“Dr. King’s dream began to be realized when President Johnson passed the Civil Rights Act,” Clinton said. “It took a president to get it done.”
The quote is already infamous. But it’s worth a second look with news from South Carolina that Congressman Jim Clyburn may rethink his neutral stance in the that state’s upcoming primary. That could be very bad for Hillary Clinton.
Josh Marshall, three days ago, asked his readers to take a deep breath, pointing out that the excerpt above was only a small part of a larger quote:
“I would, and I would point to the fact that that Dr. King’s dream began to be realized when President Johnson passed the Civil Rights Act of 1964, when he was able to get through Congress something that President Kennedy was hopeful to do, the President before had not even tried, but it took a president to get it done. That dream became a reality, the power of that dream became a real in peoples lives because we had a president who said we are going to do it, and actually got it accomplished.”
Josh made the point that Hillary referred to two presidents. Said he:
“Jack Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson, one of whom inspired but did relatively little legislatively and Johnson who did a lot legislatively, though he was rather less than inspiring. Quite apart from the merits of Obama and Clinton, it’s not a bad point about Kennedy and LBJ.”
Josh is right, I think, in arguing that the full quote casts Hillary in a more favorable light, particularly if one is concerned about her understanding of political history. Kennedy did relatively little for the Civil Rights movement. His greatest contribution to the struggle for African-American equality was, there’s no polite way of putting this, dying. Lyndon Johnson used JFK’s memory to whip votes for the Civil Rights Act, accomplishing what Kennedy had not — as Hillary notes.
But that’s a narrow view of MLK’s dream, which extended beyond voting rights, beyond de jure discrimination to the more complicated de facto realm:
“I say to you today, my friends, that in spite of the difficulties and frustrations of the moment, I still have a dream. It is a dream deeply rooted in the American dream.
I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: “We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal.”
I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit down together at a table of brotherhood.
I have a dream that one day even the state of Mississippi, a desert state, sweltering with the heat of injustice and oppression, will be transformed into an oasis of freedom and justice.
I have a dream that my four children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.
I have a dream today.
I have a dream that one day the state of Alabama, whose governor’s lips are presently dripping with the words of interposition and nullification, will be transformed into a situation where little black boys and black girls will be able to join hands with little white boys and white girls and walk together as sisters and brothers.
I have a dream today.
I have a dream that one day every valley shall be exalted, every hill and mountain shall be made low, the rough places will be made plain, and the crooked places will be made straight, and the glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together.”
Hillary, whether in the truncated or the complete quote, ignores the expansiveness of Dr. King’s dream. Instead, she offers an inside-the-Beltway revisionist history of the Civil Rights movement, a top-down interpretation, in which presidents were the key players rather than the men, women, and children who marched and sat-in and faced mortal danger to realize an ephemeral dream that, in many parts of the nation, including swaths of South Carolina, is still a dream deferred.
Congressman Clyburn, meanwhile, fought for that dream. The biography on his website indicates that he became a leader in the local chapter of the NAACP when he was just twelve years old. He later took part in several important Civil Rights marches. He also met his wife in the movement. And then he became a history teacher in Charleston before helping, one assumes after he entered Congress, to raise more than $1.5 million for an Archives and History Endowment established at South Carolina State University, his and his wife’s alma mater.
Clyburn, in other words, has a command of both the lived and learned history of the Civil Rights movement. Of Hillary’s comments he said: “We have to be very, very careful about how we speak about that era in American politics.” “It is one thing to run a campaign and be respectful of everyone’s motives and actions, and it is something else to denigrate those. That bothered me a great deal.”
Bill Clinton may have been our first Black president. But if Hillary is perceived by African-American voters as being on the wrong side of a memory fight over the Civil Rights movement, she’s in trouble. She could, if she isn’t more careful with her use of the past, come across as the Goldwater Girl she once was.
Update: I should be clearer on a few points. First, I don’t believe that Hillary is racist — really, I don’t — or that she doesn’t know the history of the Civil Rights movement. My point is largely about perception: in suggesting that she has a top-down view of the struggle for African-American equality, a view in which presidents were more important than the movement’s leaders or rank-and-file, it becomes easy for people to believe that she lacks the proper respect for Martin Luther King and the people who fought so hard to help realize his dream.
Second, if I’m right about that, about that issue of perception, and Clyburn’s comments suggest to me that I am, that’s a problem for Hillary. The Clinton name has great resonance with African-American voters. The Toni Morrison piece, linked above, calling Bill the “first black president,” is telling. But, I remember back to Coretta Scott King’s funeral, where Bill was brilliant. Hillary was, well, less brilliant. So even if she was speaking strictly about political history when she made her comment to Fox’s Major Garrett, she runs the risk of tarnishing an important part of the Clinton brand — especially if Clyburn endorses Obama.
Third, the one way in which I’m not willing to be as charitable to Hillary as Josh is this: I think her formulation does misread the history of the Civil Rights movement in an important way. And her misreading is just the sort of thing that I’d expect from someone who has lived in the White House. Hillary suggets that the Civil Rights Act was a kind of capstone to the movement, and that President Johnson, therefore, realized Martin Luther King’s dream. Wrong and wrong, as far as I’m concerned. The King dream, as noted above, was not just about clearing away legal impediments to Black equality; it was about transforming “the jangling discords of our nation into a beautiful symphony of brotherhood.” The individuals who would be the key players in such a symphony were not going to be presidents or Supreme Court justices; they would have to be ordinary Americans. If the dream is ever going be realized, in other words, it will have to be from the bottom up.
Update II: Here are more links to Josh Marshall’s ongoing and very thoughtful coverage of this and related issues: here, here, here, here, and here.
38 comments
January 11, 2008 at 7:53 am
blueollie
Disclaimer: I am an enthusiastic Obama supporter.
I don’t think that HRC meant to come across that way, but her remarks can be taken as a huge insult against those who faced the open wrath of police dogs, fire hoses and the KKK.
LBJ was able to do what he did because of the blood, sweat, tears and angst expended by the hundreds of thousands who put their skins on the line for civil rights.
January 11, 2008 at 9:39 am
ari
Thanks, blueollie, I’ve tried to clarify that your comment was exactly what I meant to be saying.
January 11, 2008 at 10:58 am
urbino
FWIW, which is probably little, I agree with you. I think Josh missed something important, both historically and politically; namely, just what you’ve expressed.
I think Josh got it exactly right, however, when he identified the dog-whistle racism in Karl Rove’s recent WSJ editorial. (If I weren’t so lazy, I’d provide a link.)
January 11, 2008 at 11:07 am
ari
Yes, I saw that post and agree. But that will seem like small potatoes if Obama gets the nomination. Which should not be read as my saying that he shouldn’t get the nomination. Oh, and here’s the link.
January 11, 2008 at 11:14 am
BEW
Ari,
I don’t think your update really helps. Hillary is talking about Presidents and how, having the right President, can make a big difference in what is accomplish. She is running to be President , a position that can obviously wield a great deal of power. It would make sense that would talk about President she admires (active vs passive, handson vs caregiver, etc)as it tells we voters what she type of President she hopes to be.
She never said anything at all about civil rights activists and the role they play or did not play in the quote you supplied. Unless you have more quotes, all that that you wrote in the update is conjecture on your part.
Finally, I think calling Hillary a Goldwater girl is cheap shot since Goldwater was against the Civil Rights Act. You are suggesting she is racist. Yes, I know she supported Goldwater as a teenaget but I don’t think we should hold people accountable for what they believed as teenagers.
January 11, 2008 at 11:53 am
blueollie
BEW, I am the last person to defend Goldwater, but I did read parts of his book.
He said that had the Civil Rights Act covered the Federal government and would have prohibited Federal Government discrimination, he would have voted for it.
And by the way, HRC did comment on her “Goldwater Girl” days in her book Living History: she says that the Republican Party “left her” more that she “left it”.
So, I don’t think that Ari took a cheap shot, nor did I see it as Ari calling HRC a racist.
January 11, 2008 at 12:28 pm
bitchphd
I agree with what BEW is saying. Not nec. the part about the Goldwater thing–although I’m sure that her teenage support for Goldwater may very well hurt her with some voters–but I don’t think you were taking a cheap shot there trying to imply that she’s racist. But I do think that what she was saying was clearly meant to talk about what a president can substantively do to help disenfranchised Americans, what she can do specifically and beyond simple lip service, bully pulpit kinds of things.
That said, of course your analysis of how her statement might be read is accurate.
January 11, 2008 at 12:36 pm
ari
BEW, thanks very much for the comment. If Hillary had said what you wrote (ever consider signing up to ghost for a candidate?), I don’t think I would have bothered posting. Because I agree that, when considering the nature of reform movements and social change, having a sympathetic and effective president can be absolutely critical. But she said something else again:
“That dream became a reality, the power of that dream became a [sic] real in peoples lives because we had a president who said we are going to do it, and actually got it accomplished.”
So yes, she admires LBJ, one assumes, but the crux of the quote is that it takes a president to do the heavy lifting for the Civil Rights movement. If you think I’m misreading that part of the quote, I think we’ll just have to agree to disagree. Because I can’t imagine reading those words in any other way.
As to whether my update is conjecture, sure, there’s some of that. But mostly it’s an argument, suggesting that: 1) Hillary might have hurt herself by making her comment. 2) Offering some reasons why that might be the case. 3) Speculating about the foundation of the comment itself.
Moving on, it’s a pretty tough rhetorical bind I find myself in when I have to say, as clear as day, that I’m not accusing Hillary of racism only to be told that I am. I’d ask you to please read the post again: there’s not much there to suggest that I think she’s racist. Elitist? Maybe. A so-so historian? Yup, that’s a case I make. Someone whose views of the past might damage their poltiical prospects? Again, yes. But you’ve decided that I’m accusing her of being racist. And I just don’t see that at all. Sorry, I really don’t.
Finally, I didn’t say that she’s a Goldwater Girl. I don’t think she is anymore. But I do think she opens herself up to those kinds of accusations when she offers her rather cramped narrative of the Civil Rights movement’s history.
January 11, 2008 at 12:41 pm
ari
Oh, Bitch PhD and I were cross-posting — in case that’s not clear. And, given that, I would say that if what Bitch is saying is what BEW meant, okay. I’ll buy that. But I still think her way of saying what the two of you are saying (maybe) betrays a top-down view of the past. Is that surprising? Nope. She was the first lady of the United States, is a seated US senator, and has been one of the most powerful and recognizable people in the world for fifteen years. Such people, I’d guess, often have a top-down view of history, as they’re at the top. But one of Bill Clinton’s greatest strengths was to project the sense that he was always looking at the past and the present from the bottom up. And this quote suggests to me that Hillary has a harder time doing that.
January 11, 2008 at 12:43 pm
ari
There’s also a mess of open questions about whether Hillary thinks that Dr. King’s dream has been realized. Or not.
January 11, 2008 at 12:47 pm
ac
I don’t know that she has such a hard time, in general, with the bottom up point of view. Just as Obama got his start in civil rights work, she started in family law and the Children’s Defense Fund. It’s just that she can’t cast herself in the same role as Obama, having gone with the experience theme, and has to distinguish herself and make her point somehow. She may have chosen the wrong way to do that, but it’s about constructing a helpful narrative from the position she’s in, not a general failing, I’d say.
January 11, 2008 at 12:56 pm
charlieford
(Disclaimer: I’m NOT a Hillary supporter.)
Golly. Can we have a reality check? Is it fair to judge a political speech–preumably extemporaneous–by the standards of history as a discipline? She’s not writing history per se. And her “began to be realized” shows she’s not making the broad claims you read into her speech.
Only a deliberately uncharitable misreading would take her “the power of that dream became real in peoples lives” as a re-writing of history. She’s talking about the presidency, and how important the individual occupying it is. A micro-parsing of her words here needs to be balanced with a recognition of what her thrust was. She’s not saying LBJ was important and MLK wasn’t; she’s saying that, had Barry Goldwater been in office then, there would have been no CR or VR Acts.
Do we really have an argument with that?
She’s making a simple point: that MLK’s agenda wasn’t implementable even in part without executive action. Did MLK himself believe anything different? Why did people march on WASHINGTON after all? Wasn’t the whole point of such marches to enact a living petition of the government to act on the peoples’ concerns?
January 11, 2008 at 12:59 pm
ari
Good point. Her work at CDF, where I first heard about her, was really laudable. And certainly established her credibility as someone who cares deeply about social justice. Which I really believe she does. But that was a long time ago, at least so far as the building blocks for a narrative go.
And I’m half trying to figure out what kind of support she’s going to get in the African-American community. The conventional wisdom has been that African-American voters in South Carolina haven’t been flocking to Obama because either: 1) They think he can never win because he’s Black. 2) He’s not Black enough. But I’ve always guessed that the Clinton name mattered more than punditts were suggesting. This flap, epsecially if Congressman Clyburn endorses Obama, could become very meaningful. Or not.
January 11, 2008 at 1:01 pm
bitchphd
Yeah, I don’t know one way or the other about her point of view. But I do think that one problem she has as a candidate, ironically, is that she is very honest about her view of the specific office she is running for. E.g., all the folks who hate her for saying she is “keeping all options open” re. Iraq. To me, that sounds like a smart, honest statement: the situation is complicated as shit; once whoever wins the election is in office, they will have to consult with a ton of people about what’s happening, what can and can’t be done, etc.; we have, like it or not, real interests in Iraq and the Gulf region generally that mean that “just walk away” is not going to happen, no matter what people wish we’d do. All that said, pulling out might very well be the “best” or only thing to do at this point. But I wonder if the candidates who are saying they’ll definitively pull our troops out might not find themselves scrambling to explain why they’re not doing that once they’re in office.
January 11, 2008 at 1:04 pm
charlieford
Sorry I garbled a bit of that, meant to sy “wasn’t implementable in important parts without executive action.”
I also meant, by “deliberatey uncharitable,” that we’re refusing to see the specific points she’s making as subordinate to the larger point. By pulling out specific propositions and then only viewing them in terms of how they correspond with the history of the Civil Rights movement does a kind of hermeneutical violence here.
January 11, 2008 at 1:09 pm
ari
Cross-posted again. Drat. Why did people march on Washington? I wish Lucy B would show up to answer that. But she’s doesn’t seem to be around, so here’s a link to her book. In the meantime, though, the answer is, as with any major historical event: it’s complicated. But claiming citizenship by occupying the nation’s most important public space was a big part of the story. As was getting the attention of federal officials. Just as you suggest.
As to whether I’m being uncharitable. Maybe. But I’m not convinced that’s the case. You point to the first part of the quote: “began to be realized.” I would counter with, again: “That dream became a reality, the power of that dream became a real in peoples lives because we had a president who said we are going to do it, and actually got it accomplished.” I stand by my point: that’s a very top-down analysis of the Civil Rights movement.
January 11, 2008 at 1:15 pm
ari
“hermeneutical violence here”
Not surprisingly, I don’t see it that way. When candidates for office use history as a lever, I think it’s both fun and important to think about what they’re saying, why they’re saying it, and then, in some cases, to respond
“she is very honest about her view of the specific office she is running”
I think this is one of her most appealing traits, along with a deep intelligence, an admirable work ethic, and a lifelong commitment to public service. I’m less fond of her overt racism (That is SO a joke. Please don’t hate me.).
January 11, 2008 at 1:22 pm
charlieford
“As to whether I’m being uncharitable. Maybe. But I’m not convinced that’s the case. You point to the first part of the quote: “began to be realized.” I would counter with, again: “That dream became a reality, the power of that dream became a real in peoples lives because we had a president who said we are going to do it, and actually got it accomplished.” I stand by my point: that’s a very top-down analysis of the Civil Rights movement.”
If she was giving an academic lecture on the Civil Rights movement, I’d agree with you. But I don’t think she’s offering any kind of “analysis” of the Civil Rights movement; she’s offering an analysis of the importance of the Presidency. She’s not unaware, I’m sure, that part of MLK’s dream was to get America out of Vietnam, and LBJ hardly made THAT a reality. What he did do was tear down certain pillars of Jim Crow.
I’ll stand by this point/question: Unless we honestly believe it wouldn’t have mattered were Goldwater president, what are we criticizing?
January 11, 2008 at 1:34 pm
ari
“what are we criticizing”
Y’know it may be that my current project — on historical memory — has placed a bee in my bonnet. That said, I’m interested in the way that a presidential candidate, not a professional historian, understands the past. And from there, I get VERY interested in the production and consumption of historical mythologies: in this case, that Hillary suggests, I think, that presidential politics was the driving force behind realizing MLK’s dream.
So, getting back to the original post, yes, I think Hillary’s political history is pretty darned good. As you say, had Goldwater been president, not so much with the Civil Rights Act. Also, probably, if Kennedy had lived. But in terms of an understanding of how the Civil Rights movement — and maybe social movements more broadly — affected chage, Hillary’s comment strikes me as deeply wrong. And maybe, though I’ll grant only maybe, telling.
January 11, 2008 at 1:50 pm
lige
I think it would have been possible for Hillary to have given (well deserved) praise to LBJ for his accomplishments without implicitly criticising MLK. LBJ is a good model (minus the Vietnam war of course) for what Hillary could offer as president though I’m not sure if she really does have the legislative abilities he had.
January 11, 2008 at 1:50 pm
urbino
It’s just that she can’t cast herself in the same role as Obama, having gone with the experience theme
I think this is an excellent point, ac. By making the strategic and rhetorical choice of favoring experience as a theme, she had fewer rhetorical options when she got around to making this point — which is, in itself, a fair one.
I still think Ari is right that it was unfortunate and may well hurt her, but, in light of your point, it’s hard for me to tell whether her rhetoric indicates the top-down view of history Ari suggests, or is simply a by-product of earlier rhetorical decisions.
(Did I use the word “rhetoric” in its various forms enough times in that comment? If not, here’s one for W: rhetoricalocity.)
January 11, 2008 at 1:53 pm
charlieford
Oh, Bama!
Again, no argument on the broader issues. But I’ll stand by my point that we can misunderstand by virtue of close readings of such statements. I don’t doubt that she sees the world from an executive point of view more than the rest of us do. And, as Heidegger said, “every revealing is a concealing.” But, how sophisticated do we have to be to grant all that (charity, in other words) as we analyze her statement and its import.
Again, golly.
I’ll let it rest with that, since I’m already repeating myself and I’m not being funny.
January 11, 2008 at 2:02 pm
ari
Me, too. Not being funny, that is. And I can’t stand that. Seriously, though, I appreciate your comments and hope I didn’t offend. I’ll bring the funny again when I get more sleep. Our little one has a cold and is waking us up constantly.
January 11, 2008 at 2:35 pm
Matt W
“she’s offering an analysis of the importance of the Presidency”
But this is a slightly odd thing to do in the circumstances. Because the person she’s criticizing is someone who’s himself running for President. So she can’t make the argument, “Hey, whatever you want, you need me on the inside, just like MLK needed LBJ.” Because, if Obama wins the presidency, he’s on the inside.
What she was saying, I think, is something like: “Inspiring rhetoric is one thing, but what you really need is a legislative maneuverer like LBJ. I’d be more effective at getting a program enacted even if I don’t give out grand sweeping rhetoric.” And here I think Ari is right: This is a top-down view of change, because the point of the inspiring rhetoric is to mobilize support. If there isn’t any inspiring rhetoric, there isn’t anything there to sign.
Another thing she’s trying to do is set Obama up as JFK rather than LBJ, where JFK is the one who talked big but couldn’t get things done. Which I think is a slight misreading of the history — as I understand JFK didn’t really try for much on civil rights until he was pushed by the Movement. So again, a bottom-up approach is important.
Of course one of the issues here is that we don’t seem to be dealing with a movement that’s as specific as the civil rights movement. That makes it harder to tell whether we should be dealing with top-down or bottom-up views of change anyway.
January 11, 2008 at 2:39 pm
charlieford
Good point, Matt. I’ll rethink it. And no offence taken or meant, ari. Sleep tight.
January 11, 2008 at 3:45 pm
ari
Here are more links to Josh Marshall’s ongoing coverage of this and related issues: here, here, here, here, and here.
January 11, 2008 at 5:30 pm
andrew
Patterson, 405-6
January 11, 2008 at 5:47 pm
urbino
Of course, there would’ve been no Court involvement had there been no boycott to save. Chicken and egg, again.
What she was saying, I think, is something like: “Inspiring rhetoric is one thing, but what you really need is a legislative maneuverer like LBJ. I’d be more effective at getting a program enacted even if I don’t give out grand sweeping rhetoric.” And here I think Ari is right: This is a top-down view of change
True, but I’m still not sure, given the reality ac noted, we can quite attribute that top-down view to Hillary. That she actually holds such a view and that her rhetoric merely gives the appearance of such a view as an artifact of other, prior choices, are equally probably hypotheses, IMHO.
So while I’m on board with saying the statement likely hurts her, I can’t quite get to saying she actually holds that top-down view.
January 11, 2008 at 5:49 pm
urbino
Also, I think it highly unlikely that Hillary would be the successful legislative maneuverer that LBJ was. Extremely unlikely.
January 11, 2008 at 6:34 pm
ari
Jim Patterson, one of my mentors, is not necessarily renowned for his bottom-up views of the past. And I’d also love to know when Thurgood Marshall said that. In other words, was it after he was on the Court, and thus, perhaps, more inclined to see things from a top-down perspective. Once you climb all of those steps, after all, you get a pretty panoramic view.
January 11, 2008 at 7:26 pm
urbino
Marshall’s comments didn’t strike me as surprising. I’ve only read Taylor Branch’s history of the CRM, so I’ve only gotten one view into it, but the sentiments quoted above seem pretty typical of the NAACP insider’s opinion of King. A pretty darn good summary of them, in fact. They saw him as an amateur stirring up more trouble than was necessary, starting something he couldn’t finish.
January 11, 2008 at 8:02 pm
charlieford
urbino, I think you’re right that Hillary is (will be) no LBJ. I didn’t know LBJ, but I’ve read about him (and lived through his presidency). See here:
http://charlieford.wordpress.com/2008/01/07/what-worries-me-the-hillary-file/
January 12, 2008 at 3:27 pm
genesiawilliams
We all millitants here right?
Civil Rights Act and my issues with it.
It is an act and not part of the fiber of the nation. I don’t pretend to know if it can be made permanent but the fact is it can be rescended. So earth to Hil, where we the presidents since…. if we are all so progressive why didn’t it become permanent surely the freedom and rights of a group of people could just be slid in there as a cemented fixture. But I guess the strikethrough of the 3/5th’s thing was enough.
And King’s dream included better neighboorhoods and schools and what not , no red lining…. just ya’ know little stuff…. so if she’s preparing to seriously tackle these things then let’s talk. kudos to Kennedy and even LBJ for what they did, but Kennedy was a war hero and all sorts of wonderful red,white, and blue things——– he got shot for as much and less.
Top down interpretation is right.
January 13, 2008 at 10:39 am
Ed Schmitt
I agree with just about everything you said here, but I do take issue with the conventional wisdom that seems to predominate that Kennedy “did relatively little for the Civil Rights movement.” This is not a perfect reverse analogy, but when you teach about the sectional crisis of the 1850s, do you suggest that James Buchanan “did relatively little” for the the cause of slavery for his putting the weight of the presidency behind the Lecompton constitution? There are certainly grounds for criticizing Kennedy for not doing more, more vigorously, and leaving the litigation over legislation strategy earlier. But in my own research in African American newspapers, there is a clear sense that while they were at times frustrated with Kennedy and wanted him to do more, that he was on their side. As the Washington Afro-American editorialized on June 8, 1963, 3 days before his civil rights address declaring it a moral issue for the first time from the White House perspective, “The Eisenhower people – just didn’t care about civil rights. President Kennedy does. And the majority of his appointed aides and officials do. Not only does President Kennedy want desperately to change the plight of the colored American, he believes firmly in his heart that America can only meet her moral commitments to the world in terms of a solution to racial inequities. Because President Kennedy’s actions have given new hope to colored Americans, he has, in effect, touched off a series of demonstrations all over the country, started by colored Americans secure in the knowledge that their government was on their side at this time.”
Certainly this is only one angle of vision, and as historians we can perhaps take issue with the naivete of this view, but it shouldn’t be underestimated. Yes, Kennedy’s death was probably the most important factor in the passage of the civil rights legislation of the next year and a half, but if African Americans and moderate to liberal whites didn’t find Johnson’s argument that this was the trajectory of what Kennedy wanted believeable, things could very plausibly have turned out differently.
There is a real disconnect between our conventional historiographical (and popular) wisdom that Kennedy didn’t do much, and the devotion African Americans at the time felt for him. And I don’t think his death explains all of that. As I say, I’m working on this in my own research, and hope to have further thoughts out for discussion soon.
January 13, 2008 at 12:16 pm
genesiawilliams
To Ed,
I definitely would have been a Kennedy supporter I know my grandparents were saddened by his passing so…. I just don’t think people should hang on to that you don’t get brownie points for what you’re supposed to do. Since Kennedy’s light was extinguished someone else (in presidential seat) should have picked it up and pushed for the full ‘dream’.
Misperceptions about that era are common,
Like the prevailing thought that the movement was about intergration when in fact integration was just a means to an end.
Seperate but equal hadn’t worked.
If seperate could have been equal the need to join whites in the mainstream wouldn’t have been a focal point. But they understood that would be the only was to be seen and heard.
As opposed to being swept under the historical rug.
January 13, 2008 at 12:28 pm
charlieford
Given the fact that he had, like, zero electoral mandate, and that the liberals in congress were overpowered by a combination of Republican and Southern Democrat conservatives, there’s very little JFK could have done in the legislative realm. He could have been a bit more on the ball as regards protecting civil rights activists, but then recall the FBI was still controlled by Hoover. I don’t think JFK could have pushed Hoover anywhere he didn’t want to go.
January 25, 2008 at 4:07 pm
It gets harder to remain neutral on Hillary. « The Edge of the American West
[...] though, the Clintons have really begun to wear on me. First, it was Hillary playing games with Martin Luther King’s memory. That Sean Wilentz is sticking up for her interpretation only deepens my skepticism about [...]
January 27, 2008 at 9:49 pm
Jay
Right before his death MLK himself said LBJ did little for the movement and that the movement forced him to pass the bill so I’m guessing he might disagree with HRC.