Lyndon B. Johnson Quotes
It broke their virginity.
No civil rights bill had been passed since Reconstruction and the Southern legislators were considered an insurmountable power bloc in Washington who could not be thwarted. Some had criticized the bill as being very weak and insignificant. LBJ disagreed.
Lyndon Baines Johnson, 1908-1973, 36th President of the United States (Democrat, TX), Description of the effect of the Civil Rights Bill of 1952 on the South
Sourced by: Eigen's Political and Historical Quotations
He was right. Even the vaunted Southern Filibuster was broken by the strategy and tactics Johnson and Senator Humbert Humphry, the Floor Leader for the 1964 Civil Rights Bill.
He was responding to Mississippi Congressman William Colmer-- {637395}. Southern racists frequently accused other members of Congress of being intimidated by civil rights leaders rather than voting for civil rights legislation out of conviction. Many of them, like Colmer, were so insular that revanchist that they did not realize that other whites could really believe that segregation was not a necessary and good thing.
Lyndon Baines Johnson, often referred to by his initials LBJ, was the 36th president of the United States, in office from 1963 to 1969. He served as the 37th vice president from 1961 to 1963 and assumed the presidency following the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. A Democrat from Texas, Johnson was also a United States representative and later majority leader in the United States Senate. Johnson is one of only four people to have served, at various times, in all four federal elected positions.
