Civil rights hero LBJ was a racist

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I should have seen it coming. Whenever I write anything regarding President Lyndon B. Johnson, a conservative is sure to make such a remark.

Youll recall in last weeks column I mentioned LBJ making the observation that Republicans are “so busy operating the trickle-down theory, giving the richest corporations the biggest break, that the whole thing goes to hell in a handbasket. An irate reader posted the following statement in the comments section that follows my column on line:

Hey John Dunphy: remember when your hero LBJ commented the following after the Civil Rights Act passed (which he opposed when he was in the senate, along with another one of your heroes Al Gore’s father – who actually filibustered against his passage): “I ‘ll have them [racial epithet] voting Democrat for 30 years.”

Wise guy that I am, I opened my rebuttal with the correction, You people can’t even get misinformation right. The claim is that LBJ said, I’ll have those [deleted] voting Democratic for 200 years.”

According to Snopes, I continued, this alleged quotation was first cited in Ronald Kessler’s 1995 book “Inside the White House.” Snopes investigated this purported LBJ quotation and concluded, “It wouldn’t have been entirely out of character for LBJ to have said “something as crude and cynical as this, “but on balance we have to question its authenticity.”

While researching my reply to this readers comment, I found a fascinating article on MSNBC titled “Lyndon Johnson was a civil rights hero. But also a racist.” The articles opening sentence reads: “Lyndon Johnson used the word a lot.” Adam Serwer, the articles author, provides ample proof of this accusations truth as well as the political irony of LBJs use of this epithet.

For example, when discussing a civil rights bill with southern politicians such as Mississippi Democrat James Eastland, who vehemently opposed such legislation, he’d simply call it the [deleted] bill. But Johnson, as Senate majority leader, helped to get that very bill the Civil Rights Act of 1957 passed.

The 1964 Civil Rights Act and the 1965 Voting Rights Act passed during Johnsons presidency. LBJ in 1967 appointed Thurgood Marshall to the US Supreme Courts as its first black justice. However, in Flawed Giant, LBJ biographer Robert Dallek wrote that Johnson said he appointed Marshall rather than a less well-known black judge because when I appoint a [deleted] to the bench, I want everybody to know he’s a [deleted].”

I hate this word.

I honestly cant recall the first time I heard it as a child, although I have a pretty good idea which relative I heard use it. Long deceased, he was an old-time Irish Catholic who, like many Irish Catholics of his generation, had little use for black people. My parents did not particularly like the word and generally refrained from using it.

I also remember hearing an expression used by members of the generation that preceded my parents. If someone was perspiring heavily, that person was said to be sweating like a [racial epithet] at election. When I grew older, my study of American history led me to assume this expression had something to do with elections that could deprive black Americans of their civil rights and possibly even endanger their lives. A bit of research proved that my suspicions were correct.

In an article by Mary Jourdan Atkinson titled Familiar Sayings of Old Time Texans, which was included in Publications of the Texas Folk-Lore Society, Number IV (1925), I read Sweating like a [deleted] at election is a commentary on Reconstruction days that every Southerner understands. The Reconstruction period followed the Civil War. For a time, former Confederate states were governed by Republican coalitions of newly-enfranchised ex-slaves, white southerners who had remained loyal to the Union and white northerners who had moved South.

Ex-Rebels resolved to re-establish white supremacy in their states and formed terrorist organizations such as the Ku Klux Klan to intimidate black men from voting. Casting a nerd could cost a black voter his life.

This white baby boomer resolved long ago not to use the word.

Yes, I know it often appears in song lyrics. Yes, its replete in the dialogue of films such as Pulp Fiction. But I choose to refrain from saying it. Why? Because its hate speech distilled into just two syllables and six letters.

John J. Dunphy is an author, book store owner and former recording secretary for the Godfrey Democrats.

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