|
?:reviewBody
|
-
A viral quote circulating since the 1990s attributes the following statement to Lyndon Baines Johnson, the 36th President of the United States: I'll have those niggers voting Democratic for 200 years: It's cited in a variety of contexts — as an example of LBJ's opportunism, as an example of his crassness, as an example of his racism and hypocrisy, and as an example of the racism and hypocrisy of the Democratic Party in general. We don't have a high degree of confidence that he actually said it, however. There's no question that Lyndon Johnson, despite championing the landmark Civil Rights Act of 1964 and signing it into law, was also a sometime racist and notorious vulgarian who rarely shied away from using the N-word in private. For example, he reportedly referred to the Civil Rights Act of 1957 as the nigger bill in more than one private phone conversation with Senate colleagues. And he reportedly said upon appointing African-American judge Thurgood Marshall to the Supreme Court, Son, when I appoint a nigger to the court, I want everyone to know he's a nigger. According to historian Doris Kearns Goodwin, he also uttered this cynical-sounding statement, which sometimes circulates in tandem with the voting Democratic remark: To be fair, historians point out that sometimes — as in the case above, presumably — Johnson's more bigotry-laden statements were calculated to achieve a specific end, such as convincing his pro-segregation Dixiecrat colleagues that it was in their best interests to support civil rights legislation. MSNBC reporter Adam Serwer writes: But there were also instances of casual racism that can't be so easily rationalized. Biographer Caro also notes that Johnson is said to have replied as follows to a black chauffeur who told him he'd prefer to be called by name instead of boy, nigger or chief: All of which is to acknowledge that, without question, Lyndon Johnson used the N-word in private conversations. What is in question is whether Johnson in fact uttered this particular instance of it: I'll have those niggers voting Democratic for 200 years. The quote appeared for the first time anywhere on page 33 of Ronald Kessler's book, Inside the White House: The Hidden Lives of the Modern Presidents and the Secrets of the World's Most Powerful Institution, published in 1995: The MacMillan referenced above was Ronald M. MacMillan, a former Air Force One steward Kessler interviewed for Inside the White House. The steward provided many of the juiciest tidbits in a relentlessly juicy compendium of gossip, including the revelation that Johnson liked to parade around without his clothes on: Other sources have corroborated Johnson's predilection for casual nudity, so we don't need to dwell on it, but the fact remains that not all of Ronald MacMillan's anecdotes, when checked, check out. For example, Luci Baines Johnson flatly denied MacMillan's claim that when she was a teenager she once screamed at him to go Find my nigger (i.e., her servant) and threatened to slap him if he didn't. This was the attitude of these people who were championing civil rights, Kessler quotes MacMillan as saying. But when asked for her version of events, Luci Johnson wrote, I do not now, nor have I ever, subscribed to such feelings or such language and therefore could not use it. LBJ's comment about black people voting Democrat was supposedly uttered to two unnamed governors traveling with the president on Air Force One, but we only have one source — MacMillan, who claimed he overheard the exchange — and no corroboration from anyone else. And then there's MacMillan's editorializing: It was strictly a political ploy for the Democratic party. He was phony from the word go. And: This was the attitude of these people who were championing civil rights. It's not just that MacMillan gives the appearance of being a biased witness, but also that his cynical portrait is at odds with historical evidence showing that by the time Johnson took office after JFK's assassination, he was fully committed to Kennedy's civil rights legislation. Some of this evidence can be found in LBJ's oval office recordings, in which he can be heard fighting for its passage. Eric Foner writes in the New York Times Book Review: Lastly, the historical evidence suggests that far from being concerned about securing future generations of black votes, one of Johnson's main worries -- which, to his credit, didn't prevent him from pushing for passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 — was losing the votes of white Southerners. His former press secretary, Bill Moyers, recounted this scene in his 2004 book Moyers on America: Circling back to the quote with which we started, it wouldn't have been entirely out of character for LBJ to have said something like, I'll have those niggers voting Democratic for 200 years, but on balance we have to question its authenticity.
(en)
|
![[This page as RDF]](http://data.gesis.org/claimskg/static/rdf-icon.gif){kind=icon}