The Soul of America: The Battle for Our Better Angels

Chapter 7 opens on the night of November 22, 1963, hours after the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. Newly endowed with the power of the presidency, Lyndon B. Johnson resolved to pass the proposed civil rights legislation championed by his predecessor. The past few months, meanwhile, had been full of turmoil on the racial justice front. In January, newly elected Alabama Governor George Wallace delivered an inauguration speech defying federal efforts to enforce desegregation laws, proclaiming, “Segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever” (219). Six months later in June, Wallace attempted to block the federally mandated integration of the University of Alabama. The very next day, civil rights activist Medgar Evers was assassinated in Mississippi. Then in August Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. delivered his “I Have a Dream” speech during the March on Washington, a wildly successful alliance between civil rights leaders, labor activists, and religious organizations. The very next month, four young girls were killed in a Birmingham church bombing perpetrated by the Ku Klux Klan.

Though passing civil rights legislation was as urgent as ever, Johnson also recognized the intensity of the battle before him. When his advisors counseled to him to move slow until after the 1964 election, Johnson uttered his famous reply, “What the hell is the presidency for?” (212).