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).
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Poboy, And people of all colors and ethnic background helped in the Civil Rights movement. Many were killed of all races because they believed in human dignity. My GGGrandfather allthough living in Tenn. fought for the North because he did not believe in slavery, as many in the south did not. It was a rich mans war, just like today. I am very proud of that. No one person can take credit, but I say It does take a villiage and we are all Americans, lets start acting like it.
Great piece here. Why theObama campaign wants to create controversy by creating fervor in the black community over her comments is beyond ridiculous
Earl, can you or have you identified one comment made by Obama discussing LBJ's and MLK's respective roles in the civil rights movement and what they each mean? If not, you need to be honest and tell the readers that.
Mr. Hutchinson is absolutely right. Because I am old enough to remember when Johnson was president. What many of you may not know is that when the Equal Rights Amendment looked like it may pass, (the southern reps were opposing it)the southern reps in Congress added a rider that included women. They thought that even northern reps in Congress would not go for equal rights for women and turn down the amendment for that reason. But the amendment passed in the 1960's. That is the only reason women are protected under the equal rights amendment.
Earl,
Your post is, like Nancy Reagan would say, "a wonderful piece of fiction."
It starts off and ends at or near the end.
It leaves off a struggle of a people that has lasted over 200 years.
From Crispus Attucks, David Walker and Mariah Stuart , and Nat Turner to Frederick Douglass, WEB Dubois to A Phillip Randolf and Whitney Young, to the Montgomery bus boycotts, Greenboro sit-ins, Malcolm X and Black Panthers, Thurgood Marshall and Charles Hamilton Houston,
to start off your "story" at the signing of the Civil Rights Act by Johnson is to overlook the long, long struggle by Black people for freedom.
And this is the problem with Hillary’s silly statement.
"clinical obsession to smash mouth every Hillary utterance"
So true!
The very premise of this article is simply ridiculous. Does anyone actually believe that LBJ would have "rammed through" legislation if MLK & others weren't leading marches throughout the south? Forget the semantics - if enough people take to the street wanting change, some politician somewhere is going to get the nuts and bolts of the legislation through.
The author of this article acts as though the Civil Rights Act would have been shelved, never to see the light of day, if LBJ hadn't "rammed it through." Are you kidding me? Seriously, are you kidding me?
Right. If Brave LBJ hadn't rammed through the Civil Rights Act, we'd still be drinking from separate water fountains. Tell me another one, Mr. Hutchinson.
Earl,
Someone said that you are entitled to your own opinion but not to your own facts. Check your facts guy. Obama did not respond, nor did anyone in his camp until approached by the media on Sunday. Concerned comments were coming from outside the Obama camp.
In addition, MLK was a great leader, and because of him and other brave people of all races and religions, but mostly with the organization and cooperation and bravery of the student protestors and nonviolent protesters in the south, minorities and women of all stripes can now enjoy their civil rights. And it was accomplished without having a second Civil War. The bloodshed while horrific was kept to a minimum, because of the genius of the nonviolent movement which was kept on track by MLK. As a result, this country, before Bush, could hold their head up as a beacon in the world for civil rights and civil liberties. This is why MLK has a day on the calendar honoring him. Johnson did his part, but he didn't start the fire. Don't get it twisted.
Speaking of the "right to vote" - are you aware that MEN of all colors were granted the right to vote 50 years prior to women?
The Obama camp is playing the age/gender card. If you lived prior to Obama, you're going back in time. What utter nonsense.
We all know you can't go back - but experience is a major requirement to go forward.
So, ladies, why are you putting up with men wanting a man for president - white or black?
Why don't the ladies stand up for themselves here?
t
The way super-venerating works, the kind of which Martin Luther King, Jr. has been the object (and deservedly so) is, the more you divvy up the credit for something, the less one individual stands apart as a martyr or a hero. Preserving a deep sense of the value of King's brand of action may supercede many other considerations.
Okay, there's also much to be gained by handing out a few great big thank yous. Then let's also thank television, which at that point in time gave new meaning to the idea of certain human behavior not standing the light of day. The absence of civil rights legislation was a disgrace, and that void couldn't stand the light of day, or that form of the light of day that TV was introducing. This value that television possessed was articulated during the Chicago Democratic Convention of 1968, when the chant of the demonstrators was, "The whole world is watching!" A real-time, national eye was not blinking.
The other side of such condensed social pressure is that many people addressing their social obligations, including passing civil rights legislation, are doing so out of awareness of the focus that can be brought to bear on them for not acting. Was ignoring the need for civil rights action really so nationally palatable when Johnson came aboard? Didn't things get to where he sorta kinda had to, even if the public was still too new to the power of TV to quite feel this?
Thanks for the history lesson.i still won't vote for her.She's a Republican.
Earl, I just can't figure out what side of the fence you are on. It would be good if you would declare your support for someone. First of all this is a "political campaign". Since when did reality count as the currency of measurement of value of what anyone says during a hotly contested campaign? Of course Hillary didn't intend to offer us a simple history lesson. She cast herself in the role of LBJ. While one "spin" may be to disregard the importance of LBJ, her spin was to suggest that rhetoric needs the "clout of an LBJ", and she brings that type of clout to get things done. If you believe that, I have a bridge in Brooklyn that I'm selling shares in for $1.00. Get in early before the price rises.
From the other side of history where I was in the sixties, the reason Kennedy chose Johnson was to leverage that experience and clout to balance his lack of experience, and make his vision a reality. Johnson wasn't elected President. Kennedy was, with all the same criticisms about experience that Obama is getting. That is not to say Obama is the second coming of Kennedy, but he has the capacity to surround himself with change agents who can help realize the vision that he has for our future. Along the way, they have to defend themselves against the Clinton spin masters.
I think Obama understands history very well. It is Hillary who tilted the lense to reflect on herself differently.
Re the below excerpt ... What an extraordinary statement!!!! You blame King for the racist backlash to his and others' marches and demonstrations against immorality and segregation??? what's next? Should we blame Ghandi for the violence wrought on Indians by the British during their push to independence? Oh, I know, let's blame Jews who resisted the Nazis for Kristalnacht!!! Get a grip!!!!
"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."
If you are thinking about voting for Hillary Clinton first ask yourself these questions:
Do you agree with Hillary's vote in favor of the Kyl-Lieberman amendment?
Do you agree with Bill Clinton's bombing the pharmaceutical plant in the Sudan which eventually killed tens of thousands due to lack of medicine?
Do you agree with Hillary's appointing Sandy Berger as one of her National Security advisors? Berger plead guilty to stealing and destroying classified intelligence documents (they were related to 9/11).
Do you agree with Hillary's having Mark Penn as one of her chief strategists (a major voice for her campaign) who represents Blackwater and is a known union buster?
Do you agree with the Clinton's support of NAFTA?
Do you agree with Hillary's voting against increasing fuel economy and the production of renewable fuels like Ethanol?
Do you agree with Hillary's mandated health care plan that to this day leaves out the consequences for middle to lower income families who can't afford the rates she is proposing?
Do you agree with Hillary's statement in regards to social security that the majority of Americans in this country make over 90,000 dollars a year?
Do you agree with Hillary's voting against providing seniors with a prescription drug benefit?
Do you agree with Hillary's support and defense of lobbyists?
Do you agree with Hillary's support of current bankruptcy laws that continue to hurt lower income Americans and small businesses?
Do you agree with Hillary's opposition against a level playing field so that people who pay for health insurance out of their own pocket get the same tax break the big corporations get for providing health care benefits to their employees?
Did you know that Hillary is against allowing people to shop for health insurance across state lines like we do with auto insurance?
Did you know that Hillary has voted for penalizing senior citizens who have those private health care plans through Medicare?
Do you agree with Hillary's voting for the authorization of the Iraq war and not reading the NIE report?
Since Obama himself didn't bring it up you are no less guilty of distortion of this issue then those who did raise it. Your irresponsibility in this regard is reprehensible. Will you issue an apology to Obama as you seem to expect him to do to Clinton although it was not him who raised the issue.
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