To gain further perspective on Lyndon Baines Johnson’s importance in bringing about civil rights, I will compare him to other leading figures and organisations.
Martin Luther King
Martin Luther King is perhaps the most well-known figure in the struggle for civil rights. He won a Nobel peace prize for his non-violent approach towards gaining civil rights. Most famous for his ‘I have a dream’ speech at the Washington memorial in 1963, King’s name is nearly synonymous with civil rights. King’s most notable achievements include: The Montgomery bus boycott; On December 1st, 1955, Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat to a white man on a crowded bus, for which she was arrested. After this, Martin Luther King organised a boycott of the buses, which he felt was the most effective course of action. As blacks were poorer than whites, they made up the majority of bus users, and the boycott struck a huge blow at the transport system. Eventually the bus companies started to look for help. Almost a year after the start of the boycott, segregation on buses was made illegal by the Supreme Court. The boycott was a resounding success and made King a small celebrity. Setting up the SCLC; in 1957, King and other civil rights activists set up the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, a group dedicated to bringing about civil rights through Christian teachings. Through the group, King organised marches, and his non-violent tactics gained a lot of media coverage and international attention for the civil rights movement. The Project C campaign in Birmingham, Alabama; King organised a series of sit-ins and marches, in order to provoke arrest by the racist authorities. Children and teenagers took part in the campaign, as they were running short of adult volunteers. The police used water cannons and dogs to control the marchers, which caused huge national outrage and media coverage. After the march, public places became more open to blacks, ‘Jim Crow’ signs came down, and Eugene Connors, head of the police department, lost his job. Selma, Alabama; King and the SCLC had been campaigning for voter registration for months, to fierce resistance. A series of marches from Selma to Montgomery were organised. On the first march, 750 marchers were arrested. On the second march, marchers were stopped by state troops at Pettus Bridge; the troops used tear gas and sticks on the protesters. On the third march, King led 1500 protesters to the bridge, which he had agreed to with Lyndon Johnson, with whom he worked very closely. Many blacks were annoyed at his approach. On the 25th of March, King led 25,000 protesters to Montgomery to hand a petition to demand voting rights to George Wallace, the governor. Also, King helped to organise the 1963 march on Washington, where he made his infamous ‘I have a dream’ speech. Overall, Martin Luther King accomplished a lot between 1955 and 1968, when he was assassinated. The nationwide riots after his death are a testament to his achievements. However, King worked very closely with Johnson. Nick Kotz, winner of the Pulitzer Prize and reporter for the Washington Post said that “President Lyndon Baines Johnson and civil rights leader Martin Luther King, Jr, were virtually co-conspirators”. This shows that they obviously worked very closely together and also outlines Johnson’s importance in King’s achievements. The source is likely to be reliable because Nick Kotz is a well-respected journalist who is also a winner of the Pulitzer Prize. I think that Johnson was more important than King because although King gained huge media coverage and won several victories, it was Johnson, as president, who pushed through important legislation, the kind of legislation that would have been almost impossible for anyone other than Johnson to push through.
Malcolm X
Malcolm X was also a very important figure in the civil rights movement. Unlike King, Malcolm X believed in separatism, that blacks and whites should be kept separate. He frequently made bitter rants about white people, and preached that the only way for black people to get their rights was to take them, saying, ”I am for violence if non-violence means we must continue postponing a solution to the American black man’s problems.” This shows he had no qualms about using violence if he felt he had to; he was completely unlike Martin Luther King in that respect. They both shared the same goals but believed in different ways of attaining them. I do not think Malcolm X was very important in the civil rights movement. Preaching violence was not the way to gain the support of the white population, who were the most important benefactors of the movement. He changed his beliefs after visiting Mecca near the end of his life, but was assassinated before he could do anything worthwhile. Malcolm X mainly just passed his anger on to the next generation of African-Americans, leading to the start of Black Power and the Black Panthers. The achievements of Johnson went far further than Malcolm X’s. Whilst Johnson passed legislation to better the lives of African-Americans, Malcolm X just taught them to hate white people.
Black Power
Black Power was another important factor in the civil rights movement. I think the movement was partially to blame for the demise of the civil rights movement in the mid-to-late 1960’s, along with the Vietnam War, which pulled people’s attention away from the civil rights movement. Black Power was pioneered by Stokely Carmichael, the leader of the SNCC, introduced Black Nationalism into his beliefs and in 1966, after Malcolm X’s death, he convinced fellow members to expel white members from the group. In 1966 Carmichael and other members of the SNCC broke away to form the Black Panther Party, a party devoted to Black Nationalism. The group employed Malcolm X’s proposed tactics of revolutionary action- they dressed in black and carried handguns with them on patrols, to guard against whites attacking blacks in racist attacks. However, rather than helping the civil rights movement, the black power movement undermined the cause and alienated black people. The extremist views and actions of the Black Panthers in particular contributed to this. James T. Patterson, author of ‘The Civil Rights Movement: Major Events and Legacies’, writes, “New groups, notably the Black Panthers, alarmed whites whilst others, including the nation of Islam, rejected integration entirely. White financial support for Civil Rights groups, which had been vital, dried up.” The book was written about the Civil Rights Movement in general, so it was not biased, and James T. Patterson is a well-respected historian who had his facts right. Overall, the Black Power Movement had a negative impact on the Civil Rights movement. Lyndon Johnson again was far more important in advancing civil rights.
The Grassroots movement
The Grassroots movement was the bottom-up movement by thousands of protestors, of all races, to improve civil rights in America. Often, too much credit is given to people like Martin Luther King, when, a lot of the time, it is the main populace who take action. It was women who boycotted the buses after Rosa Parks was arrested, which was a huge success. The Student Non-violent Coordinating Committee was a grassroots organisation, which also enjoyed great success. It organised hundreds of demonstrations throughout the South, and its tactics of provoking the racist police forces into brutality gained great media coverage and national outrage. The freedom riders were also an important factor in the Civil Rights Movement. They drove buses full of white and black people through different states to protest against segregation. In Alabama, a bus was assaulted by a group of racists who torched the bus and attacked the riders. This outraged the Kennedy administration, which sent 400 federal agents to protect the freedom riders. Overall, the grassroots campaign was hugely effective, more so than leaders such as King. Anthony J. Badger, in his book ‘Different Perspectives on the Civil Rights Movement’ says, “Too much attention has been given to the big personalities at the expense of the people who really enacted change.” This interpretation is reliable as Anthony J. Badger is a professor of American history at Cambridge University, specialising in post-World War 2 Southern American politics, so he is an expert in the field he is writing about. I think the grassroots movement is just as important as President Johnson in bringing about civil rights. Although Johnson signed the important legislation, the grassroots campaigners worked for years to enact change, and brought it about just as much as Johnson or any other president did, through putting pressure on the government and by publicly showing the racism and brutality of the Jim Crow states.
President Kennedy
John F. Kennedy was a factor in the Civil Rights Movement as well, even though he didn’t get to complete a full term as president. The Birmingham campaign convinced him to act against segregation and racism publicly. He de-segregated the University of Mississippi, supporting James Meredith. However, Republicans and conservative Democrats were elected into Congress, so what he could do was limited. A factor was that he didn’t have the political skill Johnson had in order to get the Southern politicians to his side. His 1963 proposal of the Civil Rights Bill was met with vehement opposition, and some say it took the shock of his death to get it passed. Although Kennedy was an outspoken supporter of civil rights, for example his support of the freedom riders, he didn’t have the legislative skill to pass any major legislation. Lyndon Baines Johnson, however, did have the political experience and skill to force the bill through, as well as subsequent Acts, like the 1965 Voting Rights Act and the 1968 Civil Rights Act. Kennedy did, however, convince white voters in the North to support civil rights. In Ben Walsh’s OCR Modern World History (History in focus) textbook, says about Kennedy, “…unlike his successor he was not as strong when it came to convincing Congress to back him.” As this was written for GCSE students to study and is approved by the government, this textbook should be non-biased and therefore the interpretation quoted should be non-biased. The book is written for students in England, so it would have no political stance when it comes to American politics. Therefore, I think the interpretation is reliable and strengthens my point that although President Kennedy was an outspoken advocate of the Civil Rights Movement, he lacked the political skill and experience to push any landmark legislation through Congress, making him less important to the Civil Rights Movement than his successor, Lyndon Baines Johnson.
President Nixon
President Nixon was the Republican president who replaced Johnson in 1969. Nixon, however, didn’t have civil rights high on his list of priorities as president, instead making the evacuation of American troops from Vietnam his number one priority. Nixon did, however, strengthen some of the laws his predecessors had put in place. Nixon dismantled the dual-school system, which for a long time had been a symbol of racial inequality. He came into presidency over a country that had 70% of black children in the South attending all-black schools. He chose Spiro Agnew, his vice president, to chair a special Cabinet Committee on education, to find the best way to desegregate schools peacefully. By 1974, the amount of black students in the South attending all-black schools had fallen to 8%. This is useful because it shows through statistics that Nixon was effective to some extent in bringing about civil rights, even though he did not consider the issue a priority. Overall, Nixon did have an important effect in desegregating schools, and destroying the dual-school system, both of which had been serious issues in civil rights for years. However, I do not think Nixon had a big impact in actually bring about civil rights, unlike Johnson. He merely advanced legislation that had already been put in place, and while he did this effectively, he did not pass any ground breaking legislation to hugely change the lives of African-Americans.
Conclusion
Overall, I think President Johnson was very important in bringing about civil rights in America. He passed ground-breaking legislation such as the Civil Rights Act of 1964, and the Voting Rights Act of 1965, both of which greatly advanced the lives of black people in America, socially and economically. I think that without Johnson, that legislation wouldn’t have been passed at all- no other president could have had both the willpower and the political skill to get them pushed through a Congress dominated by Republicans and conservative Democrats, who both opposed the passage of the bills. I think he was motivated by gaining political popularity early in his career, but when he got into a position of power he used that power to better the lives of those who were poor or discriminated against, showing that he genuinely cared about civil rights and wanted to improve the lives of those downtrodden by society.
I think Johnson was more important in bringing about civil rights than any of the previously mentioned groups and public figures. Although many of them made the struggle for civil rights public and brought attention to it, nothing would have happened if Johnson hadn’t signed the legislation. Black people would still be required to take literacy tests before voting and discrimination in housing and schools would still be rife.
A number of different sources support my claim that Lyndon Johnson was very important in bringing about civil rights. Congressman Bill Foster describes the passage of the 1964 civil rights act by Lyndon Johnson as “...one of the greatest steps forward for civil rights in the history of our country.” This was published in the Chicago Tribune newspaper, a republican newspaper, which would normally oppose whatever the Democratic Party did. However, the fact that it supports Johnson in this instance shows the magnitude of what Johnson achieved with the passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Act. Normally, a republic newspaper would cater for its republican audience by writing pro-Republican, anti-Democrat articles, and the fact that it has written an article praising Johnson, a Democrat, shows that the passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Act was a victory for not just the Democrat Party, but for the whole nation. This interpretation is reliable for that very reason- praise from a Republican newspaper would have to be hard-won.
In Lisa Jardine’s article for The Independent newspaper, she says about Johnson,” He was eventually responsible for establishing some of the most important cornerstones of liberal American legislation, the most significant of which was ground-breaking anti-poverty and civil rights legislation, whose effects can still be felt in the Unites States today.” This shows that Johnson was very important in bringing about civil rights in America, again. However, this article was written for The Independent newspaper, a left-wing newspaper, that would support liberal reforms such as the civil rights act, making it at risk of being biased and thus unreliable. Despite this, though, the fact that it is written for a newspaper means it cannot be overly biased, so the point still stands- that Johnson was very important in bringing about civil rights in America.
Bibliography of sources
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