HBO'S "All the Way" Pres. Lyndon Johnson, 1964 Civil Rights Act, Today 5:45-8 PM ET.
LBJ in the first year after John F. Kennedy's assassination stakes his presidency on what would be an historic unprecedented 1964 Civil Rights Act and is caught between the moral imperative of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and the expectations of the southern Democratic Party leaders who brought him to power. As King battles to press Johnson while controlling more radical elements of the Civil Rights Movement, LBJ navigates the bill through Congress, winning a landslide victory against Barry Goldwater, but causing the South to defect from the Democratic Party.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civil_Rights_Act_of_1964
http://thinkprogress.org/yglesias/2010/05/21/197312/goldwater-and-civil-rights/
Wiki. The Republican candidate, Senator Barry Goldwater of Arizona, suffered from a lack of support from his own party and his deeply unpopular conservative political positions. Johnson's campaign advocated a series of anti-poverty programs collectively known as the Great Society, and successfully portrayed Goldwater as being a dangerous extremist. Johnson easily won the Presidency, carrying 44 of the 50 states and the District of Columbia.
Goldwater's unsuccessful bid influenced the modern conservative movement and the long-time realignment within the Republican Party, which culminated in the 1980 presidential victory of Ronald Reagan.
His campaign received considerable support from former Democratic strongholds in the Deep South and was the first Republican campaign to win Georgia in a presidential election. Conversely, Johnson won Alaska for the Democrats for the first (and only) time, as well as Maine (for the first time since 1912) and Vermont (for the first time since the Democratic Party was founded). Since 1992, Vermont and Maine have rested solidly in the Democratic column for presidential elections, and Georgia has remained in the Republican presidential fold since 1996.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_presidential_election,_1964
- Presidential Election Map 1964, Johnson-Humphrey (D), Goldwater-Miller (R), Electoral College.
- President Lyndon Johnson's "GREAT SOCIETY"
http://www.ushistory.org/us/56e.asp
= new reply since forum marked as read
- Lyndon Johnson's "Great Society" -
Lyndon Baines Johnson moved quickly to establish himself in the office of the Presidency. Despite his conservative voting record in the Senate, Johnson soon reacquainted himself with his liberal roots.
- LBJ SPONSORED THE LARGEST REFORM AGENDA SINCE ROOSEVELT'S NEW DEAL.
The aftershock of Kennedy's assassination provided a climate for Johnson to complete the unfinished work of JFK's New Frontier. He had eleven months before the election of 1964 to prove to American voters that he deserved a chance to be President in his own right.
Two very important pieces of legislation were passed. First, the Civil Rights Bill that JFK promised to sign was passed into law. The Civil Rights Act banned discrimination based on race and gender in employment and ending segregation in all public facilities.
Johnson also signed the omnibus Economic Opportunity Act of 1964. The law created the Office of Economic Opportunity aimed at attacking the roots of American poverty. A Job Corps was established to provide valuable vocational training.
Head Start, a preschool program designed to help disadvantaged students arrive at kindergarten ready to learn was put into place. The Volunteers in Service to America (VISTA) was set up as a domestic Peace Corps. Schools in impoverished American regions would now receive volunteer teaching attention. Federal funds were sent to struggling communities to attack unemployment and illiteracy.
As he campaigned in 1964, Johnson declared a "war on poverty." He challenged Americans to build a "Great Society" that eliminated the troubles of the poor. Johnson won a decisive victory over his archconservative Republican opponent Barry Goldwater of Arizona.
- AMERICAN LIBERALISM WAS AT HIGH TIDE UNDER PRESIDENT JOHNSON.
• The Wilderness Protection Act saved 9.1 million acres of forestland from industrial development.
• The Elementary and Secondary Education Act provided major funding for American public schools.
• The Voting Rights Act banned literacy tests and other discriminatory methods of denying suffrage to African Americans.
• Medicare was created to offset the costs of health care for the nation's elderly.
• The National Endowment for the Arts and Humanities used public money to fund artists and galleries.
• The Immigration Act ended discriminatory quotas based on ethnic origin.
• An Omnibus Housing Act provided funds to construct low-income housing.
•Congress tightened pollution controls with stronger Air and Water Quality Acts.
•Standards were raised for safety in consumer products.
- Lyndon B. Johnson signs Civil Rights Act
The Civil Rights Act of 1964 was part of Lyndon B. Johnson's "Great Society" reform package — the largest social improvement agenda by a President since FDR's "New Deal." Here, Johnson signs the Civil Rights Act into law on July 2, 1964 before a large audience at the White House. Johnson was an accomplished legislator and used his connections in Congress and forceful personality to pass his agenda.
By 1966, Johnson was pleased with the progress he had made. But soon events in Southeast Asia began to overshadow his domestic achievements. Funds he had envisioned to fight his war on poverty were now diverted to the war in Vietnam. He found himself maligned by conservatives for his domestic policies and by liberals for his hawkish stance on Vietnam.
By 1968, his hopes of leaving a legacy of domestic reform were in serious jeopardy.
http://www.ushistory.org/us/56e.asp
PBS American Experience, FREEDOM SUMMER, 1964 Murder in Mississippi of Three Civil Rights Workers
On June 21, the 1964, three young men disappeared near the town of Philadelphia, Mississippi. Michael (Mickey) Schwerner and James Chaney worked for the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) in nearby Meridian; Andrew Goodman was one of the hundreds of college students from across the country who volunteered to work on voter registration, education, and Civil Rights as part of the 1964 Mississippi Summer Project. The three men believed their work was necessary, but also dangerous: Ku Klux Klan membership in Mississippi was soaring in 1964 -- with membership reaching more than 10,000.
- FBI Missing Poster of Three Civil Rights Workers, Two Were Members of CORE, the Congress of Racial Equality
- Andrew Goodman
- Edward Hollander
- Mickey Schwerner
The Klan was prepared to use violence to fight the Civil Rights movement; on April 24 the group offered a demonstration of its power, staging 61 simultaneous cross burnings throughout the state.
Over the course of the summer of 1964, members of the Klan burned 20 black Mississippi churches. On June 16, Klan members targeted Neshoba County's Mt. Zion Baptist Church, where Schwerner had spent time working. Before burning the church, the Klan severely beat several people who had been attending a meeting there. Schwerner, however, was not there that day; he had gone to Oxford, Ohio, to train a group of Freedom Summer volunteers. Upon returning to Mississippi, Schwerner, Goodman and Chaney visited the charred remains of Mt. Zion. On the drive back to Meridian, their station wagon, known to law enforcement as a CORE vehicle, was stopped, and police arrested all three. Chaney, who had been driving, was charged with speeding, while Schwerner and Goodman were held for investigation. Neshoba County sheriff’s deputy Cecil Price escorted them to the Philadelphia jail around 4pm.
Despite the fact that the schedule of fines for speeding was posted on the wall, Price said the three men would have to remain in jail until the Justice of the Peace arrived to process the fine. Schwerner asked to make a phone call, but Price denied the request and left the jail. In Meridian, CORE staff began calling nearby jails and police stations, inquiring about the three men -- their standard procedure when organizers failed to return on time. Minnie Herring, the jailer’s wife, claimed there was no phone call on June 21, but CORE records show a call to the Philadelphia jail around 5:30pm.
Price returned a little after 10pm, collected Chaney’s speeding fine -- with no Justice of the Peace -- and told the three men to get out of the county. They were never seen alive again.
In 1964, Mississippi was the only state without a central FBI office, but on June 22, agents from the New Orleans office arrived to begin a kidnapping investigation. (Since passing in 1932, the “Lindbergh law” brought kidnapping cases under federal jurisdiction.) More agents would come to Mississippi over the next several days, ultimately totaling more than 200. On June 23 investigators found the CORE station wagon, still smoldering from an attempt to destroy evidence; now the focus shifted from rescue to recovery of the men’s bodies. Continued..
- CORE Station Wagon, FBI Photo.
Read More. http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/general-article/freedomsummer-murder/
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- Univ. of Chicago Student & CORE Member Bernie Sanders Fought for Civil Rights & Against Racial Segregation in 1960s.
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- President Johnson Passes Out Pens Used to Sign the Civil Rights Act on July 2, 1964. Martin Luther King Jr. in Group.
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- Ronald Reagan's 1980 Presidential Campaign Kickoff with "State's Right's Speech" was held at the Neshoba County, Mississippi State Fair, a gesture that requires no interpretation of his Right Wing extremist conservative ideology.
The GOP's 'Southern Strategy' to win over white votes in the South, 'Dixiecrats', and the creation of the modern Republican party are credited to ultraconservative, anti-Civil Rights Senator Barry Goldwater of Arizona. It was Goldwater's run for US president in 1964 when LBJ beat the pants off him that launched the presidency of Ronald Reagan.
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"Reagan's Race Legacy" by William Raspberry, Washington Post, June 14, 2004.
I don't mean to be graceless, but I would like to inject a slightly off-key note in the praise-fest following the death of former president Ronald Reagan. No, I don't intend to jump up and start calling him names..But I was in Mississippi when I heard the news of his death, and it came just one day after a white Mississippi newspaper editor proudly handed me a copy of the Philadelphia, Miss., paper, the Neshoba Democrat.
Philadelphia, county seat of Mississippi's Neshoba County, is famous for a couple of things. That is where three civil rights workers -- Michael Schwerner, James Chaney and Andrew Goodman -- were murdered in 1964. And that is where, in 1980, Republican presidential candidate Ronald Reagan chose to launch his election campaign, with a ringing endorsement of "states' rights."
It was bitter symbolism for black Americans (though surely not just for black Americans). Countless observers have noted that Reagan took the Republican Party from virtual irrelevance to the ascendancy it now enjoys. The essence of that transformation, we shouldn't forget, is the party's successful wooing of the race-exploiting Southern Democrats formerly known as Dixiecrats. And Reagan's Philadelphia appearance was an important bouquet in that courtship.
I don't accuse Reagan of racism, though while he served, I did note what seemed to be his indifference to the concerns of black Americans -- issues ranging from civil rights enforcement and attacks on "welfare queens" to his refusal to act seriously against the apartheid regime in South Africa. He gets full credit from me for the good things he did -- including presiding over the end of international communism. But he also legitimized, by his broad wink at it, racial indifference -- and worse. His political progeny include Trent Lott, who got caught a while back praising the overtly segregationist 1948 presidential candidacy of Strom Thurmond, and, I suspect, many Lott soul mates in the current Republican congressional majority. More, http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A39345-2004Jun13.html
I missed it today, but I'm sure they will be re-running and I will catch it then. And thank you so much for the recaps and graphics, too.
They were esp'ly interesting to me as I recently had to do some classes on this topic. Such a fascinating time in our nation's history.
Cher
Last edited Sun May 29, 2016, 11:22 AM - Edit history (1)
It premiered May 21 and they've been airing it in the last week. Neflix and other outlets will soon have it too. It was a remarkable time in the 1960s and I remember some of it when young. My mother took our older brother to hear LBJ speak and I'm grateful I had the chance to meet and hear Civil Rights leader Julian Bond speak twice, and Angela Davis at a local college lecture when I was a High School student. It's great that you took classes recently on this very important era. ~ I wish Trump would reconsider fighting, I mean debating Bernie to save his reputation and preserve his 'manhood' ya know. Feel the Bern! 
- Mississippi Civil Rights Activist FANNIE LOU HAMER (Speech to the 1964 Democratic Convention is shown in the film)
Fannie Lou Hamer (1917-1977)
Fannie Lou Hamer was the youngest of 20 children, who became sharecroppers like their parents. Her grandparents had been slaves. Hamer's mother fashioned a black doll for her when she was young, so that she would develop self-confidence and pride despite her poor surroundings. Her mother also taught her spiritual strength, including the power of song.
In 1961 she was sterilized without her knowledge, as part of Mississippi's systematic effort to reduce the poor black population. Soon after, the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee visited Hamer's church; she was a 44-year-old Delta field hand who had become a plantation time-keeper. In 1962, Hamer was arrested when she tried to register to vote. According to her biographer, the costs of Hamer's initial activism were severe. She was evicted, jailed, and beaten, suffering kidney damage and partial blindness.
As SNCC's Mississippi field secretary, she became vice chairman of the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party and received national attention during its attempt to unseat the all-white Mississippi delegation at the 1964 Democratic Convention. Although the party's efforts were ultimately unsuccessful, Hamer riveted television audiences with her testimony. "If the Freedom Democratic Party is not seated now," she said, "I question America." Fannie Lou Hamer would continue to fight racism and poverty for the rest of her life.
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/eyesontheprize/profiles/11_hamer.html
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/biography/freedomsummer-hamer/
- Impossible 'Literacy Test' given to black voters in 1964 in Louisiana. 10 mins. allowed to complete.
http://boingboing.net/2013/09/23/take-the-impossible-lit.html
*Fannie Lou Hamer's Moving Speech to the 1964 Democratic Convention; more on the Civil Rights movement, LBJ.
http://www.democraticunderground.com/1017375388
"Bernie Sanders Found His Place in the Civil Rights Movement in Chicago",
http://www.businessinsider.com/ap-in-chicago-sanders-found-his-place-in-civil-rights-movement-2016-2
Bernie's background certainly influenced his political and social views, and the challenges he faced during 1959-1962 at a young age were extraordinary. What a man of the people he is with rare principles and courage. And I've always respected fighters.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bernie_Sanders