Luci Baines Johnson Praises President-Elect Obama

Luci Baines Johnson, in her CNN commentary on Barack Obama's election, is correct when she says civil rights courage came from her father, President Lyndon B. Johnson.

LBJ's youngest daughter is attrating some of today's most frequent Google searches, and for good reason. Just consider her clever but also poignant revison of the Rev. Martin Luther King's famous quote: "My father's dream was to open the doors of opportunity to all Americans regardless of the color of their skin or the quantity of their pocketbook."

Luci Baines Johnson gives proper credit to the leadership of Dr. King, along with her father, for beginning on a long path that opened the door for Barack Obama's presidential victory on Nov. 4.

Not all historians will agree with Luci Baines Johnson's glowing tribute to her father. There have been accounts in some quarters of Lyndon B. Johnson using vicious ethnic slurs in private, and associating with known racists as he began his ascent in Texas politics. Those were different times, and only LBJ's soul will know what his earlier attitudes may have been. The vast majority of reviews are positive, from peers who range from Bill Moyers to the late Jack Valenti.

Luci Baines Johnson accurately recalls that when LBJ signed the Civil Rights Act of 1964, followed by the Voting Rights Act of 1965, he was not gaining political points. President Johnson said he feared, even expected, that white backlash from his decisions would cause Democrats to lose political power in the South. Indeed, a majority of white Southerners switched to Republicans starting with Richard Nixon in 1968. Even with Obama's victory, few have switched back, at least not so far.

Luci Baines Johnson recalls this well-known line from her father's landmark 1965 speech: "Their cause must be our cause too. Because it is not just Negroes, but it is really all of us who must overcome the crippling legacy of bigotry and injustice, and we shall overcome." That statement took a whole lot more courage in 1965 than it would take today.

Presidents Franklin D. Roosevelt and John F. Kennedy were revered by African-Americans, but both hesitated to take the steps for civil rights that Lyndon Johnson took Luci Baines Johnson has given her father, and in the process Barack Obama, a good and fitting tribute.

SOURCE

http://www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/11/23/johnson.lbj.obama/