Franklin and
Betty J. Parker Dialogue, Monday, June 15, 2015, Uplands Village, Pleasant
Hill, TN. bfparker@frontiernet.net
Betty:
Our topic is “Minorities’ Protests in the 1960s, the 20th Century’s Most
Tumultuous Decade.”
Frank:
It is based on the book The Liberal Hour: [subtitle] Washington and
the Politics of Change in the 1960s. Its authors are two Colby College,
Maine, professors: political scientist G. Calvin Mackenzie and historian Robert
Weisbrot (NY: Penguin, 2008). We
also used other sources.
Betty:
Frank, why are the 1960s important?
Frank:
The 1960s became important when African American1 protests
began to explode on Feb. 1, 1960. Four black college students sat at a
Greensboro, N.C., segregated F.W. Woolworth lunch counter. They were refused service. They
remained seated until they were removed.
Betty:
Sit-ins spread like wildfire to hundreds of segregated southern eating
places. Months later, most dropped
their segregation policy. Sit-ins
inspired wade-ins at segregated swimming pools, pray-ins at white-only
churches, play-ins at white parks.
Frank:
Freedom Riders on buses followed.
The first, May 1961, from Washington, DC, to New Orleans, broke rules at
separate drinking fountains, rest rooms, and other facilities. White racists fiercely attacked these
Freedom Riders with beatings, bus burnings, and killings.
Betty:
Black protests inspired other protesters who were later joined and
backed by anti-Vietnam War peacenik flower children. The 1960s, the protest
decade, became, in our thinking, the 20th century’s most tumultuous,
life-changing decade.
Frank:
A near-revolution was brewing.
Protesters’ actions said to Americans, in effect: your denial of our
rights, your segregation of minorities, your killing wars abroad, your neglect
of the poor have kept us from the American dream.
Betty:
They also said, in effect: we will protest peacefully until you pass
laws to legalize our civil rights, end America’s unjust wars, create a just
society.
Frank:
We were struck in researching the 1960s by the serious intent of these
young people’s grass-roots protests.
They risked jail, injury, death to protest for long denied civil
rights. And, less
consciously, they sought, deep down, we think, a more perfect union in a more peaceful
world.
Betty:
That insight led us to spend a year studying the best writings we could
find about the 1960s. We asked:
what did minority protesters so desperately seek? What did they achieve?
How do their goals affect us now, and for the future?
Frank:
We also asked: were the 1960s protests a turning point in U.S.
history? Was it one of those
ongoing crisis-driven turning points which earlier changed our country, a
turning point which recurs during troubled times to correct national ills?
Betty: Young people’s attitudes and values
changed in the 1960s. They had a
different world view. Many in the
1960s sympathized with the protesters, hoped they would succeed. Yet today, sadly, 50 years later,
prejudice exists, racial incidents occur, questionable wars remain.
.
Frank:
1960s black protesters expected and endured racist attacks, water hoses,
club-wielding police, and police attack dogs.
Betty:
Media coverage of 1960s bloody clashes heightened public concern, led
President John F. Kennedy (1917-63) to ask aides to draft and send to Congress
in March 1963 a strong, fool-proof, civil rights bill.
Frank:
Southern diehards had rigged Congressional rules to give Southern
committee chairpersons power to amend or to kill bills they opposed.
Betty:
Black protesters battled for just such a strong federal civil rights
act. Wiser citizens favored
it. But southern segregationists
and many others wanted it killed.
The Civil Rights bill seemed doomed.
Frank:
Pres. Kennedy’s assassination, Nov. 22, 1963, changed everything. Building on national grief, successor
Pres. Lyndon Baines Johnson (1908-73) told Congress and the nation: our
monument to Pres. Kennedy must be to pass his civil rights bill. It is the right thing to do. It will put the US on the right side of
history.
Betty: Pres. Johnson’s unmatched legislative
skills enabled him to strengthen Pres. Kennedy’s civil rights bill and push it
through despite the longest filibuster in U.S. history against it.
Frank:
Pres. Johnson cajoled enough Republican votes for its passage. He signed it into law July 2,
1964. It was and is the most
comprehensive Civil Rights Act in U.S. history.
Betty:
Getting that act passed, plus his later liberal legislation for Voting
Rights, Medicare, Medicaid, Head Start, Model Cities, and other acts we later
list, would have placed Pres. Johnson in the Valhalla of great U.S. Presidents,
but for his tragic escalation of the Vietnam War.
Frank:
Yet, Pres. Johnson’s Great Society legislation in his 5 presidential
years, 1963-68, has greatly benefitted millions of Americans.
Betty:
Frank, why have we not lived up to hard won civil rights freedoms?
Frank:
No easy answers to that question.
We went along with old prejudices against non-whites and incoming poorer
foreigners, let most of them be kept down, live in ghettos, be underpaid,
impoverished.
Betty: We allowed blacks to be unjustly
arrested, tried, jailed, and disproportionately given the death
penalty.
Frank:
We allowed monied, politically connected slumlords and others to benefit
from racism.
Betty:
Question, Frank: Will racially mixed marriages change the racial
picture?
Frank:
Fifteen percent of marriages now (2015) are of mixed races, 4 out of 10
families have a mixed race member, and a census estimate is that by 2043, 28
year from now, non-whites will outnumber whites.
Betty: Latino farm workers, led by Cesar E.
Chavez (1927-93), inspired by black protesters, demanded in California and
elsewhere, fairer wages and human rights.
Frank:
Native Americans, ethnics, women, other disenfranchised minorities
followed.
Betty:
Betty Friedan’s (1921-2006) 1961 book, Feminine Mystique, spurred women’s demand for both motherhood and a
career, for full access to higher education, and for equal opportunities for
equal pay.
.
Frank:
Rachel Carson’s (1907-64) 1962 book, Silent Spring, stirred fears of the threat of DDT pesticides.
Environmentalists demanded clean water and air, damaged by our industrial
waste, mainly for corporate profit.
Betty:
Ralph Nader’s (1934-) 1965 book, Unsafe at Any Speed, demanded safer cars, better marked highways, and by
extension, truth in advertising, honest labeling on consumer goods.
Frank:
Gay rights protesters came out of the closet, June 28, 1969, when gay
patrons of New York’s Greenwich Village Stonewall Inn bar fought off for the
first time a police raid.
Betty: 1960s public opinion and protesters
urged government to aid the elderly, the poor, the sick, the handicapped.
Frank:
An increasing concern was and is the widening income gap between the
tiny percentage of rich getting richer at the expense of the have–less majority
and the increasing number of bottom poor.
Betty:
Protesters asked: what happened to the American dream that anyone can
rise by hard work and fair play?
Frank:
Protesters’ answer: to make majority life better, give minorities their
civil rights, remove tax breaks for the rich, uplift the needy.
Betty: Cold War US-USSR tensions we number
below, added to the 1960s chaos and increased military spending.
Frank:
1-May 1, 1960, a U.S. spy plane was shot down in the USSR; captured
pilot Gary Powers confessed to spying.
Betty:
2-USSR’s Sputnik (Oct. 4, 1957) spurred the space race and the belief
that to rule space is to rule the world.
Pres. Kennedy promised May 25, 1961, to land Americans on the moonl They did land on the moon on July
20, 1969.
Frank:
3-In 1961, the Russians built the Berlin Wall to stop East Germans
fleeing communism to the free West.
Betty: 4-Oct. 1962: Finding Russian missile
launching sites in Cuba, 90 miles from Florida, led to a US blockade and
near-atomic annihilation.
Frank: 5-Americans were shocked at the long,
un-winnable Vietnam War, its atrocities, its return of dead U.S. soldiers in
body-bags, seen daily on TV.
Betty: Vietnam war’s purpose was to stop
Communist North Vietnam from communizing South Vietnam. Many believed in the domino theory:
that if a country goes communist, its neighbors will follow.
Frank:
Anti-Vietnam War draftees who burned their draft cards and defected to
Canada were cheered by rebellious young “peacenik” hippies.
Betty:
Their drug use, rock music, freedom songs, and free love were all forms
of protests. Protesters liked being rebels, Don Quixotes, tilting against
American hypocrisy.
Frank:
Protesting students occupied university buildings demanding self-rule,
more relevant courses. They held a
large summer 1964 love session in San Francisco’s Haight-Ashbury section. They
held a massive August 1969, Woodstock, NY, love-in, dance in, song-fest.
Betty:
Why? To protest the status
quo, to end hypocrisy, to correct national mistakes, to improve many lives.
Frank:
1960s USA also blazed with anti-black beatings, jailing, house bombings
and burnings, killing riots, murders, and assassinations of Pres. Kennedy,
Martin Luther King, Jr., Malcolm X, Medgar Evers, Pres. Kennedy’s younger
brother Robert F. Kennedy.
Betty:
Frank, list big earlier changes that made the 1960s protests inevitable?
Frank:
First, a possible model was Pres. Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s 1930’s
Depression-era activist government.
His make-work for pay agencies: WPA, PWA, CCC, etc., what were they but
a 1930s movement to uplift the one-third jobless, ill housed, ill-clothed,
ill-fed Americans.
Betty: 2-WWII’s mammoth industrial drive and
military sacrifices to stop the Hitler-Japanese axis created full employment,
led to national affluence, made the U.S. leader of the free world.
Frank:
3-1944 GI Bill education and housing aid lifted some 7 million veterans
and their families into middle class affluence with homes, cars, consumer
goods, TVs.
Betty: 4-Affluent Americans moved from
conservative rural areas and from boss-controlled cities into more moderate suburbs.
Frank:
5-Between 1920-1960 (40 years) 4.5 million Blacks moved from the South
to the North and West. Black votes
became important. Race problems became a national concern, and that led to the
1960’s black protests.
Betty:
6: Post-WW II baby boomers grew up, 70 million by 1960, nearly half the
U.S. population. They were better educated, favored minority rights, uplifting
the poor, creating a truly just society.
Frank:
7-TV and other media brought into living rooms police clubbing, biting
police dogs, water pressure hoses that swept protesters off their feet, Ku Klux
Klan-type murders of black and white activists, police brutality; recall Ohio
National Guards who killed five protesters at Kent State University.
Betty:
8-The 1955 Montgomery, AL, black bus boycott, a surprise success,
greatly inspired 1960’s protesters.
Frank:
Worth mention is Martin Luther King’s (1929-68) emergence as moral
leader of Black protesters during the Montgomery bus boycott.
Betty: Black seamstress Rosa Parks (1913-2005)
was arrested Dec. 1, 1955, for refusing to give up her seat on a segregated
Montgomery, AL, bus.
Frank:
At her court arraignment on Dec. 5, 1955, local NAACP leaders, knowing
that 6 of every 10 bus riders were black, held a one-day black bus boycott.
Betty :
Volunteer drivers, black and white, that day took all blacks to work
without incident. Stunned bus
officials felt the heavy financial loss.
Frank:
Fearing harsh police reaction might bring injury, jail, loss of jobs,
black leaders decided to hold a Tuesday night, Dec. 6, 1955, “What to do next”
meeting.
Betty:
Outside the overcrowded Montgomery church, loudspeakers broadcast to an
overflow crowd of many thousands.
Frank:
Their speaker was Montgomery’s new, likeable, 26-year old,
well-schooled, non-aligned, remarkably talented preacher, Martin Luther King,
Jr.
Betty:
King was influenced by Mohandas K. Gandhi’s non-violent protests which
had won India’s freedom from Britain.
King, with little time to prepare, said (here condensed):
Frank:
We are here as American citizens seeking fairness on Montgomery buses
where seating is a problem of long standing.
Betty: General murmurs of assent.
Frank:
Last Thursday, one of our finest citizens was taken from a bus,
arrested, and jailed because she refused to give up her seat to a white person.
Betty: Scattered "Yeses,
"Amen’s," and "That's So."
Frank:
If it had to happen, I am glad it happened to Mrs. Parks, whose
integrity no one can doubt, or the height of her character, or the depth of her
Christian commitment.
Betty: Strong choruses of "That's
right," "That's right."
Frank:
And just because she refused to get up, she was arrested.
Betty:
Angry stirring from the crowd.
Frank:
There comes a time when people get tired of being trampled by the iron
feet of oppression.
Betty:
Many "Yes," "Yes," "Yeses." Rising cheers and applause.
Frank:
There comes a time when people get tired of being thrown across the
abyss of humiliation to experience the bleakness of nagging despair.
Betty: Stomping feet. The wooden floor shook,
echoing in the rafters.
Frank:
There comes a time when people get tired of being pushed out of the
glittering sunlight and left standing in the chill of November.
Betty: He had touched a nerve. The crowd
drowned him out.
Frank: We are not here advocating violence. We
have overcome that.
Betty: "Repeat that! Repeat that!" A
voice shouted.
Frank:
I want it known in Montgomery and throughout this nation that we are
Christian people. Our only weapon
is the weapon of peaceful protest.
Betty:
Long shouts of approval.
Frank: We couldn't do this behind the iron
curtain in a communist nation. But
the great glory of American democracy is the right to protest.
Betty:
Loud shouts. Hands clapping. Pride in a speaker whose rhetoric
rolled so easily. Separating his
peaceful black protest from brutal Ku Klux Klan and white citizens’ councils’
beatings and killings, King said:
Frank:
There will be no crosses burned, no white persons pulled out of their
homes and murdered. We are going
to work peacefully to achieve justice.
We are not wrong in what we are doing.
Betty:
Shouts, yells, cheering.
Frank:
If we are wrong, the United State Supreme Court is wrong.
Betty:
King rocked. His audience rocked with him.
Frank:
If we are wrong, God Almighty is wrong.
Betty: The crowd exploded. Church rafters shook.
Frank: If we are wrong, justice is a lie.
Betty:
Roars, applause, rapture mixed with pride in themselves and in their
speaker.
Frank:
We are determined here in Montgomery to protest until justice runs down
like water, and righteousness like a mighty stream.
Betty: Pandemonium as listeners recognized the
words of the Prophet Amos. King
concluded amid cheers, applause, cries of "Oh, Yes! Oh, Yes! Oh,
Yes!"
Frank:
King stepped from the pulpit, embraced and lauded. He would be arrested, jailed, his house
bombed, his life threatened.
Betty: He would give other, greater speeches;
would be shot dead April 4, 1968, age 39, in Memphis.
Frank:
But his oratory that night, Dec. 6, 1955, made him, at age 26, a
national figure, a prophet of his time.
Betty:
Rosa Parks, Martin Luther King, Jr., and other black leaders, before the
Montgomery bus boycott, learned peaceful protest techniques at Tennessee adult
educator Myles Horton’s (1905-90) interracial Highlander Adult Education
Center, then located in Monteagle, Grundy County, Tennessee.
Frank:
Rosa Parks later said that attending Horton’s Highlander enabled her to
stand fast in Montgomery, AL.
Betty: Tennessee-born Myles Horton, as a young
Sunday School teacher, asked Crossville, TN’s Congregational minister Abram
Nightingale: How can I start an interracial adult school to help poor people
solve their problems?
Frank:
Rev. Nightingale advised Myles Horton to study social welfare at Union
Theological Seminary in New York City.
Betty:
From New York, Horton then went to Chicago’s Jane Addams Hull House for
new immigrants, then to Denmark to study Danish Folk Schools, which had
uplifted and modernized 19th century Denmark.
Frank:
Myles Horton’s interracial study groups in the 1930’s were for coal mine
labor union leaders, 1940s for cotton mill union leaders, 1950s-60s for civil
rights leaders: Rosa Parks, Martin Luther King, Jr., and hundreds more.
Betty:
At Myles Horton’s Highlander “We Shall Overcome,” the civil rights song
heard round the world, was popularized by white folk singer Guy Carawan (1927-
died May 2, 2015).
Frank:
Horton’s Highlander workshops pioneered peaceful public school
integration after the U.S. Supreme Court’s 1954 Brown vs. Board of Education outlawed separate white and black schools.
Betty:
Myles Horton’s citizenship classes enabled blacks to read and write to
meet voter registration requirements.
Frank:
Myles Horton 1970s-80s classes helped elect black sheriffs, black
mayors, plus other black officials.
Betty:
Chicago author Studs Terkel wrote: “Were I to choose America’s most
influential and inspiring educator, it would be Myles Horton of Highlander.”
Frank:
Bill Moyers, aide to Pres. Lyndon Johnson, later PBS broadcaster, wrote:
“[Myles Horton] has been beaten up, locked up, put upon … railed against by
racists, toughs, demagogues, and governors. But…[for over 50 years] he …help[ed] people…discover within
themselves the courage and ability to confront reality and change.”
Betty: We have conveniently forgotten that the civil rights
blacks fought for in the 1960s were, 100 years earlier, legally given to them
in three post-Civil War U.S. Constitutional Amendments which Southern diehards
subverted.
Frank:
The 13th Amendment, U.S. Constitution (adopted 1865), abolished slavery;
the 14th Amendment (1868) granted equal protection to all; the 15th Amendment
(1870), granted voting rights.
Betty:
What irony that 1960s black protesters shed blood to reinstate freedoms
given them 100 years earlier in these 3 post Civil War Constitutional
Amendments.
Frank:
We now look at 3 main 1960s heroes, their motives and concerns; the
three most responsible for the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights
Act of 1965.
Betty:
Dr. King, Pres. Kennedy, and Pres. Johnson.
Frank:
We’ve mentioned King’s Montgomery, AL, bus boycott speech, but not the
circumstances of his forever remembered “I have a dream” speech.
Betty:
King gave his “I Have a Dream” speech Aug. 28, 1963, before 250,000
gathered on the mall between the Lincoln Memorial and the Washington Monument
at the end of the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom.
Frank:
The motive for the March was to press Congress to pass the stymied Civil
Rights Bill. This largest ever
gathering at the Washington, D.C. Mall had heavy media coverage and a long list
of speakers.
Betty: No speaker wanted to be last, thinking
the crowd would be leaving and TV coverage gone. Dr. King humbly took the last speaker spot.
Frank:
King began his prepared speech when nearby seated black gospel singer
Mahalia Jackson (1911-72), called to him:
“Tell about your dream, Martin, tell about your dream.”
Betty:
Leaving his script, animated, emotional, King’s 142 words, torn from his
heart and soul, ended with…
Frank: “I have a dream that my four little
children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the
color of their skin but by the content of their character.”
Betty:
Overpowering applause, cheers and tears filled the gigantic mall at
King’s shortest, greatest speech.
Frank:
Second hero, Pres. John F. Kennedy, was immediately burdened with
earth-shaking USA-USSR conflicts.
He privately favored black demands. Publicly he was silent lest he lose Southern votes needed
for his anticipated 1964 re-election.
Betty: Founding father Joseph Patrick Kennedy,
Sr. (1888-1969) raised 9 children to be first and best in school, sports, and
public service.
Frank:
First born son, charismatic Joseph Patrick Kennedy, Jr., was groomed to
seek the U.S. presidency. But he
died in a WW II secret mission plane explosion.
Betty:
Second son JFK, pressured to take his place, also in WW II, commanded a
small PT Boat cut in two by a Japanese warship.
Frank:
JFK saved one crew member’s life, got the rest to safety. His deeds, publicized by his father in
a widely read magazine, helped make JFK a war hero. He served 6 years in the U.S. House of Representative, 8
years in the U.S. Senate (total, 14 years). His 1960 U.S. Presidency election win over Republican
Richard Nixon was really razor thin.
Betty: During that 1960 Kennedy-Nixon
presidential campaign Martin Luther King, Jr., with others in an Atlanta, GA,
lunch room sit in, was arrested.
Frank:
The others were freed but King was held in Georgia State Prison,
Reidsville, GA, likely to be secretly beaten or killed.
Betty:
Kennedy phoned King’s wife Coretta to comfort her while his brother,
Robert Kennedy (1925-68), phoned Georgia officials and gained King’s
release.
Frank:
Result: A big black vote for JFK which helped his razor thin election
win over Richard Nixon. 17
Betty:
Pres. Kennedy was impressed by the peaceful dignity of that Aug. 28,
1963, “March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom” and by Martin Luther King’s “I
have a dream” speech.
Afterwards JFK invited black leaders to the White House and endorsed
their civil rights demands.
Frank:
Months before his assassination JFK sent Congress two important bills
for debate and passage: a tax cut bill to boost the economy and the
before-mentioned near fool-proof Civil Rights bill which his staff had drafted
to eliminate weaknesses that were in earlier civil rights acts.
Betty:
Congressional segregationists planned to weaken or kill both bills, when
Pres. Kennedy was assassinated.
Frank:
His successor, Pres. Lyndon Johnson saved, improved, won passage of, and
signed both historic bills into law.
Betty:
Pres. Johnson also, used his legislative skills to fulfill many of the
1960s protesters’ demands and left a lasting legacy of far-reaching laws.
Frank:
Pres. Kennedy, and to a lesser degree Martin Luther King, Jr. were from
affluent families, well educated, bound to succeed. Not so Lyndon Johnson: humbly born, early deprived, who by
conniving and by his wits became not only master of Congressional procedures
but also of its intrigues.
Betty:
Lyndon Johnson realized the Kennedys had reluctantly made him Vice
President just to insure Southern votes for John F. Kennedy’s 1960 presidential
win.
Frank: Johnson knew he was excluded from
Kennedy’s inner circle.
Betty:
Johnson feared he would be dropped from the ticket in JFK’s 1964
re-election bid.
Frank:
Yet, Lyndon Johnson, unlikely hero, in the wrenching hours after Pres.
Kennedy’s assassination, remembered his own early poverty, remembered his first
job teaching poor Mexican Americans, remembered his 1930s Depression job for
FDR as head of Texas National Youth Administration, remembered his private vow,
if given power, to uplift America’s poor.
Betty:
With presidential power unexpectedly thrust upon him, Lyndon Johnson did
what neither Martin Luther King, Jr., nor Pres. John F. Kennedy, could do.
Frank:
Pres. Lyndon Johnson used his great Congressional skills to win passage
of both Pres. Kennedy’s tax cut bill and the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
Betty:
Lyndon Johnson in the 1964 presidential election trounced Republican
Barry Goldwater: won 61.1% popular vote and 44 of the 50 states. Instead of being jubilant LBJ
said sadly and correctly: We [Democrats] have lost the South to the Republicans
for perhaps a generation.
Frank:
Remember loser Barry Goldwater’s 1964 campaign remark, “Extremism in the
defense of liberty is no vice…and moderation in the pursuit of justice is no
virtue”--heralded the rise of a stronger conservative Republican Party and its
recent Tea Party extremists.
Betty Important to mention is the Martin Luther
King, Jr.-led Selma-to-Montgomery, AL, March for Voting Rights, right across
Gov. George C. Wallace’s (1919-97) segregated heartland.
Frank:
Selma, AL., then notorious for its segregated low 2% black vote, is 54
miles from Montgomery, Al.’s capital. Gov. Wallace had barred blacks from the University of
Al; had vowed: segregation now, segregation forever. March 1965, 50 years ago, black leaders, knowing that Pres.
Lyndon Johnson-initiated Voting Rights Bill (later Voting Rights Act of 1965),
about to go to Congress for debate, decided to press Congress for its quick
approval through a massive black Selma-to-Montgomery, AL, March for Voting
Rights.
Betty: Blacks needed it badly because it
removed restrictions specifically meant to keep blacks from their right to
vote.
Frank:
The Selma to Montgomery March for Voting Rights began on March 7, 1965,
with some 600 marchers who after six blocks were viciously forced back by club
swinging state and local police causing falls, injuries, and deaths. A second attempt two days later, March
9, 1965, was also police attacked
and aborted.
Betty: March 7, 1965, was later called Bloody
Sunday because of police beatings.
Black protester leader John Lewis’s (1940-) skull was fractured (later
Georgia Congressman). Killed in
the voting rights struggle were white Viola Liuzzo, white Rev. James Reeb
(1927-65), and black Jimmie Lee Jackson, shot dead by an Alabama state trooper.
Frank:
On March 10, 1965, amid plans for the third successful Selma to
Montgomery, AL, March for Voting
Rights, Pres. Johnson, when submitting his Voting Rights bill, said to Congress
and the nation:
Betty:
“[The Blacks’] cause must be our cause, too, because it is not just
[Black Americans] but really it is all of us, who must overcome the crippling
legacy of bigotry and injustice.”
Frank: Then, shocking the jam-packed House
Chamber of the of U.S. Capitol, Johnson raised his arms toward the ceiling, and
thundered: “And We Shall Overcome.” Instant shocked surprise as it sank
in: the President of the United States had voiced the black freedom slogan.
Tears ran down cheeks amid long thunderous applause. Martin Luther King, watching TV in Birmingham, AL, wept.
Betty: In the third successful Selma to
Montgomery, AL Voting Rights March, on March 21, 1965, some 25,000 reached
Montgomery, the state capitol.
Five months later Congress passed and LBJ signed the Voting Rights Act
of 1965.
Frank:
Selma, the acclaimed 2014
film, was faulted for misrepresenting Pres. Johnson as opposing the Selma
march. Johnson approved that march
but suggested delay to Martin Luther King, Jr., not wanting to disrupt delicate
behind-the-scenes congressional lobbying for passage of the Voting Rights Bill,
passed and signed August 6, 1965.
Betty: Pres. Johnson’s fame has risen. Historian Robert Dallek called him the
“Flawed Giant.” Pres. Johnson’s
chief assistant Joseph A. Califano, Jr. (1931-) wrote in 2012 that Barack
Obama’s presidency would not have been possible without Pres. Johnson’s backing
of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965.
Frank:
Califano called Pres. Johnson: “America’s most overlooked, complicated,
liberal and legislatively productive president.”21 Johnson’s
biographer, prize winner Robert A. Caro, wrote: Abraham Lincoln freed black
Americans, but Lyndon Johnson got them into voting booths as full-fledged
American citizens.
Betty:
Lyndon Johnson gave us: Medicare for senior citizens; Medicaid and Food
Stamps for the poor; Head Start for pre-school 4 and 5 year olds; federal aid
to elementary and secondary education, Model Cities, clean air, water, and
vehicle pollution laws; Immigration Reform Act, and much more.
Frank:
Pres. Johnson deliberately signed Medicare into law at the Truman
presidential library, Independence, MO, and gave Truman the first Medicare
card. Why? Because Truman in his presidency had
tried but failed to enact national health insurance. It was a nice, gracous gesture.
Betty: Pres. Johnson also appropriately chose
to sign the Immigration Reform Act at New York Harbor’s Statue of Liberty. Why?
Because at the statue’s base is Emma Lazarus’s (1849-87) moving poem:
Frank: “Give me your tired, your poor, Your
huddled masses yearning to breathe free, The wretched refuse of your teeming
shore. Send these, the homeless,
tempest-tossed to me, I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”
Betty:
Truman and Johnson, both self-made men, had the presidency suddenly
thrust upon them, Truman by Pres. Roosevelt’s death, Johnson by Pres. Kennedy’s
assassination.
Frank:
Truman was saddled with the unpopular Korean war, Johnson with the
unpopular Vietnam war. Each,
having replaced extremely popular presidents, was held in lower esteem.
Betty:
Yet, both have since been highly esteemed for their accomplishments.
Frank:
Pres. Johnson, like Pres. Kennedy, inherited the Vietnam War from Pres.
Eisenhower. Johnson saw no way to
end it honorably, felt he had to escalate to win, not wanting to be the first
president to lose a major war.
Betty:
Pres. Johnson could not give us both guns (Vietnam War victory) and
butter (Great Society). The
anti-war chant, “LBJ, LBJ, how
many kids have you killed today?” tore at his heart and soul.
Frank:
LBJ said to Lady Bird: we did our best; time to go back to the
ranch. He told a national
audience, March 31, 1968: I will not run for re-election.
Betty: By 1968, the liberal hour was over. Richard Nixon was elected
President. The Republicans were
taking control.
Frank:
Our 3 major 1960s leaders--King, Kennedy, Johnson, plus so many who
helped them, left us a goodly heritage.
They gave us much but not everything the 1960s protesters fought for,
suffered for, died for.
Betty:
We honor the 1960s Protesters, the many heroes who backed them, the liberal
U.S. Supreme Court who approved them.
Above all we honor the millions who endured hate and misery but never
lost hope. They all made America
better.
Frank:
Now, Betty’s conclusion, and then mine.
Betty: Frank will alternate with me:
My first conclusion is, Yes, protesters and
demonstrators made a difference.
But the book, Liberal Hour’s main point is that the 1960s greatest legacy
came because of passage of the many liberal
laws we enjoy to this day.
Frank:
Betty’s 2nd conclusion: How fortunate that the 1960s liberal laws were
upheld by the most liberal Supreme Court in U.S. history under Chief Justice
Earl Warren (1891-1974), a Republican.
My 3rd conclusion: Pres. Johnson’s legislative success
provided us seniors with Medicare.
Many of the needy have Food Stamps (since 1964) and Medicaid (since
1965). One-third of all Americans now have Medicare or Medicaid.
Frank:
Betty’s final conclusion:
The Civil Rights Act 1964 and the Voting Rights Act 1965 made blacks an
important political force. Sadly today barriers to
voting are still being erected.
Betty: In reaction to 1960s
empowerment of blacks, Southern Democrats
became conservative Republicans.
¶Now Frank’s Conclusion:
Frank: I see the 1960s protests as a
mini-revolt that gave minorities long overdue civil rights and gave the poor
more government aid. These gains righted wrongs of prejßßßßßudice and neglect.
But vast problems remain.
What we lack, what we need, is a vision of the
future: How do we collectively--in
our heart of hearts, and for all our children and the world’s children--create
a more perfect union in a more peaceful world?
How do we transform war
into peace, discord into harmony, fierce competition into reasonable
cooperation?
That’s
basically what every presidential election is about. The only way I see it being done is by moderate l960s-style
protests that result in beneficial improvements for all the world’s people.
In
our discussion a minute or so ahead, please, some in this wise and humane
audience tell about your 1960s experiences; and more particularly tell what you
would do if you had the power to improve the world. ¶But Betty has a last request.
Betty: Before closing, we ask those
here who knew Martin Luther King, Jr. please to stand. Now, anyone who protested in the 1960s
please stand with them. And now the rest of you stand, because wherever you
were, you were surely praying that “justice would run down like water.” Our Thanks.
We end with: “We shall overcome, We shall overcome, We
shall overcome some day. I do
believe deep in my heart that we shall overcome someday.”
Frank: Thank you for being here. We could not
have reviewed this topic without you.
Save a life, lift a life, and you save the world.
End.
Books Used
1. Busby, Horace. The Thirty-First of March; An
Intimate Portrait of Lyndon Johnson’s Final Days in Office. NY:
Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2005.
Author was one of Pres. Johnson’s most trusted advisors.
2. Caro, Robert A. The Years of Lyndon
Johnson: The Passage of Power. See fine
review of this masterly LBJ biography.
http://www.robertcaro.com/the-books/the-passage-of-power/
3. Craats, Rennay. 20th Century USA; History of the
1960s. Mankato, MN:
Weigl Publishers,
2001. 48 p., short, pithy, brief
overview.
4. Dallek, Robert. Flawed Giant: Lyndon
Johnson and His Times 1961-1973. NY: Oxford University Press, 1998. Excellent account.
5. Ellis,
Sylvia. Freedom's Pragmatist:
Lyndon Johnson and Civil Rights. Gainesville,
FL: University of Florida Press, 2013.
6. Gitling, Todd. The Sixties: Years of Hope, Years of
Rage.
NY: Bantam Books, 1987.
7. Goodwin,
Richard N. Remembering
America. Boston, MA;
Little, Brown and Co., 1988.
First hand account of the 1960s by advisor-writer for U.S. Presidents JFK
speechwriter for, an adviser to and a confidant of, successively, John Kennedy,
Lyndon Johnson, Eugene McCarthy and Robert Kennedy and LBJ, both of whom did
their best toward liberalizing 1960s problems. See insightful review of this
book at:
http://www.nytimes.com/1988/09/04/books/where-have-all-the-dreamers-gone.html
8. Meltzer, Milton. There Comes A Time: The
Struggle for Civil Rights. NY: Random House, 2001. Excellent, simple, thorough, balanced;
has useful “Calendar of Civil Rights History, 1940-68.”
9. Olsen, James S., Editor. Historical Dictionary of the 1960s. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1999.
10. Purdum, Todd S. An Idea Whose Time Has Come: Two
Presidents, Two Parties, and the Battle for the Civil Rights Act of 1964. NY:
Macmillan, 2014. Excellent coverage of the USA Civil Rights Act; sent to
Congress by Pres. J.F. Kennedy where Southern segregationists planned to kill
it; Pres. L.B. Johnson saved, improved, and signed it.
11. Smith,
Hedrick. Who Stole the American
Dream? NY: Random House, 2012. How USA has been robbed of its dream of a broad middle class
by favoring banks, Wall Street, and the rich over past 40 years.
12. Stewart, John G. When Democracy Worked: Reflections
on the Passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Knoxville, TN, 2014. Author, legislative director for U.S.
Senator Hubert H. Humphrey (D, Minn.), tells history of, and how he, Humphrey
and others, worked hard maneuvering legislative passage through many hurdles of
this centerpiece civil rights act of its time.
13. Time-Life Books Editors. Turbulent Years: the 60s.
Alexandria, VA. Editors of
Time-Life Books, no year given, 192 pp.
Thorough, news-journalism, coverage. End.
1960s
Sources, extremely large, can be accessed via Google.com or other search
engines by typing in such topics as: 1960s USA, 1960s Timelines, African
American Protests, USA Civil Rights, etc., plus names of key 1960s persons
named in above article.
Send
corrections, comments: bfparker@frontiernet.net E ND.
Authors' Writings:
2015 Published writings
of Franklin Parker, 1921-, & Betty JuParker, 1929-, P.O. Box 406,
Pleasant Hill, TN 38578. E-mail:
bfparker@frontiernet.net Copy any of the URLs below,
paste on your browser, click on that URL, and you should access result.
41 of their Library of Congress Publications, listed in (beneath
1. Benjamin…:)
For
our Library of Congress and WorldCat publications, many
on
George Peabody: copy Franklin Parker, 1921, and Betty J. Parker, 1929-) on
your browser and click on: http://bit.ly/mfEmU2
British
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then,
under Advanced Search enter: Parker, Franklin, 1921-, and click
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Franklin
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For
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For
a funny skit on our 61st wedding anniversary, access:
Vanderbilt
University's Wise Library, Nashville, has these 9 Franklin Parker, 1921-,
publications (with Lib. of Congress call numbers): (copy on your browser
and click on): http://tinyurl.com/leroakx
1.
George Peabody, a biography Rev.
ed. HV28 .P4 P29 1995, 1995
2.
George Peabody, a biography
[electronic resource] Rev. ed. 1995.
3.
Education in the People's Republic of China, Past and Present : An Annotated
Bibliography, 1986.
4.
U.S. higher education : a guide to information sources, 1980.
5.
British schools and ours, 1979.
379.156 P224b, 1975
6.
The Battle of the Books : Kanawha County. Parker, Franklin, 1921-. Z5811 .P25 v.18,pt.1,
1971
7.
American dissertations on foreign education; a bibliography with abstracts (20
volume series).
370.8
In8, no.2, 1960
8.
African development and education in Southern Rhodesia. 370 P32 no.70
v.2, 1956
9.
George Peabody, founder of modern philanthropy.
Berea
College's Hutchins Library , Ky (the Parkers' undergraduate college, FP,
B.A., 1949; BJP, B.A., 1950), lists 17 of their publication titles: Copy
and click on:
http://banc.berea.edu:7008/vwebv/searchResults?searchId=10387&recPointer=10&recCount=10 Or: http://tinyurl.com/nzhksll
For
Picture/article F. Parker playing Xmas Jingle Bells: copy, paste on your
browser:
Lists
66 of Franklin Parker's publications in the U.S. Government ERIC (Educational Resources Information Center)
system, with access to Abstract of each Publication plus full access to each
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