Hillary's Comment on MLK and LBJ

"A genuine leader is not a searcher for consensus but a molder of consensus." - Martin Luther King, Jr.

Recently in the past few days, the civil rights movement has finally been brought up in the hotly contested democratic primary between Sen.'s Hillary Rodham Clinton, and Barack Obama. A flare up by the Obama camp and his supporters over a remark Hillary made on Fox News about Obama comparing himself to Martin Luther King Jr and John F. Kennedy, causing an ensuing controversy that's tying the Clinton campaign down as it fights for the black vote in South Carolina. The media has since barked the call and has been up and arms defending Obama's interpretation of his rival's remarks, leaving many viewers oblivious to those pesky historical facts on the issue.

Hillary was on Meet the Press with Tim Russert the other day and said of her remarks:

"I was responding to...Senator Obama himself...and his comparison of himself to Kennedy and Dr. King. There is no doubt that inspiration offered by all three of them is essential....Dr. King didn't just give speeches. He marched...he was gassed. He was jailed..."

She added that King "wanted somebody in the White House to act."

Clinton is factually right and, after seeing the video of the comment, I am convinced that she met no disrespect to King's legacy.

Lyndon Johnson played an important, crucial role in making the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Voting Rights Act of 1965, and the Fair Housing Act of 1968 a reality. He sacrificed his own favor with southern conservatives to do the right thing. I see a particular irony that some southern Black elected officials, some of whom owe their seats in Congress to the changes effectuated by the Voting Rights Act, now criticizing Clinton for remembering her civil rights history. Noting Johnson's role is not disrespectful to King's legacy. It's simply a historical fact. And Clinton's memory seems to be on target.

But you don't have to take my word for it; Lyndon Johnson recorded his phone conversations during his tenor in office.

This direct transcription is of a few days after Johnson became President. Many people of this country were very worried about Johnson on civil rights. When he first ran for the Senate in '48, he did so as an anti-civil rights candidate, as many did in Texas in those days. So many black leaders especially worried that when Johnson, the first southern president in all that time, became president, he might not have the kind of commitment to civil rights that John Kennedy had. Johnson knew he needed to assure the civil rights movement leadership if he were to sign a bill with meat, so he called King:

PRESIDENT JOHNSON: A good many people told me that they heard about your statement. I guess on TV, wasn't it?

MARTIN LUTHER KING: Yes, that's right.

PRESIDENT JOHNSON: I've been locked up in this office and haven't seen it, but I want to tell you how grateful I am and how worthy I'm going to try to be of all your hopes.

MARTIN LUTHER KING: Well, thank you very much. I'm so happy to hear that, and I knew that you had just that great spirit. And you know you have our support and backing. We know what a difficult period this is.

PRESIDENT JOHNSON: It's just an impossible period. We've got a budget coming up that we've got nothing to do with. It's practically already made. And we've got a civil rights bill that hasn't even passed the House and it's November, and Hubert Humphrey told me yesterday that everybody wanted to go home, and I'm going to ask the Congress Wednesday to just stay there till they pass 'em all. They won't do it, but we'll just keep them there next year until they do, and we just won't give up an inch.

MARTIN LUTHER KING: Uh-huh. Well, this is mighty fine. I think it's so imperative. I think one of the great tributes that we can pay a memory of President Kennedy is to try to enact some of the great progressive policies that he sought to initiate

PRESIDENT JOHNSON: Well, I'm going to support 'em all, and you can count on that. And I'm going to do my best to get other men to do likewise. I'll have to have you-all's help. And I never needed it more than I do now.

In conjunction with the civil rights movement, Johnson overcame southern resistance and got Congress to pass the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which outlawed most forms of racial segregation. Johnson signed it into law on July 2, 1964. Legend has it that, as he put down his pen, Johnson told an aide, "We have lost the South for a generation," anticipating a coming backlash from Southern whites against Johnson's Democratic Party. In 1965, he achieved passage of a second civil rights bill, the Voting Rights Act, which outlawed discrimination in voting, thus allowing millions of southern blacks to vote for the first time.

In 1967, Johnson nominated civil rights attorney Thurgood Marshall to be the first African American Associate Justice of the Supreme Court. After the murder of civil rights worker Viola Liuzzo, Johnson went on television to announce the arrest of four Ku Klux Klan's men implicated in her death. He angrily denounced the Klan as a "hooded society of bigots", and warned them to "return to a decent society before it's too late." He turned the themes of Christian redemption to push for civil rights, thereby mobilizing support from churches North and South. At the Howard University commencement address on June 4, 1965, he said that both the government and the nation needed to help achieve goals: ...To shatter forever not only the barriers of law and public practice, but the walls which bound the condition of many by the color of his skin. To dissolve, as best we can, the antique enmities of the heart which diminish the holder, divide the great democracy, and do wrong - great wrong - to the children of God...'.

Lyndon Johnson was a calculating politician for much of his political career, but when it came to civil rights, he recognized the absolute need for deep measures. Much has been made by historians and commentaries of Johnsons political talents, but rarely mention the courage it took for him to sign the civil rights bill of 1964. Just the same, many focus on the oratory talents of Martin Luther King, Jr, but fail to acknowledge the mans brilliant, calculating political talents which drove for political consensus on a political measure that would bare real results. Dr. King understood and accepted the power of government, and worked hard to gain its trust. Sen. Obama's claim that Clinton is playing the race card and denigrating Martin Luther King, Jr's legacy is both shameful and historically inaccurate. This attack is strictly political, as he tries to lesson the advantage the Clintons enjoy over him, the long and sustained love by the black community. Obama knows he cannot win the party nomination if he fails to win over the black community. Hillary is clearly getting an unfair shake by a media that's afraid of history books and by a rival who is running for president without a record of accomplishments.
I know Hillary's right on the history, but I'll let the civil rights leader speak for himself:

"The problems of poverty, urban life, unemployment, education, housing, medical care, and flexible foreign policy were dependent on positive and forthright action from the federal government." - The Autobiography of Martin Luther King, JR. Edited by Clayborne Carson.