When President Lyndon B. Johnson took office in 1963, his advisers urged him to abandon President John F. Kennedy’s pursuit of civil rights law. If he did not, they warned, he would lose the support of the Southern Democrats, who were crucial to his election. LBJ famously replied, “Well, what the hell is the presidency for?”
President Joe Biden is now facing his own civil rights battle. With states enacting hundreds of voter suppression laws targeting color communities and Senate Republicans blocking the sweeping voting exercise, Biden should urge the U.S. Senate to end the filibuster and the For The People Act and John Lewis Voting Rights Adopt the Advancement Act to Save Our Democracy by Jim Crow 2.0.
President Johnson would do that. Instead of following the advice of his advisors, Johnson took bold steps to promote civil rights for black Americans. As veteran Washington Post journalist Mary McGrory put it, Johnson used “an incredible, powerful mix of persuasion, persuasion, flattery, threat, reminder of past favors, and future benefits” to pass two of the most critical laws of the 20th century: the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965.
Johnson used every tool in his arsenal to tackle an “American problem” he called. He told Georgia Senator Richard Russell, a renowned segregationist and leading voice in the Senate filibuster against civil rights law, “Dick, I love you and I owe you. But … I’ll run you over if you challenge me to this civil rights law. “He encouraged Senator Hubert Humphrey, who wrote the Civil Rights Act, and Majority Leader Mike Mansfield, to put pressure on Senate minority leader Everett Dirksen, and others, so that they break the Republican filibuster. He met regularly with civil rights activists like Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and continued to express his commitment to the cause in speeches and public appearances. When the Senate invoked Cloture in June 1964 and in order to put an end to the longest filibuster in history, it was believed that Johnson’s tactics got up to a dozen senators to pass the Civil Rights Act.
President Joe Biden speaks about child tax credit relief payments that are part of America’s bailout during an event held in the Eisenhower Executive Office building in Washington, DC on July 15, 2021.
SAUL LOEB / AFP via Getty Images
Now, decades later, a party that is losing touch with the majority of Americans and unable to win free and fair elections is determined to roll back rights and democratic practices for President Johnson and the civil rights movement fought passionately. Republicans have tabled over 380 bills in state parliaments designed to restrict voting rights, particularly in the democratically-minded color communities. Georgia’s latest electoral law is so strict that the US Department of Justice has filed a lawsuit against the state. The Supreme Court, with three new Trump appointees, dealt the final blow in Brnovich’s decision against the Democratic National Committee to maintain Arizona’s voting restrictions, which severely weakened the effectiveness of the 1965 Suffrage Act.
As Senate Democrats attempt to overcome Republican filibuster and opposition from West Virginia Democratic Senator Joe Manchin to pass the For The People Act and the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act, President Biden now has the opportunity to follow Johnson’s example to follow and cement his own legacy as an advocate for civil rights.
Biden has called for the need to protect and expand voting rights. But he still has to demand an end to the filibuster, this “Jim Crow relic,” as former President Barack Obama called it at the funeral of John Lewis last year, leaving obstructionists like Senator Manchin and Senator Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona instead.
Like Joe Biden, Lyndon B. Johnson was a vice president and a senator for many years before becoming president. With years of experience, Johnson understood the power of the presidency to subordinate recalcitrant senators to his will and advance his civil rights agenda for the American people. If Biden hopes to succeed with the agenda that the American people voted for and badly needed, he too must abandon political caution and use all the tools and power of the presidency to do what’s right for Americans and for them Future of American democracy to do. History’s eyes are on him.
John Bonifaz is the co-founder and president of Free Speech For People.
Ben Clements is the chairman and senior legal advisor to Free Speech For People.
Free Speech For People is a national not-for-profit legal advocacy organization dedicated to defending our democracy and our constitution.
The views expressed in this article are one’s own.
Comments are closed.