I know you're like me

President Lyndon Johnson,
to Governor George Wallace:

"Why don'tcha just desegregate all your schools? 
You and I go out there in front of those television cameras right now, and you announce you've decided to desegregate every school in Alabama."

Gov. Wallace:  "Oh, Mr. President, I can't do that, you know.  The schools have got school boards; they're locally run.  I haven't got the political power to do that."

Pres. Johnson: 

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

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-----------------------------

Spring 1968:  Pres. Johnson announces he will not seek re-election.
But three years earlier...
[excerpt]-------------------  He focused his efforts on trying to head off more violence in Alabama.  When King announced that he would begin another march to Montgomery on March 9, the White House urged him to avoid a fresh confrontation.  With a federal judge issuing a temporary order barring all marches, King was reluctant to defy the very authority he was trying to enlist in his campaign.  Consequently, he agreed to a compromise worked out by a mediator the President had sent to Selma.  King led 2000 marchers, including 200 religious leaders from all over the country, across the Pettus Bridge, where Alabama troopers once again blocked the way.  After singing "We Shall Overcome," the anthem of the civil rights movement, and kneeling in prayer for several minutes, King led the marchers back to Selma without incident.

King's restraint contrasted dramatically with the actions of local whites the next day.  They beat up the Reverend James Reeb, a white minister from Boston, who died in a Birmingham hospital the following night.

Johnson now came under strong pressure to intervene with federal troops.  Sympathy marchers in cities around the country urged the President to protect the protestors in Alabama, while pickets outside the White House carried signs denouncing Johnson's inaction:  "LBJ, just you wait -- see what happens in '68."

Johnson was pained at the attacks on his commitment to support black voting rights.  "Once again my Southern heritage was thrown in my face.  I was hurt, deeply hurt," he wrote later.  But he was determined "not to be shoved into hasty action."  Though he had put 700 troops on alert during the second march on March 9 and though federal attorneys, marshalls, and FBI agents had been sent to Selma to keep the peace, Johnson was reluctant to publicize his actions.  Southern obstructionists eager to show the South as a victim of overbearing federal power might use them to their advantage.  If he acted too aggressively, Johnson believed it would alienate southern moderates, antagonize centrists everywhere, and block passage of a voting rights act.  On the other hand, if he did nothing to protect the marchers, it would deepen the rift between North and South and undermine his ability to lead a law through Congress.

Johnson needed the cooperation of George Wallace, who also wanted to prevent further bloodshed.  Wallace had national ambitions and the sense to see that more violence would mark him as simply a racist rather than an opponent of federal authority, which he rightly believed could be made into a popular political issue.  "Now that Wallace, he's a lot more sophisticated than your average southern politician, and it's his ox that's in the ditch, let's see how he gets him out," Johnson said at a meeting convened to discuss the crisis.

To escape his dilemma, Wallace asked Johnson to see him.  Johnson agreed at once, and they met at the White House on the afternoon of March 13.  The meeting provided the occasion for what one aide called possibly LBJ's finest performance.  Johnson's objective was to put Wallace on the spot, to make clear that he would back the legitimate demands of the marchers and insist that Wallace protect peaceful demonstrators from police violence.

Johnson orchestrated every aspect of the meeting.  He received Wallace in the Oval Office, where he sat him on a couch with soft cushions that placed him some three or four feet above the floor.  Johnson positioned himself in a rocking chair "and leaned toward the semi-recumbent Wallace, his towering figure inclined downward until their noses almost touched."  After Johnson let Wallace say his piece against outside agitators stirring up trouble and his opposition to federal intervention in the affairs of his state, Johnson gave him the "treatment."  "I know you're like me, not approving of brutality," Johnson said, and handed the governor a newspaper with a picture of a state trooper kicking a black protestor who had been knocked to the ground.  Johnson waved aside Wallace's explanations that the troopers were only doing their duty, that it was an isolated incident, and that they didn't start the ruckus.  Johnson pressed Wallace into acknowledging that there was "brutality."

Then raising the issue of black disenfranchisement, Johnson asked Wallace to persuade Alabama registrars to give blacks their constitutional right to vote.  Wallace protested that he didn't have the wherewithal to sway these local officials.  "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."

..."Why don'tcha just desegregate all your schools?" he asked Wallace.  "You and I go out there in front of those television cameras right now, and you announce you've decided to desegregate every school in Alabama."  Wallace replied:  "Oh, Mr. President, I can't do that, you know.  The schools have got school boards; they're locally run.  I haven't got the political power to do that."  Johnson said, "Don't you shit me, George Wallace."

After nearly three hours of hammering at the governor, Johnson appealed to his sense of history.  He urged Wallace not to "think about 1968; you think about 1988.  You and me, we'll be dead and gone then, George.  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.  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?"  After their meeting, Wallace remarked:  "Hell, if I'd stayed in there much longer, he'd have had me coming out for civil rights."
------------------------- [end excerpt]

{Flawed Giant.  Lyndon Johnson and his Times, 1961 - 1973.
Robert Dallek.  Copyright, 1998.  Oxford
University Press.  New York.  Oxford.}

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