Add the Rev. Jesse Jackson to the list of long-time civil rights leaders coming to the defense of former President Lyndon B. Johnson, portrayed in Oscar-nominated “Selma” as reluctant to push for passage of the Voting Rights Act.
In a revealing new book about the presidency and race, Jackson, a close ally of the late Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., added LBJ to Abraham Lincoln and King as the three key transformational figures in American racial politics.
“You probably got three tall trees: Lincoln, Johnson, and Dr. King,” he says in The Presidency in Black and White by April Ryan, the White House reporter for American Urban Radio Networks.
“No president used his authority with more power of change than Lyndon Johnson. Lincoln, because of Civil War, yes, but … Johnson as president. [Johnson’s] ‘64 Civil Rights Act, ‘65 Voting rights Act, speech at Howard University, he was a transformative figure,” said Jackson.
“All the rights we now enjoy came under Johnson, and he laid the groundwork for the Great Society, War on Poverty, that’s Lyndon Johnson,” he told Ryan.
She also interviewed King ally Andrew Young, who was at the meeting between King and Johnson confrontationally portrayed in “Selma.”
He, however, described the meeting as more mellow. At it, Johnson and the civil rights leaders discussed the Voting Rights Act and Young said that Johnson said he was delaying proposing it because he didn’t have the votes.
“He just didn’t have the power. He just didn’t have the votes, the influence, and we walked out of the meeting, and Martin said, “I guess we have to find a way to give the president some power,’ ” said Young, who added that as a result, voting rights wasn’t part of LBJ’s agenda.
A week later, the “plotting” for the violent march in Selma, Ala. began.
Paul Bedard, the Washington Examiner’s “Washington Secrets” columnist, can be contacted at [email protected].
