Anodyne
Thursday, August 28, 2008
 

Robert Caro: "As I sit listening to Mr. Obama tonight, I will be hearing other words as well. I will be hearing Lyndon Johnson saying, 'We shall overcome.'"

"The heroism of the march at Selma, the heroism all across the South, the almost unbelievable bravery of black men and women — and children, so many children — who marched, and were beaten, and marched again, for the right to vote, created the rising tide of national feeling behind the passage of civil rights legislation, the legislation not only of 1965 but of 1964 and 1957. That feeling did so much to make the legislation possible. It has taken me scores of pages in my books to try to describe that heroism, and all of them inadequate. But it also took Lyndon Johnson, whom the black leader James Farmer, sitting in the Oval Office, heard 'cajoling, threatening, everything else, whatever was necessary' to get the 1965 bill passed and who, with his legislative genius and savage will, broke, piece by piece, in 1957 and 1964 and 1965, the long unbreakable power of the Southern bloc."
- posted by cjb @ 6:09 PM


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