

What enabled Martin Luther King to successfully protest for civil rights was the Supreme Court Brown decision, which was actually a culmination of a decades-long legal battle by Thurgood Marshall and other NAACP lawyers. LBJ appointed Thurgood Marshall to an open seat on the US Supreme Court, as he had successfully appealed many cases to that august body.

DISCUSSING THE SOURCES

Doris Kearns’ biography, Lyndon Johnson, An American Dream, was part autobiography, because one of her main sources were her notes of the hundreds of hours she interviewed him after his retirement when she lived at his ranch during her school breaks and summers, both soon after he awoke early in the morning, and bouncing in his pickup truck as he looked after his sprawling ranch in the afternoon.

Doris Kearns was part of his administration; she was a White House Harvard intern until they transferred her to the Labor Department when they discovered she had been an anti-war protester. LBJ was fond of her, she worked again at the White House during his last year as President, and she followed him to Texas to draft his memoirs, a project that stalled and morphed into her biography. Doris Kearns later married; she is now Doris Kearns Goodwin.

Her biography has the same weakness that many histories written soon after the events they describe share: they assume the reader knows historical details that contemporaries saw on television. We had to add background information to many of the events she described that happened over forty years ago.

This is her first biography, and although it is an excellent read, Kearns too often describes in detail how LBJ was able to pass legislation and handle the press without tying these descriptions to actual events. She tends to overemphasize the legislative process that LBJ managed while underemphasizing the events themselves.

[1] Doris Kearns Goodwin, Lyndon Johnson & the American Dream (New York: Signet Book, 1976), Chapter 6, The Vice Presidency, pp. 167-176.

[2] Doris Kearns Goodwin, Lyndon Johnson & the American Dream, Chapter 7, The Transition Year, pp. 176-203, 206-219.

[3] Doris Kearns Goodwin, Lyndon Johnson & the American Dream, Chapter 8, The Great Society, pp. 220-226.

[4] Doris Kearns Goodwin, Lyndon Johnson & the American Dream, Chapter 8, The Great Society, pp. 261.

[5] Doris Kearns Goodwin, Lyndon Johnson & the American Dream, Chapter 7, The Transition Year, pp. 198-200 and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civil_Rights_Act_of_1964 .

[6] Doris Kearns Goodwin, Lyndon Johnson & the American Dream, Chapter 8, The Great Society, pp. 227-262.

[7] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voting_Rights_Act_of_1965

[8] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civil_Rights_Act_of_1968

[9] Doris Kearns Goodwin, Lyndon Johnson & the American Dream, Chapter 10, Things Go Wrong, pp. 300-323.

[10] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Munich_Agreement

[11] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Korean_War

[12] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vietnam_War

[13] Doris Kearns Goodwin, Lyndon Johnson & the American Dream, Chapter 7, The Transition Year, pp. 204-205.

[14] Doris Kearns Goodwin, Lyndon Johnson & the American Dream, Chapter 9, Vietnam, pp. 262-299.

[15] Doris Kearns Goodwin, Lyndon Johnson & the American Dream, Chapter 11, Under Siege in the White House, pp. 324-350.

[16] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tet_Offensive

[17] Doris Kearns Goodwin, Lyndon Johnson & the American Dream, Chapter 11, Under Siege in the White House, pp. 351-368 and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1968_United_States_presidential_election .