All The Way With LBJ – A Half Century After His Passing

By MIKE MAGEE

This is the 52nd anniversary of the death of Lyndon Baines Johnson from his 5th Heart Attack. And two days ago was the 39th anniversary of the first celebration of a new federal holiday, Martin Luther King Jr. Day. In signing that original proclamation in 1983, President Ronald Reagan said, “The majesty of his message, the dignity of his bearing, and the righteousness of his cause are a lasting legacy. In a few short years he changed America for all time.”

The MLK federal holiday was not so “Kum ba yah” (“Come by here”) this year. President Trump was in no mood to be tutored on this 60’s phrase derived from an African American spiritual made famous by Pete Seeger. Rather, he took advantage of the convergence of MLK’s day and his own coronation to trash all things DEI (Diversity, Equity, Inclusion).

Of those supporting the 2nd term President, from here and beyond, few could have had a broader smile on his face than dearly departed (July 4, 2008) former North Carolina Senator Jesse Helms. Helm led the opposition to the MLK bill, submitting a 300-page report that labelled King an “action-oriented Marxist” and a communist. Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan (NY) was so enraged at the time that he declared the report a “packet of filth”, threw it on the Senate floor, and then unceremoniously repeatedly stomped on it.

So, as a nation, we have been down this road before.

As history.com reports: “On the day of Nixon’s second inaugural celebration, Johnson watched sullenly as Nixon announced the dismantling of many of Johnson’s Great Society social programs… The following day, while Lady Bird and their daughters were in Austin, Johnson suffered a fatal heart attack at his ranch in Johnson City.”

In yesterday’s Washington Post, George Will provided us all with a much needed reality check by quoting Stanford professor of government, Stephen Kotkin, who in the lead up to the election said, “Who’s the ‘we’? Trump is not an alien who landed from some other planet.”

“This is somebody the American people voted for who reflects something deep and abiding about American culture. Think of all the worlds that he has inhabited and that lifted him up. Pro wrestling. Reality TV. Casinos and gambling, which are no longer just in Las Vegas or Atlantic City, but everywhere, embedded in daily life. Celebrity culture. Social media. All of that looks to me like America. And yes, so does fraud, and brazen lying, and the P.T. Barnum, carnival barker stuff. But there is an audience, and not a small one, for where Trump came from and who he is.”

LBJ was 64 when he died. He would be 117 today. The Civil Rights Act that he signed on July 2, 1964, “altered the legal, political, and social landscape of America as radically as any law of the twentieth century,” according to presidential historian, Doris Kearns Goodwin. And yet, LBJ defined himself more as a pragmatist than in heroic terms. He said, “I know a lot of people around those Georgetown parties are saying that I wasn’t much of crusader for civil rights when I was in the Senate. On balance, they’re right about me. I wasn’t a crusader. I represented a southern state, and if I got too far ahead of my voters they’d have sent me right back to Johnson City . . . Now I represent the whole country, and I can do what the whole country thinks is right.”

His remarks on that July 2nd evening signing were lofty:

We believe that all men are created equal. Yet many are denied equal treatment.

We believe all men have certain inalienable rights. Yet many Americans do not enjoy those rights.

We believe that all men are entitled to the blessings of liberty. Yet millions are being deprived of those blessings-not because of their own failures, but because of the color of their skin.

But it cannot continue. Our Constitution, the foundation of our Republic, forbids it…Morality forbids it. And the law I will sign tonight forbids it.

We have come now to a time of testing. We must not fail. Let us close the springs of racial poison.”

That very evening, LBJ speech writers, Bill Moyers and Dick Goodwin, encountered their boss in a pensive mood. This was the anniversary of his massive 1955 heart attack. Asked what was troubling him, he replied, “I think we just delivered the South to the Republican Party for a long time to come.”

Many years later, Dick Goodwin’s recollections of that night’s events were captured by his historian wife, Doris Kearns Goodwin. He said, “Who would have thought that the testing time that lay ahead would still be with us more than a half century later, that the springs of racial poison have still not been closed?”

Trump clearly wants his own Kennedy, if only a junior. But on this 52nd anniversary of his death, I’m “All The Way With LBJ.”

Mike Magee MD is a Medical Historian and regular contributor to THCB. He is the author of CODE BLUE: Inside America’s Medical Industrial Complex. (Grove/2020)