Now, Lyndon Johnson had many flaws. ThereÂ’s plenty of documentation of that fact in the wonderful biographies that have been written about Johnson. But so far none of the those biographers have really doubted the total conviction that Johnson had, once be became President, to end for all time theÂ…practice of segregation and white supremacy–not just in the South but all over the country. It was sanctioned by law in the South, but Johnson knew from his own experience that these conditions–the social conditions–were common in all parts of the country. The Black population of the United States was harnessed against progress, was kept from advancing by law and by the customs and culture that surrounded them all the way into the 1960′s and beyond there. So Lyndon Johnson pushed through Congress two historic civil rights bills (Note: the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965).
When he (successfully passed these Civil Rights Acts) he said to his aid Bill Moyers that I may have turned the South over to the Republican Party for the next generation., I donÂ’t think he could possibly have known just how prophetic that statement was.
Indeed, it was in 1964 that Strom Thurmond finally switched from the Democratic Party to the Republican Party that began this avalanche of "coming out" parties where all these Democrats, who were really closet Republicans, came out of the closet to present themselves as what they truly were, which was super conservative and still segregationistsÂ….
