LBJ: We want equality for all, and we can stand on that principle. But I think that you can contribute a great deal by getting your leaders and you yourself, taking very simple examples of discrimination where a man's got to memorize [Henry Wadsworth] Longfellow or whether he's got to quote the first 10 Amendments or he's got to tell you what amendment 15 and 16 and 17 is, and then ask them if they know and show what happens. And some people don't have to do that. But when a Negro comes in, he's got to do it. And we can just repeat and repeat and repeat. I don't want to follow [Adolph] Hitler, but he had a--he had a[n] idea...
MLK: Yeah.
LJB: ...that if you just take a simple thing and repeat it often enough, even if it wasn't true, why, people accept it. Well, now, this is true, and if you can find the worst condition that you run into in Alabama, Mississippi, or Louisiana, or South Carolina, where... well, I think one of the worst I ever heard of is the president of the school at Tuskegee or the head of the government department there or something being denied the right to a cast a vote. And if you just take that one illustration and get it on radio and get it on television and get it in the pulpits, get it in the meetings, get it every place you can, pretty soon the fellow that didn't do anything but follow... drive a tractor, he's say, "Well, that's not right. That's not fair."
MLK: Yes.
LJB: And then that will help us on what we're going to shove through in the end.
MLK: Yes. You're exactly right about that.
LJB: And if we do that, we'll break through as--it'll be the greatest breakthrough of anything, not even excepting this [19]64 [Civil Rights] Act. I think the greatest achievement of my administration....
January 15, 2015
50 years ago today: LBJ and MLK talked on the telephone... "I don't want to follow Hitler, but he had a... he had a idea..."
Transcript and audio here. Excerpt:
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32 comments:
Alinsky rules.
The Big Lie is the spreading of an untruth until people believe it.
This would be the spreading of a true example until people understand it.
LBJ obviously did not quite understand, or did not in this case correctly use, Goebbel and Hitler's technique of the Big Lie. More credit to him for that.
I really love LBJ' appreciation of the tractor driver(common man). You don't find that today. He trusted the intrinsic values that Americans were taught to have and respect
I probably talked on the telephone 50 years ago today too, but I was less famous then.
"I think the greatest achievement of my administration...."
With politicians, it's ALWAYS about them and their legacy.
Yet here we are 50 years later with all white Academy Awards nominees.
LBJ was taking the upper hand Texas style in solving the Negro problem.
It was not a conversation. Martin had been successful at organizing and done the peaceful marching for years, but he was also smart enough to see that any ally joining up late was a good thing.
A complete transcript of MLK's side of the conversation.
---
Martin Luther King, Jr.: Yes?
King: Thank you.
King: Hello?
King: [Unclear.]
King: Well, I certainly appreciate your returning the call, and I don't want to take but just a minute or two of your time. First, I want to thank you for that great State of the Union message. It was really a marvelous presentation. And I think we're on the way now toward the Great Society.
King: Yes.
King: That's right.
King: Yes.
King: Yes.
King: Yes. Yes. [Unclear.]
King: Yes. Well, I remember that you mentioned it to me the other day when we met at the White House, and I have been very diligent in not . . . making this statement.
King: Yes. Right. Well, Mr. President, I'll tell you the main thing I wanted to share with you. This really rose out of conversations that I've had with all of the civil rights leaders--I mean the heads of civil rights organizations--
King: --as well as many people around the country as I have traveled. We have a strong feeling that it would mean so much, first, to help with our whole democracy but to the Negro and to the nation, to have a Negro in the Cabinet. We feel that this would really would be a great step forward for the nation, for the Negro, for our international image. And it would do so much to give many people a lift who need a lift now. And I'm sure that it could give a new sense of dignity and self-respect to millions of Negroes who--there are millions of Negro youth who feel that they don't have anything to look forward to in life.
King: Yes.
King: Oh, yes.
King: I just--no, I don't know him well.
King: [Unclear.]
King: He's a top flight man.
King: Sure.
King: No.
King: Yes. Well, this--I--this is very encouraging and I was, as I said, very concerned about this and I know how others have been mentioning that--what this could mean; it would be another great step toward the Great Society.
King: Yes.
King: Yes.
King: Well, we think very highly of Whitney and--
King: --that he can play a role in--
King: I think so. There's no doubt about it.
King: Well, I think you're right, and we're certainly going to continue to work in that area.
King: That's right. Nothing--
King: And it's very interesting, Mr. President, to notice that the only states that you didn't carry in the South, the five Southern states,have less than 40 percent of the Negroes registered to vote.4 It's very interesting to notice. And I think a professor at the University of Texas, in a recent article, brought this out very clearly. So it demonstrates that it's so important to get Negroes registered to vote in large numbers in the South. And it would be this coalition of the Negro vote and the moderate white vote that will really make the new South.
And then that will help us on what we're going to shove through in the end.
Every political strategy session ends with this phrase.
Thanks for the MLK-only version.
MLK called to talk about getting a black person on LBJ's cabinet. LBJ is pushing the voting right's legislation. They're kind of at cross-purposes, and it's rather strange that it's LBJ who's trying to get the real structural change, with legislation that's quite difficult to push through. MLK just wants something superficial done, something that's entirely and easily within LBJ's power. LBJ doesn't hide that he wants what he wants for his own personal, historical glory, but what he wants is a much more significant benefit for black people.
More of the complete conversation between MLK and LBJ:
LBJ: My man, what up wid dat Eartha Kitt gal?
MLK: She fine, right?
LBJ: Yeah she fine!
MLK: I had that.
LBJ: The hell you say.
MLK: No, I did. Wouldn't lie to you. You da man.
LBJ: And you my n . . .
MLK: Don't go there, sir.
LBJ: Didn't mean any offense. Anyway, I'm gonna tell Bird to invite Eartha Kitt to the White House one of these days. What could go wrong?
LBJ comes across here as much more idealistic than the usual unprincipled hack he's portrayed as. I'm impressed.
Graham Powell said...
LBJ comes across here as much more idealistic than the usual unprincipled hack he's portrayed as. I'm impressed.
LBJ knew the call was being recorded. He was the one recording it. People speak differently when they know they're being recorded.
The weird part of that is, as mikee said, that there's no need to bring up Hitler's "big lie".
Because there were, as MLK mentioned, plenty of true examples to repeat.
(Now, they may have been atypical in some cases, but they weren't lies.)
"it's rather strange that it's LBJ who's trying to get the real structural change, with legislation that's quite difficult to push through. MLK just wants something superficial done, something that's entirely and easily within LBJ's power"
My guess is that MLK and other civil rights leaders of the time didn't know that that sort of legislative change was even a possibility.
LBJ, master of the legislative process, did. He knew he could get the votes.
The Repubs, minority party at the time and ever since the Depression and until 1994, voted by a larger percentage for the civil rights legislation than Dems did.
LBJ knew he had Republican votes for civil liberties.
I'm glad to hear LBJ was so committed to cleaning up the Democrat Party...pity it didn't work out...
Odd reference by LBJ to Big Lie. But Big Lie had two parts: the Lie, and the Big. Here there was no Lie: it was a fact that some were discriminated against on the basis of color. But here there was a need for Big, i.e. relentless simplification and iteration until the truth was felt by everyone, even (and especially) the man in the tractor.
But for LBJ to summon up, on a rare phone call with a politically red-hot interlocutor, the Big Lie specifically and unnecessarily to emphasize a point: why? Had LBJ just been reading of specific Third Reich propaganda techniques? What was his intellectual heritage? ...I should read Robert Caro's books, I guess.
MLK wanted both the voting rights legislation and a black person on LBJ's cabinet.
The poll tax amendment to the Constitution had been ratified a year earlier. LBJ had just given a State of the Union speech in favor of the voting rights act. MLK wanted him to do the other thing too.
And it wasn't "entirely and easily within LBJ's power". A cabinet appointment requires confirmation by the Senate.
And in contrast to LBJ and MLK, Hitler was a non-smoking, non-drinking, vegetarian, faithful to his partner. Unlike LBJ and like MLK, he was a spellbinding speaker.
Ugh. LBJ is disgusting.
LBJ was a big influence in my thinking as a youngster. Somehow, I always instinctively knew he was a political creature through and through, but I admired his virtuosity in achieving political results. If it had developed that he put Harvey Oswald in that building window, I wouldn't have been the least surprised. He understood and excelled at the game of thrones.
More important was his influence on my budding development as a Classic Liberal. I ended up in the Mississippi delta in the mid sixties, largely because of his influence.
The voting rights act and the civil rights legislations were great achievements.
In retrospect, the Great Society was a great mistake, and has caused great harm to those who were the intended beneficiaries. But he knew how to get shit done.
I'm pretty sure that was the last time I voted for a Democrat presidential candidate. Goldwater would have been the better choice in retrospect.
-Krumhorn
"In retrospect, the Great Society was a great mistake, and has caused great harm to those who were the intended beneficiaries. But he knew how to get shit done."
Domestically, I agree completely.
He did not understand the world outside Texas and DC, though. The last president we had who understood the world was Eisenhower.
What was his intellectual heritage? ...I should read Robert Caro's books, I guess.
His intellectual heritage was exceedingly slight, if you follow Caro, and almost entirely built on observation of practical politicians at work. The man spent weeks of his childhood following his state-legislator father around Austin watching how things got done, then did his own little "Long March through the institutions" in every organization or institution he had access. He was a deeply unpopular college student who still managed to become president of his class, then as a congressional aide took over the "little Congress" debating society and made a big deal of it.
If Woodrow Wilson insisted on writing a constitution or set of by-laws for every organization he came in contact with, LBJ set out to find the position of power in any given social/insitutional situation, and proceeded to exploit the hell out of his found leverage. For instance: he was seriously bored as a congressman after his first term in office, and looking forward to decades of "paying his dues" at the bottom of the seniority pile, chose instead to find a new place of power within the congressional delegation, and got himself onto the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee on the one hand, and hooked up with deep-pocketed Texas money-men (notably the boys at Brown and Root) to flout the election finance laws of the time with ferocious intensity.
This behavior is really nothing like the Hitler model of power cultivation and distribution. LBJ wasn't really any kind of socialist, he was a favors-and-cronyism son-of-a-bitch. He was a past master of milking the fuck out of the appropriations game, and corrupt as the day was long. But he didn't really have principles per se, for good or ill. He had certain prejudices in favor of the little people, insofar as they didn't affect his interests or the interests of his cronies, but principles? Not that I can see.
I highly recommend the Caro series of books on Lyndon Johnson. Here's the link to buy the first volume. I like buying the Kindle version, and then Amazon gives you a big discount on the audio version, which uses "Whispersync" to let you keep your place as you switch between reading and listening (for example, if you decide to take a walk). The narrator is the same person who does the audiobook for "The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich," which I listened to last summer — about 40 hours of narration. It's very weird to me to hear LBJ's story told in the same voice! It makes things seem so foreboding!
Yet here we are 50 years later with an all-white Obama campaign staff.
There, fixed it for you.
"50 years ago today: LBJ talked at MLK on the telephone."
FIFY.
Also, Michael K: I'd say Reagan had a pretty good understanding, too. (I especially like the Gordian simplicity of "We win; they lose".)
Al Gore's father voted against the Civil Rights Act.
At least LBJ wants popular support and the support of congress. Remember when presidents were like that?
In one of the more revealing passages in her shameless memoir, "I Shared The Dream" Georgia Davis Powers recalls the time in 1968 when MLK got off the phone with a close advisor, Communist apparatchik Stanley Levison:
I didn't hear all the conversation, but I heard Martin repeat something Levison said to him. After he hung up, he was still repeating this phrase. "Cowardice asks, is it safe? Expediency asks, is it political? Vanity asks, is it popular? But conscience asks, is it right?"
I asked, "Will you use that in your speeches?"
He smiled, "I will use it when it is appropriate."
I said, "M. L., is anything we do and say original?"
He replied, "Originality comes only from God. Everything else has, is, and will be used by someone else before you."
People speak differently when they know they're being recorded.
Jeez, then what did Nixon sound like when he wasn't being recorded?
LJB, huh? You're not trying to make fun of President Johnston, are you?
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