History Made Every Day™

MLK and LBJ

The unlikely partnership of Johnson, a master politician, and King, a visionary preacher, began just a few days after Johnson became president upon the sudden assassination of John F. Kennedy.

Kennedy had proposed landmark legislation that outlawed segregation in U.S. schools and public places. But the bill was stuck in congressional committees. And King, frustrated by the slow progress under Kennedy, was now willing to test the moral imagination of the new president.

Johnson was born and raised in conservative and segregationist Texas. As a teacher, Johnson believed segregation condemned the South to educational and economic backwardness. But if he wanted to be a successful politician, he had to be careful.

In 1937, Johnson was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives as a liberal New Dealer allied with Democratic President Franklin Roosevelt. Johnson voted against civil rights, along with other southern congressmen, telling his liberal friends, "You can't be a statesman if you don't get elected." Johnson still spoke out against civil rights when he successfully ran for the U.S. Senate in 1948.

Johnson, the consummate "Washington insider" politician, mastered the legislative process. In 1955 at age 46, he became the youngest Senate Majority leader in U.S. history. But liberals within his own party soon began to attack him. They said he was too cozy with popular Republican President Dwight Eisenhower and demanded stronger action on housing, jobs, and civil rights.

Johnson had never voted for a civil rights bill. But he was determined to shake his southern image and became a truly national politician (after all, he wanted to run for president himself someday!). In 1957, when a civil rights bill came before Congress, it looked as if he would be finally forced to take a stand.

Johnson not only favored the bill, but worked hard behind the scenes to win passage. He moved from one side to the other, persuading southern Democrats and northern liberals to compromise. The Civil Rights Act of 1957, the first civil rights legislation to pass since Reconstruction, was signed by President Eisenhower in September 1957. While it lacked teeth needed for significant change, Johnson saw it as a crucial first step.

Johnson's presidential ambitions were derailed in 1960 by John F. Kennedy. But hoping to broaden his appeal to conservative southern voters, JFK invited LBJ to join the Democratic presidential ticket as his running mate. In November, the Democrats barely defeated Eisenhower's two-term vice president, Richard Nixon.

As vice president, Johnson was essentially rendered powerless. But some historians argue that, ironically, the conservative Johnson pushed the more liberal Kennedy to go further and faster on civil rights than the president intended to go. Author Taylor Branch in Pillar of Fire cites Johnson's 1963 Memorial Day speech at Gettysburg as an example.

When Johnson met with King a few days after Kennedy's assassination, King told him racial tensions could no longer be tempered by compromise. Johnson, who appreciated King's powers of persuasion, decided to utilize his experience in parliamentary politics and the bully pulpit for passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Act.

Perhaps the most dramatic moment of the long struggle came on June 10, 1964. To break a filibuster, Johnson had California Democrat Clair Engle, who was dying of a brain tumor, wheeled onto the Senate floor. Engle couldn't speak, so LBJ had him signal his aye vote by pointing to his eye.

The Senate approved the act itself nine days later and Johnson signed it on July 2, 1964, with King in attendance (note: Engle died July 30).

While Johnson was elected to a full term as president in a landslide that November, he was beaten by Republican Barry Goldwater in five Southern states. It was a sign that Democrats would eventually pay an electoral price for decades to come.

Still, Johnson continued to work closely with King. The two met in February 1965 to plot out a plan to insure voting rights for black Americans. King would march in Alabama and LBJ would propose legislation.

State troopers used clubs and whips to halt King's march from Selma to Montgomery, even killing some protesters. Sensing a change in public sentiment, Johnson proposed a voting rights act in a stirring speech to a joint session of Congress. In closing, he slowly intoned the battle hymn of the civil rights movement, "And we shall overcome." Almost everyone rose in thunderous applause.

King kept marching as Johnson twisted arms in Congress. They had done it again. Johnson signed the National Voting Rights Act of 1965 on August 6. He gave the first pens to key legislators and then gave one to King.

In 1966, Johnson and King turned their attention to "fair housing" to beef up enforcement of laws against discrimination in housing. But when King went north he said had "never seen such hate -- not in Mississippi or Alabama -- as I see here in Chicago." The legislation stalled. And Johnson's relationship with King soured with the civil rights leader turned against the Vietnam War.

By March 1968 there was still no hope of passage in the House. But all that changed when King was assassinated in Memphis on April 4, triggering riots across the country by discontented blacks. On the morning after, Johnson, as a last tribute to King, started working the phones. The bill passed and Johnson signed it April 11, a mere week after the assassination.

In the end, King and Johnson got it -- they needed each other to pass these landmark laws and create what King called "a second emancipation."