their cause must be our cause

There are different kinds of days in our Congress, in Washington, D.C.

There are days like this --
"Congress is so strange.  A man gets up to speak and says nothing.  Nobody listens -- and then everybody disagrees."
-- Senator Alexander Wiley, quoting a Russian observer  (1947)

...and there are days like this:
"...Really, it is all of us, who must overcome the crippling legacy of bigotry and injustice.  And," Johnson paused, raising his arms for emphasis, "We shall overcome."

A moment of stunned silence followed, as the audience absorbed the fact that the President [LBJ] had embraced the anthem of black protest. 

And then almost the entire chamber rose in unison, "applauding, shouting, some stamping their feet."

---------------------------------
Many more of the "everybody disagrees" days,
than the
"shouting-feet-stamping" days.

That's ok; that's life.

In some countries, the only feet-stamping the people do is toward the nearest border, trying to get out....North Korea, for instance....

=======================
In Robert Dallek's LBJ bio, when he describes the discussions / negotiations between President Lyndon Johnson, and Alabama Governor George Wallace, these two paragraphs stood out, for me:

1.  "Don't shit me about your persuasive power, George," Johnson replied.  "I saw you . . . attacking me [on television], George.  And you know what?  You were so damn persuasive that I had to turn off the set before you had me changing my  mind."

2.  After their meeting, Wallace remarked:  "Hell, if I'd stayed in there much longer, he'd have had me coming out for civil rights."

============= I admire and applaud the civility of those comments, each man paying a compliment to the persuading powers of the other.....

===================
[excerpt]----------- Though [LBJ's] administration representatives in the Senate had to break a conservative filibuster and fend off liberalizing provisions that jeopardized the bill, by May 26, after only two and a half months, the Senate passed the bill by a lopsided 77 to 19 count.  In the House, where conservative maneuvering presented a challenge, the bill won passage on July 9 by an overwhelming 333 to 85 vote. 

A conference committee spent all of July throwing out House and Senate additions, largely restoring the bill to what the White House had initially proposed.    [emphasis, mine]

On August 6, in remarks in the Capitol Rotunda, Johnson emphasized the historical importance of the measure he was about to sign and promised that he would move swiftly to enforce its provisions. ------------ [stop excerpt]

Now, see -- when people say, automatically, "Those damn politicians never keep their promises!" - that isn't true.  We have to be nicer to our politicians, we mustn't "beat up on" them so much.  Because look:

-------- [excerpt]:  The impact of the law across the South was evident at once.  By the end of 1966, only four states of the old Confederacy had less than 50 percent of their voting-age blacks registered, and in three of these, registration had reached 47 percent.  Only Mississippi, with 33 percent of blacks on the voting rolls, was well short of the law's requirement.  At the end of 1967, Georgia, Louisiana, and Virginia had also exceeded the 50 percent target, and Mississippi had 45 percent of its black citizens registered.  By the 1968 election, Mississippi was up to 59 percent, and black registration in the eleven Confederate states averaged 62 percent.  ...

Black office-holding now also expanded dramatically, with the number of black officials multiplying in six Deep South states during the next four years nearly sixfold.  ...As important, white politicians seeking black votes abandoned the region's traditional racist demagoguery.  In the words of one histsorian, "a new generation of moderate governors, putting aside the ancient obsession with race, gave the South enlightened leadership."  The act also made a large difference in numbers of black elected officials nationally; by 1989, the number of black office-holders had grown from the few hundred there had been in 1965, to 6000.------------------- [end excerpt]

(By 1989 an African American public office-holder could think to himself, "I used to be hated because of my race -- now I'm hated for being a politician.  Progress is beautiful!")

In Flawed Giant's Chapter 4, King of the Hill, Dallek wrote:
At a breakfast meeting the day after Johnson's voting rights speech, Florida's Spessard Holland "asked angrily:  'Did you hear ol' Lyndon say we shall overcome?'  The moderate Lister Hill, of Alabama, turning to Richard Russell, asked, 'Dick, tell me something.  You trained that boy. . . . What happened to that boy?'  The Georgia senator responded, 'I just don't know, Lister. . . . He's a turncoat if there ever was one.'

-------------------------------
You couldn't make this stuff up -- you couldn't make it up!

-------
 "What do you want left after you when you die?  Do you want a Great...Big...Marble monument that reads, 'George Wallace -- He Built'?...Or do you want a little piece of scrawny pine board lying across that harsh, caliche soil, that reads, 'George Wallace -- He Hated?'"

-------
"I know you're like me, not approving of brutality."

-------
"Don't you shit me, George Wallace."

-------
"I know you're like me...."

-------
"I wanted to talk from my own heart, from my own experience."

-------
"...a turning point in man's unending search for freedom. . . . Rarely in any time does an issue lay bare the secret heart of America itself. . . . Rarely are we met with a challenge . . . to the values and the purposes and the meaning of our beloved Nation."

-------
"It is the effort of American Negroes to secure for themselves the full blessings of American life.  Their cause must be our cause too.  Because it is not just Negroes, but really it is all of us, who must overcome the crippling legacy of bigotry and injustice."

-------
"It's his ox that's in the ditch, let's see how he gets him out."

-------
"Now you've got a lot of poor people down there in Alabama, a lot of ignorant people.  You can do a lot for them, George.  Your president will help you."

-------
"And, we shall overcome."

-------
"The real hero of this struggle is the American Negro....His courage to risk safety and even to risk his life, have awakened the conscience of this Nation...."

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You could not make that stuff up.
whatacountry


"Don't you shit me, George Wallace"

---------------------
excerpts from Flawed Giant,
Robert Dallek

-30-