Obama Needs a History Lesson about Hillary and King

The Obama camp did it again. They manufactured yet another issue out of a non-issue when they pounded Hillary Clinton for supposedly defiling Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. by minimizing his role in the civil rights struggle. Here's Hillary's terrible sin per the Obama campaign crowd: she said that Dr. King's dream was realized when President Lyndon Johnson shoved the 1964 Civil Rights Bill through Congress. This was anything but a put down of King.

Hillary paid tribute to King for laying the groundwork for the civil rights bill and gave justifiable credit to Johnson for ramming the bill through a bickering, divided and very recalcitrant Congress. Her point was that presidents that have their public policy priorities screwed on right can make changes, monumental changes, for good.

If Hillary could be faulted for anything it's that she didn't go far enough. If Johnson hadn't forcefully intervened and jawboned, prodded, arm twisted, and embarrassed the slew of wavering and hostile Congressmen to the bill into supporting the bill, or at least tempering their opposition to it, King's dream would have remained just that, an empty dream. King recognized that. In a Playboy interview in 1965, he said this about Johnson: "He has demonstrated his wisdom and commitment in coming to grips with the problem (racial discrimination). My impression is that he will remain a strong president for civil rights." History amply proved that, and Johnson despite his Vietnam War tumble from historical grace, still is regarded as the president that did more for civil rights than any other president.

But I'd go even further still. King gets much deserved praise and is much honored for igniting the national fervor for civil rights and galvanizing thousands to put their bodies on the line in the civil rights battles. Yet, there's an ugly side and often forgotten note to that. The street marches and demonstrations also stirred the first tremors of white backlash. The George Wallace surge in the North, the open hostility of many Northern whites to housing and school integration, and the Republican reawakening in the South was a direct outcropping of the civil rights push. This stiffened the spines of Southern Democrats and conservative Northern Republicans who dug their heels in and flatly opposed the bill, piled amendment after crippling amendment onto the bill initially, and employed every legal and parliamentary dodge and stall tactic they could dredge up to delay a vote on it, if not to kill it outright.

King could do nothing about this. JFK who introduced the bill couldn't do anything about it either. He was at his wits end after months and months of Congressional ducking and dodging on the bill about how to get it moving. By the time Johnson took office, following JFK's murder, the bill was still born in Congress. There was every chance that it could be shelved. However, Johnson would have none of that. He was a Southerner and he knew the mood and temper of the South. From his decades in the Senate he knew where the political skeletons were buried and how to rattle them. He did what King and Kennedy didn't have a prayer of doing, he got the sympathetic ear of enough Southerners to take some of the steam out of their vehement opposition to the bill. The rest of course is history. The Civil Rights Bill, not King's marches and demonstrations, broke the back of legal segregation in America and became the watchword for progressive, visionary social legislation for decades to come.

King and all the top civil rights leaders knew that history had been made with the passage of the bill, and that the man that played the towering role in making that history was LBJ A t the signing ceremony for the bill, King and the other civil rights leaders beamed when Johnson handed them the pens after the signing. They effusively praised him for his tireless effort.

Hillary's statement was a simple, honest, and respectful nod to Johnson for his indispensable part in making civil rights a legal fact and reality in America. This was the same nod that King and the civil rights leaders made more than four decades ago to him.

This is a nod that the Hillary haters have forgotten or deliberately distorted in their clinical obsession to smash mouth every Hillary utterance. This is a history lesson that Hillary got right about King and Johnson, and one that the Obama campaign flunked badly.

Earl Ofari Hutchinson is an author and political analyst. His forthcoming book is "The Ethnic Presidency: How Race Decides the Race to the White House" (Middle Passage Press, February, 2008).

Comments

[DBBearden]

Bill Clinton had two terms in office to establish his legacy. If you want to know what that legacy was, visit:
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2001/01/08/politics/main262484.shtml
LBJ on the other hand had one term in office. You might want to visit that era as well:
http://www.nvr.org/pres_content.php?pro=pres&sec=timeline&subsec=4
Now, do we have to wait four years to see what HRC will do? Check this out:
http://prorev.com/connex.htm

[chamberslee]

Hillary and Obama's voting records are nearly identical--agreeing 97- 98 percent of the time. Their campaign strategies are similar, also: they both use tested and proven (even questionable) tactics to persuade voters. Once we accept this fact, we can get back to the real issues that matter.

Neither candidate is a saint.

[gregjones]

Earl.....you forgot some things !!!
It is great and refreshing to see how Obama has allows taken the high road and was first to call the 'truce'. He is a true leader with integrity. I've become even more disturbed with Hillary after reading articles that show that she was actually against the civil rights act of 1964 as a republican and staunch supporter of Sen. Barry Goldwater who was adamently against the civil rights act and was a segregationist. She was a 'Goldwater Girl' at the same time she claims to have been for the civil rights movement. That kind of dishonesty really disturbs me. We have had a big liar in office for the past 7 years.....America Needs Integrity !!! (Google: Hillary, King, Goldwater) By the way....wonder if the Clintons will keep unleashing their attack dogs on Obama (or mis-writings)while continuing to say....'It wasn't Me' !

[Boris]

The more I see of Obama, the less I like him. His deceptive attacks, by himself or his surrogates, reduces my trust in him. Did he even live in America during the MLK times or the LBJ period? I think he sees history from a far distant perspective, that of a naive, young, angry outsider.

Without Dr. King, America would have never seen close up the problems in the deep South and he brought the message home to every living room.

HOWEVER, only LBJ had the power to make the civil rights bill come true. He was the most powerful Senate Majority leader of all time before becoming president and he understood the southern mentality. He had clubs to cudgel the Dixicrats into voting his way. Strom Thurmond reluctantly pulled the rest of the southern Dems. into line but he warned Johnson that the Civil Rights Bill would be the end of the Democratic Party in the South.

Lyndon Johnson deserves to stand alongside of Dr. King in bringing justice and equality to Black America.

And, so does Harry Truman, who refused to grant the request of Sen. Strom Thurmond to eliminate black veterans from the benefits of housing and college in the GI Bill.

Every college educated African American veteran of WW II should pray to God every night in thanks for the courage of President Truman.

[cheforacle]

Earl, when do you plan to cite a statement by Obama which supports your point that Obama doesn't know his civil rights history?

[bumpersticker]

It was Bill Clinton who tried to put Obama in a box of "fairy tale" and ineffective dreamer, and contrast Hillary as the effective "do'er."

Hillary used the MLK/LBJ example to buttress that perception as a self-serving distortion. Let's be honest here - the attempt was to link "I have a dream" to a perception that we need more than just a dreamer like MLK AND OBAMA.

Anyone who looks at Obama's life must conclude that he walks the walks and does what needs to be done. Bill and Hillary attempted to make Obama look impotent. That's the game here.

[Edmonsky]

Earl Ofari Hutchinson,
Obama does not need any history lesson about Hilary and King. Earl only betrayed his intellectual gap in understanding the issues being discussed. Earl is blinded by his simmering jealousy against Obama. Let me break it down for Earl to the level that will make sense to him.

Hilary Clinton says that Obama is a talker and not a doer. She accused Obama of raising false hopes in citizens. Obama countered that there was nothing false about hope, citing as examples, the hope that led JFK to put men in the moon; and how MLK deployed hope in pursuit of civil right.

Hilary Clinton was stuck in her argument that Obama is a talker and not a doer. It was Hilary’s ill-advised logic to draw analogy between herself (doer) and Obama (talker) with MLK (dreamer) and LBJ (doer). Such analogy in that context is very distasteful and contemptible. MLK was both a dreamer and doer. MLK did not only preach ideals of non-violent resistance but he walked the walk.

It was not Obama’s campaign that first raised the alarm of belittling MLK’s achievements by Hilary Clinton. The response was spontaneous by those who disagreed with the analogy by Hilary in equating Obama, her competitor in election, whom she is casting as a talker and not a doer to MLK, whom she considers as a dreamer but his dream did not come to fruition without LBJ who signed it into law. It is the analogy stupid.

[plutorage]

The writer misses the point. Hilary put MLK in a subservient position to LBJ not because it was reality but because she wants to win and she simply says the first advantageous thing that comes to mind instead of thinking about the totality of what she is saying.

Hilary wasn't really thinking about LBJ, MLK or her audience. She was thinking about Hilary.
Because of her lack of real experience, Hilary makes the kind of mistakes a college student would make running for class president.

[Tellmethetruth]

Both Hillary Clinton and Bill Clinton spoke at Coretta King's funeral only a year ago and brought down the house. George Bush I and II spoke as did Jimmy Carter. Bush II got many jabs from many folks who spoke before him. Bill and Hillary Clinton - the crowd was estastic.

I do not recall Obama being in attendance let along speaking.

[cheforacle]

Earl, what statement did Obama even make about LBJ that you believe means he fails to understand the reationship between MLK and LBJ. Your article fails to cite any statement that Obama is supposed to have made yet you claim he needs a history lesson. It seems it is you Earl that needs a lesson on contemporary political happenings. What specifically did Obama say on this subject? You are trying to create innuendo.

[shamba]

"The Obama camp did it again. They manufactured yet another issue out of a non-issue when they pounded Hillary Clinton for supposedly defiling Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. by minimizing his role in the civil rights struggle."

The Obama camp did not manufacture this. Hillary made the statement and journalists and pundits responded. Granted many put a negative spin on Hillary's words. I listened to the interview in question, and thought that Hillary was walking a thin line there. Obama himself has said that he does not think that Hillary was dissing MLK.

So, Hutchinson is wrong here about one thing - it was not the "Obama camp" that made this the issue that it turned out to be. Hillary's camp and those that "overreacted" to her statement should take responsibility for that.

[Revrob56]

Reasonable thinking people could simply write off Hillary's misuse of words that implied a very minimal impact on the civil rights bill( that mind you has not stopped the vast majority of African Americans from being discriminated against)if she had done one thing that she just can't do. The one thing that would really humanize her much more than tears, hairstyles, fashion, black friends and supporters­...apologi­ze for her misspeak. But she like our current president have a difficult time saying I made a mistake...please forgive me. For Bush it's too late and too many lives have been lost to say it. In Hillary's case she'd rather be disruptive and destructive and misdirect blame than admit fault. And by the way sir her exact quote was "...it took a President" and not the countless black and white Americans who were lynched, beaten, jailed and killed for that right. Not taking away from Johnson's handling of the legislation. He was a political whiz. But I think the blood, lives, sweat and tears of generation trump his contribution.

[Herrington]

Mr. Huchinson,

What you write here was my first reaction to Senator Clinton's statement exactly, followed by an immediate cringe, because a no white person on the planet is allowed to say such a thing.

While I acknowledge the necessity of holding a hard line on speech and communication in issues of race, it does cause its full share of difficult moments. It even, often, rings ridiculous.

[suki21693]

Interesting how this avoids one basic point: what was Clinton trying to accomplish by saying this? What was the parallel she was trying to draw?

Over 40 years on and the implications are insulting to all.

I am willing to give her the benefit of the doubt on this one issue. Race is a very touchy subject and even if one is attempting to approach it positively, there is so much room for misinterpretation and misunderstanding.

Like I said, I would give her the benefit of the doubt on this ONE issue...but there just seem to be so many others...

[CAPTAINSKIPPY]

That's true. Without LBJ, the 1964 Civil Rights Act was toast; he made it look easy, but he lobbied long & hard, and twisted many arms to pass that legislation. Then he signed it, knowing he was giving up "the solid South" for at least a generation.