NOTES

ABBREVIATIONS

FRUS	Foreign Relations of the United States
JFKL	John F. Kennedy Library
LBJL	Lyndon B. Johnson Library
NSF	National Security Files
OF	Office Files
OH	Oral History
PP	Personal Papers
SOF	Senate Office Files
TCC	Transcripts of Telephone Conversations
VP	Vice Presidential
WH	White House
WHCF	White House Central File

INTRODUCTION: THE PARADOX OF REFORM

1. “Remarks in Cadillac Square, Detroit,” September 7, 1964, in Public Papers of the Presidents: LBJ, 1963–1964, vol. II (Washington, DC, 1965), 1051–1052.

2. Sidney Milkis, “Franklin D. Roosevelt, the Economic Constitutional Order, and the New Politics of Presidential Leadership,” in The New Deal and the Triumph of Liberalism, ed. Sidney M. Milkis and Jerome M. Mileur (Amherst, MA, 2002), 32.

3. Quoted in Richard J. Ellis, American Political Cultures (New York, 1993), 24.

4. “Remarks at a Reception for Members of the American Society of Newspaper Editors,” April 17, 1964, in Public Papers: LBJ, 1963–1964, vol. I, 485.

5. Sidney M. Milkis, “Lyndon Johnson, the Great Society, and the Modern Presidency,” in The Great Society and the High Tide of Liberalism, ed. Sidney M. Milkis and Jerome M. Mileur (Amherst, MA, 2005), 5.

6. Thomas F. Jackson, From Civil Rights to Human Rights: Martin Luther King, Jr., and the Struggle for Economic Justice (Philadelphia, 2007), 137.

7. Ibid., 68–69.

8. See Jeff Woods, Black Struggle, Red Scare: Segregation and Anti-Communism in the South, 1948–1968 (Baton Rouge, 2003).

CHAPTER 1: “I AM A ROOSEVELT NEW DEALER”: LIBERALISM ASCENDANT

1. Randall Bennett Woods, Quest for Identity: America Since 1945 (New York, 2005), 185.

2. See Wayne Fields, Union of Words: A History of Presidential Eloquence (New York, 1996), 215–216.

3. Text of President’s Off-the-Record Remarks to Governors, November 11, 1963, Diary Backup, Box 1, LBJL.

4. Robert Dallek, Flawed Giant: Lyndon B. Johnson and His Times, 1961–1973 (New York, 1998), 67; see Eric F. Goldman, The Tragedy of Lyndon Johnson (New York, 1969).

5. LBJ and George Reedy Conversation, January 25, 1964, TCC, Box 1, LBJL.

6. Goldman, Tragedy of Lyndon Johnson, 124–125.

7. Ibid., 106–107.

8. Ibid., 107.

9. Ibid., 115–117; James Jones interview with author.

10. Goldman, Tragedy of Lyndon Johnson, 109.

11. See ibid., 108–111.

12. Harry McPherson OH, VI, May 16, 1985, LBJL; James Rowe OH, II, September 16, 1969, LBJL.

13. See Clark Clifford OH, II, July 2, 1969, LBJL.

14. Laura Kalman, Abe Fortas: A Biography (New Haven, 1990), 28–29.

15. Ibid., 3, 15–16.

16. Diary Backup, November 23, 1963, Johnson Papers, LBJL.

17. Abe Fortas, “Portrait of a Friend,” in The Johnson Presidency: Twenty Intimate Perspectives of Lyndon B. Johnson, ed. Kenneth W. Thompson, vol. 5, Portraits of American Presidents (Lanham, MD, 1986), 7.

18. Jack Valenti OH, October 18, 1969, LBJL.

19. Merle Miller, Lyndon: An Oral Autobiography (New York, 1980), 338.

20. Ibid., 338–339.

21. “Address Before a Joint Session of the Congress,” November 27, 1963, in Public Papers of the Presidents: LBJ, 1963–1964, vol. I (Washington, DC, 1965), 8–10; Miller, Lyndon, 338–339.

22. “Address Before a Joint Session of the Congress,” 9.

23. “Remarks at the State Capitol in Austin, Texas,” November 2, 1964, in Public Papers: LBJ, 1963–1964, vol. I, 1579–1580.

24. “Remarks to Members of the Southern Baptist Leadership Seminar,” March 15, 1964, in Public Papers: LBJ, 1963–1964, vol. I, 420.

25. Robert C. McMath, “The History of the Present,” in The Ongoing Burden of Southern History: Politics and Identity in the Twenty-First-Century South, ed. Angie Maxwell, Todd Shields, and Jeannie Whayne (Baton Rouge, 2012), 90–91.

26. Sidney Milkis, “Roosevelt and the New Politics of Presidential Leadership,” in The New Deal and the Triumph of Liberalism, ed. Sidney M. Milkis and Jerome M. Mileur (Amherst, MA, 2002), 37, 39.

27. Quoted in Milkis and Mileur, eds., New Deal, 3.

28. Milkis, “Roosevelt and the New Politics of Presidential Leadership,” 40.

29. Ibid., 56–57.

30. Suzanne Mettler, “Social Citizens of Separate Sovereignties: Governance in the New Deal Welfare State,” in New Deal, ed. Milkis and Mileur, 243, 246.

31. Ibid., 248.

32. Jytte Klausen, “Did World War II End the New Deal? A Comparative Perspective on Postwar Planning Initiatives,” in New Deal, ed. Milkis and Mileur, 197. The per capita gross national product declined from $722 to $718 from 1930 to 1935. In 1940, it was $916, and in 1945, $1,293. Growth was also more evenly distributed during the war than before. The top 5 percent of the population saw their share of all income decrease from 30 percent in 1929 to 21.3 percent in 1946. Income distribution stabilized after the war, with the top 5 percent taking 20 percent of all incomes throughout the 1950s. War mobilization also allowed corporate profits to bounce back, but with matching increases in wages and farm incomes. Corporate net profits, after taxes, peaked at $12,181 million in 1942, three times what they had been in 1935. Average annual earnings per full-time employee in manufacturing rose from $1,432 in 1940 to $2,517 in 1945.

33. Ibid., 199. In 1930 the national public debt was $131 per capita. In 1940 it was still only $325, despite the New Deal’s use of deficit spending as a remedial tool. The war changed that: in 1945 per capita national public debt was $1,848. The debt remained stable after the war, however, as the country simply outgrew it.

34. Michael McGerr, A Fierce Discontent: The Rise and Fall of the Progressive Movement in America (New York, 2003), 183.

35. Terry H. Anderson, The Pursuit of Fairness: A History of Affirmative Action (New York, 2004), 73.

36. Mel Stuart Interview with LBJ, April 27, 1968, Marilyn Conkle to Jim Jones, April 30, 1968, Diary Backup, Box 97, LBJL.

37. Seth Jacobs, “‘Our System Demands the Supreme Being’: The U.S. Religious Revival and the ‘Diem Experiment,’ 1954–55,” Diplomatic History 25, no. 4 (Fall 2001): 600.

38. Woods, Quest for Identity, 141.

39. “Remarks to a Group of Civil Rights Leaders,” April 29, 1964, in Public Papers: LBJ, 1963–1964, vol. I, 588–589.

40. “Remarks at the 12th Annual Presidential Prayer Breakfast,” February 5, 1964, in Public Papers: LBJ, 1963–1964, vol. I, 172.

41. Sidney M. Milkis, “Lyndon Johnson, the Great Society, and the Modern Presidency,” in The Great Society and the High Tide of Liberalism, ed. Sidney M. Milkis and Jerome M. Mileur (Amherst, MA, 2005), 2.

42. Robert C. McMath, “History of the Present,” in The Ongoing Burden of Southern History: Politics and Identity in the Twenty-First Century South, ed. Angie Maxwell, Jeannie Whayne, and Todd Shields (Baton Rouge, 2012), 92.

43. Quoted in Sean J. Savage, JFK, LBJ, and the Democratic Party (Albany, 2004), 263.

44. Ibid., 262.

45. See Diaries of Orville Freeman, July 22, 1964, PP/Orville Freeman, #9, Diary vol. 4, LBJL.

46. Richard J. Ellis, American Political Cultures (New York, 1996), 74–76.

47. Bill Moyers, “Setting the Stage,” in The Johnson Years: The Difference He Made, ed. Robert L. Hardesty (Austin, 1993), 65.

48. President and Isabelle Shelton Conversation, March 21, 1965, Telephone Transcripts, WH Tapes, LBJL.

49. Presidential Notes on Conversation with Roy Wilkins, November 4, 1965, 9105–07, TCC, Papers of LBJ, LBJL.

50. Mel Stuart Interview with LBJ, April 27, 1968, Marilyn Conkle to Jim Jones, April 30, 1968, Diary Backup, Box 97, LBJL.

51. Marc Landy, “Presidential Party Leadership and Party Realignment: FDR and the Making of the New Deal Democratic Party,” in New Deal, ed. Milkis and Mileur, 73–75.

52. Busby to LBJ, June 1964, OF/H. Busby, Box 52, LBJL.

53. Savage, JFK, LBJ, and the Democratic Party, 118.

54. LBJ and Ford Conversation, January 22, 1965, Tape WG6501.03, Presidential Tape Recordings, LBJL.

55. Savage, JFK, LBJ, and the Democratic Party, 160.

56. Ibid., 158.

57. Doris Kearns Goodwin, Lyndon Johnson and the American Dream (New York, 1991), 226.

58. Dallek, Flawed Giant, 64.

59. Ibid., 65.

CHAPTER 2: FUNDING THE GREAT SOCIETY AND THE WAR ON POVERTY

1. Iwan Morgan, “Promoting Prosperity: JFK and the New Economics,” unpublished paper delivered to British Library Conference, “John F. Kennedy’s Presidential Heritage,” November 4, 2013, 2.

2. Randall Bennett Woods, A Changing of the Guard: Anglo-American Relations, 1941–1946 (Chapel Hill, 1990), 25–27.

3. Jytte Klausen, “Did World War II End the New Deal? A Comparative Perspective on Postwar Planning Initiatives,” in The New Deal and the Triumph of Liberalism, ed. Sidney M. Milkis and Jerome M. Mileur (Amherst, MA, 2002), 199.

4. Iwan Morgan, “Promoting Prosperity,” 3.

5. Ibid., 5.

6. Irving Bernstein, Guns or Butter: The Presidency of Lyndon Johnson (New York, 1996), 31.

7. Ibid.

8. Notes of Troika Meeting, Diary Backup, Box 1, Presidential Papers of LBJ, LBJL.

9. Diaries of Orville Freeman, January 1, 1964, PP/Orville Freeman, Box 9, LBJL.

10. John McCone Memos, Meetings with President, January 17, 1964, Box 1, LBJL.

11. LBJ and Robt. Anderson Conversation, January 7, 1964, TCC, LBJL.

12. Bernstein, Guns or Butter, 33.

13. Jack Valenti OH, October 18, 1969.

14. Robert Dallek, Flawed Giant: Lyndon B. Johnson and His Times, 1961–1973 (New York, 1998), 73; LBJ and Byrd Conversation, January 8, 1964, TCC, LBJL.

15. LBJ and Richard Russell Conversation, WH Tapes, WH6401.15, LBJL.

16. Bernstein, Guns or Butter, 34.

17. LBJ and George Brown Conversation, January 8, 1964, TCC, LBJL.

18. Kim McQuaid, Big Business and Presidential Power: From FDR to Reagan (New York, 1982), 224.

19. Ibid., 226.

20. Diaries of Orville Freeman, December 10, 1963, PP/Orville Freeman, Box 9, LBJL.

21. “Johnson Impresses the Nation,” May 1, 1964, LBJ Handwriting File, Box 3, LBJL.

22. McQuaid, Big Business, 227.

23. “Secrets of Success,” Dallas Morning News, May 3, 1964.

24. Report to the President on the Economic Situation by the CEA, April 20, 1965, Cabinet Papers, Box 2, LBJL.

25. See Robert L. Heilbroner, “Capitalism Without Tears,” New York Review of Books, June 29, 1967.

26. Charles M. Haar, “The Bold Dreamer,” in The Johnson Years: The Difference He Made, ed. Robert L. Hardesty (Austin, 1993), 61.

27. Walter Lippmann, “The Principle of the Great Society,” Newsweek, January 18, 1965.

28. LBJ and Lippmann Conversation, December 1, 1963, in Michael R. Beschloss, ed., Taking Charge: The Johnson White House Tapes, 1963–1964 (New York, 1997), 80.

29. Bill Moyers, “Setting the Stage,” in Johnson Years, ed. Hardesty, 66.

30. Eric F. Goldman, Tragedy of Lyndon Johnson (New York, 1969), 112.

31. Quoted in Dallek, Flawed Giant, 80–81.

32. Goldman, Tragedy of Lyndon Johnson, 6–7.

33. Jack Valenti OH, July 12, 1972, V, LBJL.

34. Sean J. Savage, JFK, LBJ, and the Democratic Party (Albany, 2004), 124.

35. Richard N. Goodwin, Remembering America: A Voice from the Sixties (New York, 1989), 272.

36. Jerome M. Mileur, “The Great Society and the Demise of the New Deal Liberalism,” in The Great Society and the High Tide of Liberalism, ed. Sidney M. Milkis and Jerome M. Mileur (Amherst, MA, 2005), 427.

37. Sidney M. Milkis, “Lyndon Johnson, the Great Society, and the Modern Presidency,” in Great Society, ed. Milkis and Mileur, 40.

38. Buzz to President, May 27, 1964, Box 107, Papers of LBJ, LBJL.

39. Memorandum for the President, May 18, 1964, WH Central Files, SP, LBJL.

40. “Remarks at the University of Michigan, May 22, 1964,” in Public Papers of the Presidents: LBJ, 1963–1964, vol. I (Washington, DC, 1965), 704–706.

41. Dallek, Flawed Giant, 83.

42. Merle Miller, Lyndon: An Oral Autobiography (New York, 1980), 377.

43. UPI, April 2, 1965, OF/Bill Moyers, Box 7, LBJL.

44. LBJ and Sidey Conversation, June 11, 1964, in Beschloss, Taking Charge, 404.

45. Milkis, “Lyndon Johnson, the Great Society, and the Modern Presidency,” 11.

46. Bernstein, Guns or Butter, 82–90; David Burner, Making Peace with the 60s (Princeton, 1996), 169–170; Douglas Cater, “The Politics of Poverty,” The Reporter, February 13, 1964, 15–20.

47. Carl M. Brauer, “Kennedy, Johnson, and the War on Poverty,” Journal of American History 69, no. 1 (June 1, 1982): 103.

48. Bernstein, Guns or Butter, 91–93.

49. Edward R. Schmitt, “The War on Poverty,” in A Companion to Lyndon B. Johnson, ed. Mitchell B. Lerner (Malden, 2012), 94.

50. Michael W. Flamm, Law and Order: Street Crime, Civil Unrest, and the Crisis of Liberalism in the 1960s (New York, 2005), 24.

51. Ibid., 28.

52. Nick Kotz, Judgment Days: Lyndon Baines Johnson, Martin Luther King Jr., and the Laws That Changed America (Boston, 2005), 27.

53. R. Sargent Shriver Jr., “The War on Poverty,” in The Great Society: A Twenty Year Critique, ed. Barbara Jordan and Elspeth Rostow (Austin, 1986), 40.

54. Miller, Lyndon, 362.

55. Ibid.

56. Terry H. Anderson, The Pursuit of Fairness: A History of Affirmative Action (New York, 2004), 105.

57. “Annual Message to the Congress on the State of the Union,” January 8, 1964, in Public Papers of the Presidents: LBJ, 1963–1964, vol. I (Washington, DC, 1965), 91–92.

58. Burner, Making Peace, 166–70.

59. Brauer, “Kennedy, Johnson, and the War on Poverty,” 101.

60. LBJ and J. K. Galbraith Conversation, January 29, 1964, TCC, LBJL.

61. Bernstein, Guns or Butter, 99.

62. Dallek, Flawed Giant, 76.

63. LBJ and Shriver Conversation, February 1, 1964, TCC, LBJL.

64. Dallek, Flawed Giant, 79.

65. LBJ and Carl Albert Conversation, May 26, 1964, in Beschloss, Taking Charge, 360.

66. “Remarks upon Signing the Economic Opportunity Act,” August 20, 1964, in Public Papers: LBJ, 1963–1964, vol. II, 989.

67. Diary Backup, November 29, 1963, Box 1, LBJL; Moyers, “Setting the Stage,” 36–37.

68. Bernstein, Guns or Butter, 104.

69. Goldman, Tragedy of Lyndon Johnson, 187.

70. LBJ and Shriver Conversation, March 26, 1964, TCC, Box 3, LBJL.

71. Wickenden to Walter Jenkins, May 4, 1964, OF/Bill Moyers, Box 39, LBJL.

72. Bernstein, Guns or Butter, 105.

73. LBJ and Daley Conversation, January 20, 1964, in Beschloss, Taking Charge, 168.

74. LBJ and Moyers, Conversation, August 8, 1964, TCC, Box 5, LBJL.

75. Diaries of Orville Freeman, February 22, 1964, PP/Orville Freeman, Box 9, LBJL.

76. Bernstein, Guns or Butter, 105.

77. Dallek, Flawed Giant, 108.

78. LBJ and Shriver Conversation, April 30, 1964, TCC, Box 4, LBJL.

79. Brauer, “Kennedy, Johnson, and the War on Poverty,” 112.

80. Vicky and Simon McHugh OH, June 9, 1975, LBJL; “Remarks in the City Hall, Rocky Mount, North Carolina,” May 7, 1964, in Public Papers: LBJ, 1963–1964, vol. I, 638–639.

81. Ibid.

82. “Remarks at the 20th Washington Conf. of the Advertising Council,” May 6, 1964, in Public Papers: LBJ, 1963–1964, vol. I, 611.

83. “Remarks to Leaders of Organizations Concerned with the Problems of Senior Citizens,” January 15, 1964, in Public Papers: LBJ, 1963–1964, vol. I, 134.

84. Diaries of Orville Freeman, May 18, 1964, PP/Orville Freeman, Box 9, LBJL.

85. Moyers, “Setting the Stage,” 36.

86. LBJ and O’Brien Conversation, May 11, 1964, WH Tapes, WH6405.03, LBJL.

87. LBJ and McCormack Conversation, May 11, 1964, TCC, Box 4, LBJL.

88. LBJ and Shriver Conversation, May 13, 1964, in Beschloss, Taking Charge, 347.

89. LBJ and McCormack Conversation, May 11, 1964, TCC, Box 4, LBJL.

90. LBJ and Shriver Conversation, May 13, 1964, TCC, Box 4, LBJL.

91. LBJ and O’Brien Conversation, August 7, 1964, TCC, Box 5, LBJL.

92. LBJ and McCormack Conversation, August 6, 1964, TCC, Box 5, LBJL.

93. Quoted in Bernstein, Guns or Butter, 110–111.

94. LBJ and Jenkins, Moyers Conversation, August 8, 1964, WH Tapes WH6408.13, LBJL.

95. Dallek, Flawed Giant, 110.

CHAPTER 3: THE SECOND RECONSTRUCTION

1. Irving Bernstein, Guns or Butter: The Presidency of Lyndon Johnson (New York, 1996), 44; on the importance of a community relations service, see Ted Kheel to George Reedy, June 10, 1963, VP Papers of G. Reedy, Box 8, LBJL.

2. Bernstein, Guns or Butter, 47.

3. Charles Whalen, “Johnson and the Civil Rights Act of 1964,” in The Johnson Presidency: Twenty Intimate Perspectives of Lyndon B. Johnson, ed. Kenneth W. Thompson, vol. 5, Portraits of American Presidents (Lanham, MD, 1986), 63.

4. Lawrence O’Brien OH, September 1985, ff., LBJL.

5. Reedy to LBJ, May 21, 1963, Willie Day Taylor Files, Box 434, LBJL.

6. Ibid.

7. Robert Dallek, Flawed Giant: Lyndon B. Johnson and His Times, 1961–1973 (New York, 1998), 114.

8. Quoted in Thomas F. Jackson, From Civil Rights to Human Rights: Martin Luther King, Jr., and the Struggle for Economic Justice (Philadelphia, 2006), 168–169.

9. Anthony Lewis, “Civil Rights Issue: Administration Will Be Judged to Large Degree by Fate of This Bill,” New York Times, December 8, 1963.

10. George Reedy to Vice-President, June 10, 1963, Willie Day Taylor Files, Box 434, LBJL.

11. Louis Martin OH, May 14, 1969, LBJL.

12. Bernstein, Guns or Butter, 44.

13. Ibid.

14. H. McPherson OH, VI, May 16, 1985, LBJL.

15. LBJ and Whitney Young Conversation, November 24, 1963, in Michael R. Beschloss, ed., Taking Charge: The Johnson White House Tapes, 1963–1964 (New York, 1997), 27.

16. Roy Wilkins Appointment, November 29, 1963, Diary Backup, Box 1, Presidential Papers of LBJ, LBJL.

17. LBJ and Randolph Conversation, November 29, 1963, TCC, Box 4, LBJL.

18. “Over 300 Attended the SNCC Conference,” Student Voice, December 9, 1963; LBJ and King Conversation, November 25, 1963, in Beschloss, Taking Charge, 37–38; James Farmer OH, October 1969, LBJL.

19. LBJ and Robt. Anderson Conversation, November 30, 1963, TCC, LBJL.

20. LBJ, “Remarks to New Participants in ‘Plans for Progress,’” January 16, 1964, in Public Papers of the Presidents: LBJ, 1963–1964, vol. I (Washington, DC, 1965), 140.

21. LBJ and Robt. Anderson Conversation, November 30, 1963, TCC, LBJL.

22. Bernstein, Guns or Butter, 44, 49.

23. Charles Whalen and Barbara Whalen, The Longest Debate: A Legislative History of the 1964 Civil Rights Act (New York, 1986), 65.

24. Ibid.

25. Terry H. Anderson, The Pursuit of Fairness: A History of Affirmative Action (New York, 2004), 75.

26. Ibid., 77.

27. Ibid.

28. Ibid., 78.

29. Ibid., 81.

30. Bernstein, Guns or Butter, 53–55.

31. Jake Pickle OH, March 2, 1972, LBJL.

32. Dallek, Flawed Giant, 115.

33. Ibid.

34. Transcript of Telephone Conversation, April 10, 1964, TCC, LBJL.

35. LBJ and Rauh Conversation, January 7, 1964, TCC, Box 1, LBJL.

36. Bill Moyers, “Civil Rights,” in The Great Society: A Twenty Year Critique, ed. Barbara Jordan and Elspeth Rostow (Austin, 1986), 78.

37. Ernest “Tex” Goldstein OH, LBJL; Merle Miller, Lyndon: An Oral Autobiography (New York, 1980), 366.

38. Jack Valenti OH, LBJL; Robert Dallek, Nixon and Kissinger: Partners in Power (London, 2008), 112.

39. LBJ, The Vantage Point: Perspectives of the Presidency, 1963–1969 (New York, 1971), 158–159.

40. Whalen, “Johnson and the Civil Rights Act of 1964,” 68.

41. Nicholas Katzenbach, “The Bold Dreamer,” in The Johnson Years: The Difference He Made, ed. Robert L. Hardesty (Austin, 1993), 80–81.

42. Whalen, “Johnson and the Civil Rights Act of 1964,” 70; Miller, Lyndon, 368.

43. Richard J. Piper, Ideologies and Institutions: American Conservative and Liberal Governance Prescriptions Since 1933 (Lanham, MD, 1997), 114.

44. Bernstein, Guns or Butter, 67.

45. Harry McPherson, A Political Education: A Washington Memoir (Austin, 1994), 72.

46. Byron C. Hulsey, Everett Dirksen and His Presidents: How a Senate Giant Shaped American Politics (Lawrence, KS, 2000), 8.

47. Ibid., 9.

48. Bernstein, Guns or Butter, 61.

49. Miller, Lyndon, 368–369; see Hubert H. Humphrey, The Education of a Public Man: My Life and Politics, ed. Norman Sherman (New York, 1976), 274–283.

50. Whalen, “Johnson and the Civil Rights Act of 1964,” 70.

51. Pres. Notes on Telephone Conversation with Bill Moyers, April 28, 1964, Transcripts of White House Telephone Conversations, Box 4, LBJL.

52. Fields observes of the difference between Jeffersonian and Lincolnesque language: “The former dedicated propositions, the latter cemeteries.” Wayne Fields, Union of Words: A History of Presidential Eloquence (New York, 1996), 291.

53. LBJ, “Remarks to New Participants in ‘Plans for Progress,’” January 16, 1964, 141–142.

54. “The President’s Sermon,” Fort Worth Star-Telegram, May 4, 1964.

55. Doris Kearns Goodwin, Lyndon Johnson and the American Dream (New York, 1991), 321.

56. David Burner, Making Peace with the 60s (Princeton, NJ, 1996), 17.

57. “Remarks in Atlanta at a Breakfast of the Georgia Legislature,” May 8, 1964, in Public Papers: LBJ, 1963–1964, vol. I, 648.

58. Beschloss, Taking Charge, 341.

59. “LBJ Given Tumultuous Welcome,” Dallas Herald, May 8, 1964.

60. Nick Kotz, Judgment Days: Lyndon Baines Johnson, Martin Luther King Jr., and the Laws That Changed America (Boston, 2005), 120.

61. Hoover to Jenkins, April 14, 1964, OF/Mildred Stegall, Box 32, Presidential Papers of LBJ, LBJL.

62. Kotz, Judgment Days, 146.

63. Ibid., 122–123.

64. Beschloss, Taking Charge, 331.

65. Ibid., LBJ and Mansfield Conversation, April 29, 1964.

66. See Bernstein, Guns or Butter, 69; Whalen, “Johnson and the Civil Rights Act of 1964,” 71.

67. Hulsey, Dirksen and His Presidents, 13–18.

68. LBJ and Dirksen Conversation, May 13, 1964, in Beschloss, Taking Charge, 350.

69. Diaries of Orville Freeman, December 10, 1963, PP/Orville Freeman, Box 8, LBJL.

70. Miller, Lyndon, 369.

71. Bernstein, Guns or Butter, 71.

72. LBJ and HHH Conversation, February 25, 1964, TCC, Box 1, LBJL.

73. LBJ and Russell Conversation, April 9, 1964, in Beschloss, Taking Charge, 312.

74. LBJ and Kermit Gordon Conversation, April 29, 1964, TCC, Box 1, LBJL.

75. Dallek, Flawed Giant, 119.

76. Humphrey, Education of Public Man, 283.

77. Kotz, Judgment Days, 134–135.

78. Ibid., 231. Many civil rights activists were not as enthusiastic as LBJ. They had pressed for a jury trial provision that would either prohibit discrimination in jury selection or make judges rather than juries the final arbiter in civil rights cases. Johnson told King and his colleagues that such an amendment would be a deal breaker, but on November 19, after his landslide victory in the 1964 presidential election, LBJ met with civil rights leaders on another matter. After the meeting, he pulled Jack Greenberg, head of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, aside. “And what can I do for you?” the president asked. Greenberg replied that civil rights lawyers’ greatest problem in the South was trying to cope with the segregationist federal judges appointed by President Kennedy. Johnson promised that henceforth he would clear all judicial appointments in the South with Greenberg and other civil rights leaders. He was as good as his word. On December 10, he called MLK to get his views on an appointment to the US circuit court in the South.

79. Quoted in Randall Bennett Woods, Quest for Identity: America Since 1945 (New York, 2005), 189.

80. Ibid.

81. Kotz, Judgment Days, 164–165.

82. Quoted in Woods, Quest for Identity, 190.

83. Dallek, Flawed Giant, 120.

84. LeRoy Collins OH, November 15, 1972, LBJL.

85. LBJ and Eastland Conversation, June 23, 1964, in Beschloss, Taking Charge, 433.

86. LBJ and Hodges Conversation, June 23, 1964, TCC, Box 4, LBJL.

87. Quoted in Sidney M. Milkis, The President and the Parties: The Transformation of the American Party System since the New Deal (New York, 1993), 197.

88. Miller, Lyndon, 371.

89. LBJ and Connally Conversation, July 3, 1964, WH Tapes, WH6407.03, LBJL.

90. Lee White Memorandum, July 2, 1964, Diary Backup, Box 7, LBJL.

91. LBJ and W. Young Conversation, June 19, 1964, WH Tapes WH6406.11, LBJL.

92. Dallek, Flawed Giant, 120.

CHAPTER 4: THE MANDATE: THE ELECTION OF 1964

1. Diaries of Orville Freeman, May 4, 1964, PP/Orville Freeman, Box 9, LBJL.

2. Diaries of Orville Freeman, May 16, 1964, PP/Orville Freeman, Box 9, LBJL.

3. Robert Dallek, Flawed Giant: Lyndon B. Johnson and His Times, 1961–1973 (New York, 1998), 124.

4. Murray Kempton, “The People’s Choice,” New York Review of Books, November 5, 1964.

5. Ed Weisl OH, October 24, 1968, I, LBJL.

6. Dallek, Flawed Giant, 124.

7. “The Democratic Party and the Presidency in the Twentieth Century,” Busby to LBJ, July 1964, OF/H. Busby, Box 52, LBJL.

8. Busby to LBJ, June 1964, OF/H. Busby, Box 52, LBJL.

9. “Image Assessment and Suggested Activities,” Busby to LBJ, May 1964, OF/H. Busby, Box 52, LBJL.

10. Goldman to the President, September 24, 1964, OF/Bill Moyers, Box 53, LBJL.

11. Lloyd C. Gardner, Pay Any Price: Lyndon Johnson and the Wars for Vietnam (Chicago, 1995), 106.

12. Cater to LBJ, June 3, 1964, OF/Bill Moyers, Box 53, LBJL.

13. LBJ and Wirtz Conversation, February 27, 1964, WH Tapes WH6402.22, LBJL.

14. LBJ and McNeil Conversation, April 10, 1964, TCC, Box 4, LBJL.

15. Ibid.

16. Quoted in Eric F. Goldman, The Tragedy of Lyndon Johnson (New York, 1969), 88.

17. Unpublished Diary of Lady Bird Johnson, April 21, 1964, LBJL.

18. LBJ and Wirtz Conversation, April 17, 1964, TCC, LBJ and Kennedy Conversation, April 22, 1964, TCC, Box 4, LBJL.

19. Michael R. Beschloss, Reaching for Glory: Lyndon Johnson’s Secret White House Tapes, 1964–1965 (New York, 2001), 323.

20. Quoted in The Record (South Bend, Indiana), May 1, 1964.

21. Dallek, Flawed Giant, 128.

22. “LBJ Called Strong in the Deep South,” Houston Post, January 26, 1964.

23. LBJ and Luther Hodges Conversation, July 7, 1964, WH Tapes, WH6407.05, LBJL.

24. LBJ and G. Smathers Conversation, August 1, 1964, WH Tapes, WH6408.01, LBJL.

25. LBJ and Connally Conversation, July 3, 1964, WH Tapes, WH6407.03, LBJL.

26. Quoted in Randall Bennett Woods, Quest for Identity: America Since 1945 (New York, 2005), 187.

27. LBJ and Harte Conversation, June 4, 1964, in Beschloss, Reaching for Glory.

28. Diaries of Orville Freeman, July 22, 1964, PP/Orville Freeman, Box 9, LBJL.

29. I. F. Stone, “The Collected Works of Barry Goldwater,” New York Review of Books, August 13, 1964, 3.

30. Dan T. Carter, The Politics of Rage: George Wallace, the Origins of the New Conservatism and the Transformation of American Politics (Baton Rouge, 1995), 163.

31. Ibid., 156.

32. Quoted in ibid., 135.

33. “FBI Agents Probe Riot in Harlem,” Houston Post, July 23, 1964.

34. Valenti to President, August 4, 1964, LBJ Handwriting File, Box 3, LBJL.

35. Cater to LBJ, June 3, 1964, OF/Bill Moyers, Box 53, LBJL; see also Busby to LBJ, June 1964, OF/H. Busby, Box 52, LBJL

36. Dallek, Flawed Giant, 135.

37. Clark Clifford OH, July 2, 1969, II, LBJL.

38. LBJ and Clifford Conversation, July 29, 1964, WH Tapes, WH6407.18, LBJL.

39. “Memo Cites LBJ Order for Wiretaps,” Dallas Times Herald, January 26, 1975; see also Kenneth O’Reilly, Racial Matter: The FBI’s Secret File on Black America, 1960–1972 (New York, 1991), 185–190.

40. James Hilty, Robert Kennedy: Brother Protector (Philadelphia, 1997), 223–225; Richard Gid Powers, Secrecy and Power: The Life of J. Edgar Hoover (New York, 1988), 382–390.

41. Anthony Summers, Official and Confidential: The Secret Life of J. Edgar Hoover (New York, 1993), 312.

42. C. Deloach OH, January 11, 1991, I, LBJL.

43. Powers, Secrecy and Power, 393–399.

44. LBJ and Hoover Conversation, February 28, 1964, WH Tapes, WH6402.22, LBJL.

45. Quoted in Ronald Radosh, Divided They Fell: The Demise of the Democratic Party, 1964–1996 (New York, 1996), 2.

46. John Dittmer, Local People: The Struggle for Civil Rights in Mississippi (Urbana, 1994), 239.

47. Ibid., 281; Joseph Rauh OH, III, August 8, 1969, LBJL.

48. LBJ and Connally Conversation, July 23, 1964, in Michael R. Beschloss, ed., Taking Charge: The Johnson White House Tapes, 1963–1964 (New York, 1997), 467.

49. LBJ and McCormack Conversation, July 14, 1964, TCC, Box 5, LBJL.

50. LBJ and Roy Wilkins Conversation, August 15, 1964, in Beschloss, Taking Charge, 517.

51. White to Spottswood, July 17, 1964, LBJ Handwriting File, Box 3, LBJL. Article IV, Section 4 provides that “The United States shall guarantee to every state in this Union a republican form of government and shall protect each of them against invasion, and on application of the legislature, or of the executive, against domestic violence.”

52. White to President, August 19, 1964, Diary Backup, Box 8, LBJL.

53. Nick Kotz, Judgment Days: Lyndon Baines Johnson, Martin Luther King Jr., and the Laws That Changed America (Boston, 2005), 185.

54. Quoted in Dittmer, Local People, 290.

55. LBJ and HHH Conversation, August 14, 1964, WH Tapes, WH6408.18, LBJL.

56. Quoted in Adam Cohen and Elizabeth Taylor, American Pharaoh: Mayor Richard J. Daley: His Battle for Chicago and the Nation (Boston, 2000), 321.

57. Quoted in Dittmer, Local People, 288.

58. P. Johnson OH, September 8, 1970, LBJL.

59. Kotz, Judgment Days, 199.

60. Ibid.

61. Ibid., 200.

62. Ibid., 196. Rauh, cofounder of the Americans for Democratic Action and general counsel to the United Auto Workers, was one of the nation’s most prominent liberals.

63. Ibid.

64. Ibid., 209.

65. Beschloss, Taking Charge, 527.

66. LBJ and George Reedy Conversation, August 25, 1964, in ibid., 527–532.

67. Kotz, Judgment Days, 213.

68. Quoted in Dittmer, Local People, 92.

69. Ibid., 287–302; Joseph Rauh OH; Radosh, Divided They Fell, 1–15.

70. Quoted in Dittmer, Local People, 30.

71. Sidney M. Milkis, “Lyndon Johnson, the Great Society, and the Modern Presidency,” in The Great Society and the High Tide of Liberalism, ed. Sidney M. Milkis and Jerome M. Mileur (Amherst, MA, 2005), 24–25.

72. Diaries of Orville Freeman, August 27, 1964, PP/Orville Freeman, Box 9, LBJL.

73. Quoted in Dallek, Flawed Giant, 169.

74. Ibid., 170.

75. Joe English to Bill Moyers, September 28, 1964, OF/Bill Moyers, Box 53, LBJL.

76. The Campaign, Busby to LBJ, ND 1964, OF/H. Busby, Box 52, LBJL.

77. Dutton to Moyers, September 26, 1964, OF/Bill Moyers, Box 53, LBJL.

78. Busby to the President, September 28, 1964, OF/H. Busby, Box 52, LBJL.

79. LBJ and Sanders Conversation, August 1, 1964, TCC, Box 5, LBJL.

80. LBJ and Connally Conversation, August 9, 1964, WH Tapes, WH6408.15, LBJL.

81. LBJ and Sparkman Conversation, 1964, WH Tapes 5635, LBJL.

82. E. Carpenter OH, December 3, 1968, LBJL.

83. Ibid.

84. Buford Ellington OH, October 2, 1970, I, LBJL; E. Carpenter OH, December 3, 1968, LBJL.

85. Quoted in Jan Jarboe Russell, Lady Bird: A Biography of Mrs. Johnson (New York, 1999), 263.

86. “Remarks at a Fund-Raising Dinner in New Orleans,” October 9, 1964, in Public Papers of the Presidents: LBJ, 1963–1964, vol. II (Washington, DC, 1965), 1283–1286. The official transcript of the speech reads “Negro, Negro Negro!” but numerous first-hand witnesses testify that he used the pejorative term.

87. Busby to the President, ND 1964, OF/Bill Moyers, Box 10, LBJL.

88. Quoted in Jeff Woods, “The Changing South,” in A Companion to Lyndon B. Johnson, ed. Mitchell B. Lerner (Malden, 2012), 15.

89. “Remarks at City Hall, Macon, Georgia,” October 26, 1964, in Public Papers of the Presidents: LBJ, 1963–1964, vol. II (Washington, DC, 1965), 1446.

90. LBJ and Rusk Conversation, October 2, 1964, WH Tapes, WH6401.01, LBJL.

91. LBJ and Charles Guy Conversation, October 11, 1964, WH Tapes, WH6410.08, LBJL.

92. Rogers M. Smith, Civic Ideals: Conflicting Visions of Citizenship in U.S. History (New Haven, 1997), 33.

93. “Communist Influence in Racial Matters,” Jones and King Conversation, July 27, 1964, Files of Mildred Steagal, Box 71A, Presidential Papers of LBJ, LBJL.

94. Hoover to Moyers, October 22, 1964, Files of Mildred Stegall, Box 32, Presidential Papers of LBJ, LBJL.

95. Hoover to Moyers, October 20, 1964, Files of Mildred Stegall, Box 32, Presidential Papers of LBJ, LBJL. King also observed that many whites were confusing demonstrations with riots, and the civil rights leadership must be careful to protect the image of nonviolent civil disobedience.

96. Dallek, Flawed Giant, 183–184.

97. Jeff Woods, “The Changing South,” 18.

98. Merle Miller, Lyndon: An Oral Autobiography (New York, 1980), 402.

99. Quoted in Byron C. Hulsey, Everett Dirksen and His Presidents: How a Senate Giant Shaped American Politics (Lawrence, KS, 2000), 38.

100. LBJ and Scotty Reston Conversation, January 8, 1964, WH Tapes, WH6401.09, LBJL.

CHAPTER 5: LIBERAL NATIONALISM VERSUS THE AMERICAN CREED: THE GREAT SOCIETY FROM SCHOOLROOM TO HOSPITAL

1. “The State of the Union,” Newsweek, January 11, 1965, 18.

2. William E. Leuchtenberg, “The Genesis of the Great Society,” The Reporter 34 (April 21, 1966): 39.

3. Sean J. Savage, JFK, LBJ, and the Democratic Party (Albany, 2004), 248.

4. “The State of the Union,” 17.

5. “Annual Message to the Congress on the State of the Union,” January 4, 1965, in Public Papers of the Presidents: LBJ, 1965, vol. I (Washington, DC, 1966), 9.

6. Richard J. Ellis, American Political Cultures (New York, 1993), 74–76.

7. Henry Fairlie, “The Hidden Meaning of ‘Consensus,’” New Republic, January 1, 1966, 15–19.

8. John D. Morrissa, “Johnson’s Way with Congress,” NewYork Times, January 17, 1965.

9. Eric F. Goldman, The Tragedy of Lyndon Johnson (New York, 1969), 259.

10. Cater to the President, January 12, 1966, LBJ Handwriting File, Box 11, LBJL.

11. “Annual Message to the Congress on the State of the Union,” January 4, 1965, 1.

12. “LBJ and His Congress: Made for Each Other,” Newsweek, January 18, 1965, 17.

13. Wilbur Cohen OH, I, December 8, 1968, LBJL.

14. “Annual Message to the Congress on the State of the Union,” January 4, 1965, 1.

15. D. B. Hardeman OH, February 15, 1965, LBJL.

16. Quoted in Doris Kearns Goodwin, Lyndon Johnson and the American Dream (New York, 1991), 238.

17. LBJ and Walter Reuther Conversation, November 24, 1964, WH Tapes, WH6411.29, LBJL.

18. Robert Dallek, Flawed Giant: Lyndon B. Johnson and His Times, 1961–1973 (New York, 1998), 194.

19. C. Albert OH, III, August 13, 1969, LBJL.

20. LBJ and McCormack Conversation, WH Tapes, WH6411.08, LBJL.

21. “The 89th: LBJ’s Do-Plenty Congress,” Newsweek, February 15, 1965, 21.

22. “Remarks Before the National Connference on Educational Legislation,” March 1, 1965, in Public Papers of the Presidents: LBJ, 1965, vol. I, 227.

23. Martin E. Marty, The One and the Many: America’s Struggle for the Common Good (Cambridge, MA, 1997), 51.

24. Ibid., 56–57.

25. “Senators Not in Accord on U.S. Aid to Education,” Dallas Morning News, May 8, 1949.

26. Quoted in Patrick McGuinn and Frederick Hess, “The Great Society and the Evolution of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965,” in The Great Society and the High Tide of Liberalism, ed. Sidney M. Milkis and Jerome M. Mileur (Amherst, MA, 2005), 293–294.

27. Ibid., 291–292.

28. Ibid., 292.

29. Goldman, Tragedy of Lyndon Johnson, 304.

30. Irving Bernstein, Guns or Butter: The Presidency of Lyndon Johnson (New York, 1996), 187.

31. Savage, JFK, LBJ, and the Democratic Party, 125.

32. Goldman, Tragedy of Lyndon Johnson, 36–37.

33. Bernstein, Guns or Butter, 184; Goldman, Tragedy of Lyndon Johnson, 297.

34. Lawrence F. O’Brien OH, September 18, 1985, LBJL.

35. Bernstein, Guns or Butter, 186–188.

36. Ibid., 188–189.

37. D. Cater OH, I, April 29, 1969, LBJL; Goldman, Tragedy of Lyndon Johnson, 300.

38. D. Cater OH; Bernstein, Guns or Butter, 191.

39. McGuinn and Hess, “Great Society and the Evolution of Education,” 304. A 1966 amendment to the ESEA created a new title (Title VI) to provide grants to programs for “handicapped” children. This new program continued to expand over time as the definition of “handicapped” was broadened to cover more and more students.

40. Dallek, Flawed Giant, 196.

41. Goldman, Tragedy of Lyndon Johnson, 300.

42. Louis Martin OH, June 12, 1986, II, LBJL.

43. Lawrence F. O’Brien OH, September 18, 1985; Goldman, Tragedy of Lyndon Johnson, 302.

44. LBJ and Ralph Dungan Conversation, April 10, 1964, Box 4, LBJL.

45. Goldman, Tragedy of Lyndon Johnson, 301.

46. Douglass Cater to President, March 10, 1968, LBJ Handwriting File, Box 6, LBJL.

47. LBJ and HHH Conversation, March 6, 1965, in Michael R. Beschloss, Reaching for Glory: Lyndon Johnson’s Secret White House Tapes, 1964–1965 (New York, 2001), 169.

48. Savage, JFK, LBJ, and the Democratic Party, 126–127.

49. Goldman, Tragedy of Lyndon Johnson, 306.

50. Savage, JFK, LBJ, and the Democratic Party, 126–127.

51. “Remarks in Johnson City, Texas, upon Signing the Elementary and Secondary Education Bill,” April 11, 1965, in Public Papers: LBJ, 1965, vol. I, 413.

52. “Remarks to Members of Congress at a Reception Marking the Enactment of the Education Bill,” April 13, 1965, in Public Papers of the Presidents: LBJ, 1965, vol. I, 416.

53. Dallek, Flawed Giant, 201.

54. “Remarks Before the National Conference on Educational Legislation,” March 1, 1965, in Public Papers of the Presidents: LBJ, 1965, vol. I, 227.

55. Stephen C. Halpern, On the Limits of the Law: The Ironic Legacy of Title VI of the 1964 Civil Rights Act (Baltimore, 1995), 43.

56. Ibid., 45.

57. Ronald Story, “The New Deal and Higher Education,” in The New Deal and the Triumph of Liberalism, ed. Sidney M. Milkis and Jerome M. Mileur (Amherst, MA, 2002), 272.

58. Ibid., 276.

59. Ibid., 274.

60. Bernstein, Guns or Butter, 204–210.

61. LBJ and HHH Conversation, March 6, 1965, in Beschloss, Reaching for Glory, 209.

62. See Allen J. Matusow, The Unraveling of America: A History of Liberalism in the 1960s (Athens, 1984), 224.

63. Dallek, Flawed Giant, 202.

64. Quoted in McGuinn and Hess, “Great Society and the Evolution of Education,” 297.

65. Quoted in ibid., 298.

66. Bernstein, Guns or Butter, 157.

67. Reedy to Senator Johnson, ND 1959, SOF/G. Reedy, Box 429, LBJL.

68. Larry DeWitt and Edward D. Berkowitz, “Health Care,” in A Companion to Lyndon B. Johnson, ed. Mitchell B. Lerner (Malden, 2012), 163–164.

69. Ibid., 164.

70. Ibid., 165–166.

71. Notes of an Interview with LBJ During Preparation of Exhibits for LBJ Library, n.d., OF/Harry Middleton, “Exhibits,” Box 64, LBJL.

72. Dallek, Flawed Giant, 205.

73. Wilbur Mills OH, II, LBJL.

74. Julian E. Zelizer, Taxing America: Wilbur D. Millis, Congress, and the American State, 1945–1975 (New York, 2000), 216–217.

75. LBJ and L. O’Brien Conversation, May 18, 1964, TCC, Box 4, LBJL.

76. LBJ and Wilbur Mills Conversation, June 9, 1964, WH Tapes, WH6406.03, LBJL.

77. Zelizer, Taxing America, 221.

78. LBJ and L. O’Brien Conversation, June 22, 1964, WH Tapes, WH6406.12, LBJL.

79. LBJ and L. O’Brien Conversation, August 14, 1964, WH Tapes, WH6408.19, LBJL.

80. LBJ and Carl Albert Conversation, September 3, 1964, WH Tapes, WH6409.05, LBJL.

81. Zelizer, Taxing America, 231.

82. Bernstein, Guns or Butter, 171.

83. Quoted in Zelizer, Taxing America, 241.

84. Bernstein, Guns or Butter, 173.

85. Merle Miller, Lyndon: An Oral Autobiography (New York, 1980), 410–411.

86. Dallek, Flawed Giant, 209.

87. Bernstein, Guns or Butter, 176.

88. “Biggest Change Since the New Deal,” Newsweek, April 12, 1965.

89. LBJ and L. O’Brien Conversation, April 9, 1965, in Beschloss, Reaching for Glory, 277.

90. Dallek, Flawed Giant, 298–210.

91. Bernstein, Guns or Butter, 179.

92. Dallek, Flawed Giant, 210.

93. Bernstein, Guns or Butter, 177–178.

94. Ibid.

95. Edward Berkowitz, “The Great Society’s Enduring National Health Insurance Program,” in The Great Society and the High Tide of Liberalism, ed. Sidney M. Milkis and Jerome M. Mileur (Amherst, MA, 2005), 121–122.

96. DeWitt and Berkowitz, “Health Care,” 172.

97. Ibid., 173.

98. Wilbur Cohen OH, II, LBJL.

99. DeWitt and Berkowitz, “Health Care,” 173–174.

100. Miller, Lyndon, 412.

101. Berkowitz, “Great Society’s Enduring National Health Insurance Program,” 327.

102. DeWitt and Berkowitz, “Health Care,” 174.

103. Bernstein, Guns or Butter, 180–181; Dallek, Flawed Giant, 211.

CHAPTER 6: MARCH TO FREEDOM: SELMA AND THE VOTING RIGHTS ACT

1. Irving Bernstein, Guns or Butter: The Presidency of Lyndon Johnson (New York, 1996), 223.

2. William H. Chafe, The Unfinished Journey: America Since World War II (New York, 2003), 311.

3. Robert Dallek, Flawed Giant: Lyndon B. Johnson and His Times, 1961–1973 (New York, 1998), 212.

4. LBJ and Roy Wilkins Conversation, November 4, 1965, WH Tapes, WH6511.01, LBJL.

5. LBJ and Roy Wilkins Conversation, October 30, 1965, WH Tapes, WH6510.03, LBJL.

6. Dallek, Flawed Giant, 212.

7. George Reedy to President, November 29, 1963, Diary Backup, Box 1, LBJL.

8. David Burner, Making Peace with the 60s (Princeton, 1996), 18.

9. LBJ and Richard Russell Conversation, November 11, 1964, White House Tapes of Telephone Conversations, WH6411.15, LBJL.

10. Burner, Making Peace, 5.

11. Nick Kotz, Judgment Days: Lyndon Baines Johnson, Martin Luther King Jr., and the Laws That Changed America (Boston, 2005), 66–67.

12. Ibid., 51.

13. Taylor Branch, Pillar of Fire: America in the King Years 1963–65 (New York, 1998), 28.

14. Ibid., 150; Kent B. Germany, “African-American Civil Rights,” in A Companion to Lyndon B. Johnson, ed. Mitchell B. Lerner (Malden, 2012), 121. In The FBI and Martin Luther King, Jr.: From “Solo” to Memphis (New York, 1981), David Garrow breaks down the FBI’s surveillance and investigation of King into three distinct periods. The bureau’s early focus was on Stanley Levison, the King adviser known in the FBI as “Solo” who allegedly had close ties to the Communist Party USA (CPUSA). Its second phase began in late 1963 with an assault on King’s personal life. The final period concerned King’s politics prior to his assassination, his calls for a social and economic revolution, and his support for the anti–Vietnam War movement.

15. Hoover to Jenkins, March 9, 1964, OF/Mildred Stegall, Box 32, Presidential Papers of LBJ, LBJL.

16. Branch, Pillar of Fire, 207.

17. Bernstein, Guns or Butter, 216.

18. James Farmer OH, II, July 20, 1971, LBJL.

19. J. Edgar Hoover to the President, November 30, 1964, OF/Mildred Stegall, Presidential Papers of LBJ, LBJL.

20. J. Edgar Hoover to the President, December 31, 1964, OF/Mildred Stegall, Box 32, Presidential Papers of LBJ, LBJL.

21. Kotz, Judgment Days, 235–236.

22. Lee White to the President, December 18, 1964, Diary Backup, Box 12, LBJL.

23. Quoted in Kotz, Judgment Days, 234–244.

24. Quoted in ibid., 245.

25. Quoted in Branch, Pillar of Fire, 555.

26. LBJ and Edward Clark Conversation, November 7, 1964, WH Tapes, WH6411.12, LBJL.

27. Buford Ellington OH, I, October 2, 1970, LBJL.

28. Bernstein, Guns or Butter, 215.

29. Ibid., 219–220.

30. Michael R. Beschloss, Reaching for Glory: Lyndon Johnson’s Secret White House Tapes, 1964–1965 (New York, 2001), 171.

31. See LBJ and Katzenbach Conversation, February 5, 1965, in ibid.

32. Lee White to President and Points That Dr. King Might Make upon Leaving the White House, February 5, 1965, Diary Backup, Box 13, LBJL.

33. Dallek, Flawed Giant, 214.

34. Quoted in Kotz, Judgment Days, 265.

35. Carter, Politics of Rage, 125.

36. Bernstein, Guns or Butter, 227.

37. “An American Tragedy,” Newsweek, March 22, 1965, 18–20.

38. LBJ and L. Hill Conversation, March 8, 1965, in Beschloss, Reaching for Glory, 219.

39. LBJ and Katzenbach Conversation, March 10, 1965, in ibid., 224.

40. N. Katzenbach OH, I, November 11, 1968, LBJL.

41. Kotz, Judgment Days, 303.

42. Cater to the President, March 1965, Diary Backup, Box 15, LBJL.

43. Quoted in Dan T. Carter, The Politics of Rage: George Wallace, the Origins of the New Conservatism and the Transformation of American Politics (Baton Rouge, 1995), 252.

44. Robert Dallek, Nixon and Kissinger: Partners in Power (London, 2008), 216–217; Bernstein, Guns or Butter, 230–231; Katzenbach to President, March 13, 1965, Katzenbach Papers, JFK Library. The points that LBJ made with Wallace were carefully worked out in advance with Nick Katzenbach.

45. “Remarks Delivered to a Press Conference in the Rose Garden,” March 13, 1965, in Public Papers of the Presidents: LBJ, 1965, vol. I (Washington, DC, 1966), 276.

46. McPherson to President, March 12, 1965, Diary Backup, Box 15, LBJL.

47. LBJ, The Vantage Point: Perspectives of the Presidency, 1963–1969 (New York, 1971), 164.

48. Dallek, Flawed Giant, 218.

49. “Special Message to the Congress: The American Promise,” March 15, 1965, in Public Papers: LBJ, 1965, vol. I, 281–287.

50. Quoted in Eric F. Goldman, The Tragedy of Lyndon Johnson (New York, 1969), 322.

51. LBJ, Wallace, Ellington, and Katzenbach Conversation, March 18, 1965, in Beschloss, Reaching for Glory, 231–232.

52. LBJ and Ellington Conversation, March 18, 1965, in ibid., 235.

53. “Statement by the President in Response to a Telegram from the Governor of Alabama,” March 18, 1965, in Public Papers: LBJ, 1965, vol. I, 296–297.

54. “Forces in Position,” March 1965, Diary Backup, Box 15, LBJL.

55. Valenti Notes on Meeting in President’s Office, March 18, 1965, Diary Backup, Box 15, LBJL.

56. LeRoy Collins to the President, March 24, 1965, OF/Harry McPherson, Box 1, LBJL.

57. See Ramsey Clark OH, February 11, 1969, LBJL.

58. Cyrus Vance to President, March 20, 1965, Diary Backup, Box 15, LBJL; Bernstein, Guns or Butter, 235.

59. Kenneth O’Reilly, Nixon’s Piano: Presidents and Racial Politics from Washington to Clinton (New York, 1995), 255.

60. Ibid.

61. LBJ and Katzenbach Conversation, March 26, 1965, in Beschloss, Reaching for Glory, 247.

62. “Road from Selma: Hope—and Death,” Newsweek, April 5, 1965.

63. LBJ and Katzenbach Conversation, August 17, 1965, WH Tapes, WH6508.05, LBJL.

64. Ramsey Clark OH, II, February 11, 1969, LBJL.

65. Busby to Moyers and White, February 27, 1965, OF/Bill Moyers, Box 6, LBJL.

66. Katzenbach to Moyers and White, March 1, 1965, OF/Bill Moyers, Box 6, LBJL.

67. Quoted in Kotz, Judgment Days, 313.

68. Ibid., 315.

69. Bernstein, Guns or Butter, 236–237.

70. Busby to Moyers and White, February 27, 1965, and Moyers and White to Katzenbach, March 1, 1965, OF/Bill Moyers, Box 6, LBJL; Meeting in Cabinet Room of Bipartisan Congressional Leaders, March 14, 1965, Diary Backup, Box 15, LBJL; LBJ and Vance Hartke Conversation, May 7, 1965, TCC, Box 6, LBJL.

71. LBJ and Birch Bayh Conversation, May 7, 1965, 7603–04, LBJL.

72. Bernstein, Guns or Butter, 241.

73. LBJ and Roy Wilkins Conversation, November 4, 1965, WH Tapes, WH6511.01, LBJL. See also LBJ and Katzenbach Conversation, August 17, 1965, WH Tapes, WH 6508.04, LBJL. LBJ was also very mindful of the favorable impact the Voting Rights Act and subsequent mass voter registration would have on the nonwhite peoples of the rest of the world.

74. President Johnson’s Notes on Conversation with Thurgood Marshall, January 3, 1966, Transcripts of White House Telephone Conversations, 9403, LBJL.

75. Bernstein, Guns or Butter, 241–242.

76. Dallek, Flawed Giant, 220–221.

CHAPTER 7: CULTURES OF POVERTY

1. “New Crisis: The Negro Family,” Newsweek, August 9, 1965, 32.

2. Ibid.

3. Moynihan to McPherson, September 22, 1966, OF/H. McPherson, Box 22, LBJL.

4. Harry McPherson OH, III, LBJL.

5. Dona Cooper Hamilton and Charles V. Hamilton, The Dual Agenda (New York, 1998), 129–130.

6. Though he was heavily influenced by Moynihan’s report on the black family, he could not bring himself to trust its author. Moynihan was a self-made New York Irish intellectual who had been much too close to the Kennedys for Johnson’s taste. Harry McPherson, who was a close friend and admirer of Moynihan, did his best to persuade LBJ to bring him into the presidential inner circle, but to no avail. See Douglas Cater to President, July 7, 1965, LBJH Handwriting File, Box 8 and McPherson to President, June 24, 1965, OF/H. McPherson, Box 52, LBJL.

7. “Commencement Address at Howard University: ‘To Fulfill These Rights,’” June 4, 1965, in Public Papers of the Presidents: LBJ, 1965, vol. II (Washington, DC, 1966), 635–640.

8. Moynihan to McPherson, September 22, 1966, OF/H. McPherson, Box 22, LBJL.

9. Hamilton and Hamilton, Dual Agenda, 132.

10. George Reedy, “Affirmative Action Forgets Its Roots,” USA Today, July 19, 1995, 11A.

11. “South LA was a circumscribed realm of diminishing opportunity,” Gerald Horne has written. Gerald Horne, Fire This Time: The Watts Uprising and the 1960s (Charlottesville, VA, 1995), 52.

12. “Los Angeles: The Fire This Time,” Newsweek, August 23, 1965, 15–16.

13. See Terry H. Anderson, The Movement and the Sixties: Protest in America from Greensboro to Wounded Knee, 5th ed. (Oxford, 1995), 132.

14. Quoted in Randall Bennett Woods, Quest for Identity: American Since 1945 (New York, 2005), 250.

15. Stokely Carmichael, “What We Want,” New York Review of Books, September 22, 1966, 5.

16. See Fred Dutton to Attorney General, July 17, 1964, OF/Bill Moyers, Box 53, LBJL.

17. Joseph A. Califano, The Triumph and Tragedy of Lyndon Johnson: The White House Years (College Station, 2003), 59–63.

18. LBJ and Califano Conversation, August 14, 1965, WH Tapes, WH6508.04, LBJL.

19. Ramsey Clark OH, II, February 11, 1969, LBJL.

20. Ramsey Clark OH, III, March 21, 1969, LBJL.

21. Reedy to President, August 22, 1965, OF/H. McPherson, Box 21, LBJL.

22. President Johnson’s Notes on Conversation with A. G. Katzenbach, August 17, 1965, 8544, TCC, LBJL.

23. “‘Tough Years Ahead,’” Newsweek, August 30, 1965, 19.

24. He would get Shriver on it the next day, Johnson said, but it would be much easier to get pending social programs through Congress and funding for existing ones if King would stop opposing the White House on Vietnam. President and Martin Luther King Conversation, August 19, 1965, Diary Backup, Box 21, LBJL.

25. Nick Kotz, Judgment Days: Lyndon Baines Johnson, Martin Luther King Jr., and the Laws That Changed America (Boston, 2005), 342–343.

26. Attorney General to President, August 6, 1964, OF/H. Busby, Box 52, LBJL.

27. Ramsey Clark OH, II, February 11, 1969, LBJL.

28. Califano, Triumph and Tragedy, 59–63.

29. LBJ and John McCone Conversation, August 18, 1965, WH Tapes, WH6508.05, LBJL.

30. LBJ and J. McClellan Conversation, March 23, 1965, in Michael R. Beschloss, Reaching for Glory: Lyndon Johnson’s Secret White House Tapes, 1964–1965 (New York, 2001), 237.

31. In the beginning the architects and managers of the War on Poverty had gone to great lengths to prove that the initiative was color-blind. It never was, and it became increasingly difficult to conceal the truth. The budget for fiscal year 1966 for the Appalachian program was cut by 44 percent, causing John Sweeney of the Appalachian Regional Commission to warn LBJ that he faced a revolt from the region’s governors. John L. Sweeny to The President, December 132, 1965, OF/H. McPherson, Box 50, LBJL.

32. “Remarks at the White House Conference on Equal Employment Opportunities,” August 20, 1965, in Public Papers: LBJ, 1965, vol. II, 898.

33. Quoted in Woods, Quest for Identity, 227.

34. Southerners such as Russell and Allen Ellender (D-LA) were privately advising the president against becoming more deeply involved in Vietnam, but they would not have spoken out in his defense if and when the communists overran the South.

35. “Address at Johns Hopkins University: ‘Peace without Conquest,’” April 7, 1965, in Public Papers: LBJ, 1965, vol. I, 396.

CHAPTER 8: PROGRESSIVISM REDUX: THE CHALLENGES OF SOCIAL ENGINEERING

1. See Robert Dallek, Flawed Giant: Lyndon B. Johnson and His Times, 1961–1973 (New York, 1998), 226–227.

2. LBJ and Abraham Ribicoff Conversation, August 19, 1965, TCC, 8573 and 8574, LBJL.

3. Moyers to LBJ, August 12, 1964, Diary Backup, Box 8, Presidential Papers of LBJ, LBJL.

4. Nelson Lichtenstein, “Pluralism, Postwar Intellectuals, and the Demise of the Union Idea,” in The Great Society and the High Tide of Liberalism, ed. Sidney M. Milkis and Jerome M. Mileur (Amherst, MA, 2005), 87.

5. See ibid., 97.

6. “Preface,” in Milkis and Mileur, eds., Great Society, xiv–xv.

7. Sidney M. Milkis, “Lyndon Johnson, the Great Society, and the Modern Presidency,” in Great Society, ed. Milkis and Mileur, 3.

8. Ibid., 5.

9. Thomas J. Sugrue, Sweet Land of Liberty: The Forgotten Struggle for Civil Rights in the North (New York, 2009), 367–371.

10. “Shriver and the War on Poverty,” Newsweek, September 13, 1965.

11. Quoted in Adam Cohen and Elizabeth Taylor, American Pharaoh: Mayor Richard J. Daley: His Battle for Chicago and the Nation (Boston, 2000), 343.

12. LBJ and Abe Ribicoff Conversation, September 1, 1965, WH6509.01, LBJL.

13. President’s Notes on Conversation with Bill Moyers, August 8, 1964, Transcripts of Telephone Tapes, Box 5, LBJL.

14. See Moyers to President, August 12, 1964, Diary Backup, Box 8, LBJL; Moyers to President, April 5, 1965, OF/Bill Moyers, Box 11, LBJL; “Poverty War: Birth Pains,” Newsweek, March 29, 1965; and “War within a War,” Newsweek, December 20, 1965.

15. Eileen Boris, “Contested Rights: The Great Society between Home and Work,” in Great Society, ed. Milkis and Mileur, 121.

16. Valenti to President, August 20, 1965, Diary Backup, Box 21, LBJL.

17. Boris, “Contested Rights,” 127–128.

18. “Can Bobby Kennedy [who with his wife Ethel was hewing to the Biblical dictum ‘to be fruitful and multiply’] benefit from this program?” McPherson to Moyers, March 16, 1965, OF/H. McPherson, Box 51, LBJL.

19. See also Cater to President, March 30, 1965, LBJ Handwriting File, Box 6 and McPherson to Moyers, December 13, 1965, OF/H. McPherson, Box 51, LBJL; and “Shriver and the War on Poverty,” Newsweek, 26. Gallup polls taken at the time showed a huge majority supporting programs that offered family planning advice and services on a voluntary basis. Even 55 percent of the Catholics interviewed backed such programs. But the Vatican and the American Catholic hierarchy remained adamantly and publicly opposed. McPherson to the President, May 10, 1966, OF/H. McPherson, Box 52, LBJL.

20. Laura Kalman, Abe Fortas: A Biography (New Haven, 1990), 244–245.

21. LBJ and Abe Fortas Conversation, July 29, 1965, in Michael R. Beschloss, Reaching for Glory: Lyndon Johnson’s Secret White House Tapes, 1964–1965 (New York, 2001), 413.

22. Kalman, Abe Fortas, 240–245; LBJ and Katzenbach Conversation, July 29, 1965, in Beschloss, Reaching for Glory, 415–416.

23. See LBJ and Gov. Grant Sawyer Conversation, August 17, 1965, TCC, 8547, LBJL.

24. Moyers and LBJ Conversation, August 1, 1964, White House Telephone Tapes, WS6407.06, LBJL.

25. Quoted in Nick Kotz, Judgment Days: Lyndon Baines Johnson, Martin Luther King Jr., and the Laws That Changed America (Boston, 2005), 181.

26. President’s Notes on Telephone Conversation with George Mahon, July 29, 1964, 4407, TCC, LBJL.

27. Quoted in Kotz, Judgment Days, 181–183.

28. Ibid., 344.

29. “Shriver and the War on Poverty,” Newsweek, 26.

30. “Statement by the President Upon Announcing a Program of Assistance to Los Angeles,” August 26, 1965, in Public Papers of the Presidents: LBJ, 1965, vol. II (Washington, DC, 1966), 933–934.

31. LBJ and Abe Ribicoff Conversation, September 1, 1965, WH Tapes, WH 6509.01, LBJL.

32. Califano to President, September 16, 1965, Diary Backup, Box 22, LBJL.

33. He confided to an aide that whenever he sat across from Reuther in the Oval Office, “I’m sitting in my rocker, smiling and thinking all the time, ‘How can I get that hand out of his pocket [Reuther had been maimed by a would-be assassin’s bullet] so I can cut his balls off!’” Quoted in Dallek, Flawed Giant, 224–225.

34. LBJ and Al Friendly Conversation, August 28, 1965, WH Tapes WH6508.13, LBJL.

35. Quoted in Beschloss, Reaching for Glory, 418.

36. Quoted in Sean J. Savage, JFK, LBJ, and the Democratic Party (Albany, 2004), 135.

37. LBJ and Roy Wilkins Conversation, September 13, 1965, White House Telephone Tapes, WH6509.03, LBJL.

38. LBJ and Katzenbach Conversation, November 29, 1965, WH Tapes, WH6511.09, LBJL.

39. LBJ and Roy Wilkins Conversation, October 30, 1965, TCC, 9048 and 9049, LBJL.

40. LBJ and Roy Wilkins Conversation, November 4, 1965, TCC, 9105–07, LBJL.

41. Dallek, Flawed Giant, 229.

42. “Haynesville Justice,” Newsweek, October 11, 1965, 36.

43. Reedy to President, October 2, 1965, LBJ Handwriting, Box 10, LBJL.

44. “Opening a Second Front,” Newsweek, November 8, 1965, 33.

45. “What to Do Next?” Newsweek, November 29, 1965, 27.

46. Harry McPherson OH, III, LBJL.

47. Kim McQuaid, Big Business and Presidential Power: From FDR to Reagan (New York, 1982), 238–239.

48. Joseph A. Califano, The Triumph and Tragedy of Lyndon Johnson: The White House Years (College Station, TX, 2003), 86–87.

49. Breakfast Meeting about Steel Strike, August 30, 1965, Diary Backup, Box 21, LBJL.

50. “Steel Answers—and Real Questions,” Newsweek, September 13, 1965, 19–20.

51. Dallek, Flawed Giant, 305.

52. LBJ and Katzenbach Conversation, September 2, 1965, WH Tapes, WH6509.01, LBJL.

53. Heller to President, September 5, 1965, Diary Backup, Box 21, LBJL.

54. Connor and Fowler and LBJ Conversation, January 7, 1966, White House Telephone Tapes, 6601.05, LBJL.

55. Milton Friedman, “Social Responsibility: A Subversive Doctrine,” National Review, August 24, 1965, 721–723.

56. “What Happens to Bargaining Now?” Newsweek, September 20, 1965, 73–75.

57. Ibid.

58. Quoted in Dallek, Flawed Giant, 307.

59. Lichtenstein, “Pluralism,” 83–85.

60. Ibid., 104–105.

61. Ibid., 104.

62. Ibid., 105.

63. “Remarks at the White House Festival of the Arts,” June 14, 1965, in Public Papers: LBJ, 1965, vol. II, 659.

64. Irving Bernstein, Guns or Butter: The Presidency of Lyndon Johnson (New York, 1996), 443.

65. McPherson to President, December 1, 1965, OF/H. McPherson, Box 52, LBJL.

CHAPTER 9: NATIVISM AT BAY: IMMIGRATION AND THE LATINO MOVEMENT

1. Rogers M. Smith, Civic Ideals: Conflicting Visions of Citizenship in U.S. History (New Haven, 1997), 14–15.

2. Ibid., 16.

3. Roger Daniels, Guarding the Golden Door: American Immigration Policy and Immigrants Since 1882 (New York, 2004), 6.

4. Quoted in ibid., 7–8.

5. Ibid., 11.

6. Irving Bernstein, Guns or Butter: The Presidency of Lyndon Johnson (New York, 1996), 245–247.

7. Ibid., 59.

8. Ibid., 131–132.

9. Ibid., 133.

10. “Remarks at the Signing of the Immigration Bill,” Liberty Island, New York, October 3, 1965, in Public Papers of the Presidents: LBJ, 1963–1964, vol. II (Washington, DC, 1965), 1038.

11. Daniels, Guarding the Golden Door, 135.

12. Bernstein, Guns or Butter, 258–259.

13. Daniels, Guarding the Golden Door, 139.

14. Randall Bennett Woods, Quest for Identity: America Since 1945 (New York, 2005), 372.

15. Lorena Oropeza, “Mexican Americans,” in A Companion to Lyndon B. Johnson, ed. Mitchell B. Lerner (Malden, MA, 2012), 134.

16. Quoted in Nick Kotz, Judgment Days: Lyndon Baines Johnson, Martin Luther King Jr., and the Laws That Changed America (Boston, 2005), 95.

17. Lorena Oropeza, “Mexican Americans,” 140.

18. Ibid., 144–145.

19. Woods, Quest for Identity, 373.

20. Aside from the War on Poverty and especially community action, the Kennedy and Johnson administrations did not have a major impact on the lives of Native Americans. The forced termination policies of the 1950s had come and gone by the time Kennedy assumed office. Washington’s approach to Native American affairs, spearheaded by Secretary of the Interior Stewart Udall, was political and economic assimilation coupled with measures to preserve ethnic and cultural identity. See Thomas Clarkin, Federal Indian Policy in the Kennedy and Johnson Administrations, 1961–1969 (Albuquerque, 2001).

CHAPTER 10: THE NEW CONSERVATION

1. Quoted in Michael McGerr, A Fierce Discontent: The Rise and Fall of the Progressive Movement in America (New York, 2003), 167.

2. Ibid., 168–169.

3. Martin V. Melosi, “Environmental Policy,” in A Companion to Lyndon B. Johnson, ed. Mitchell B. Lerner (Malden, MA, 2012), 196.

4. Ibid., 196.

5. Sarah T. Phillips, This Land, This Nation: Conservation, Rural America, and the New Deal (New York, 2007), 150–151.

6. Ibid., 152.

7. Ibid., 153.

8. Melosi, “Environmental Policy,” 192–193.

9. Ibid., 190.

10. Ibid., 192.

11. LBJ and Orville Freeman Conversation, July 7, 1964, WH Tapes, WH6407.05, LBJL.

12. “Remarks at the Signing of the Water Quality Act of 1965,” October 2, 1965, in Public Papers of the Presidents: LBJ, 1965, vol. II (Washington, DC, 1966), 1035.

13. Lee White, “The Bold Dreamer,” in The Johnson Years: The Difference He Made, ed. Robert L. Hardesty (Austin, 1993), 85.

14. “Remarks at a Meeting of the Water Emergency Conference,” August 11, 1965, in Public Papers: LBJ, 1965, vol. II, 868.

15. Jan Jarboe Russell, Lady Bird: A Biography of Mrs. Johnson (New York, 1999), 279.

16. See Elizabeth Carpenter OH, II, April 4, 1969 LBJL; Joe Frantz OH, September 7, 1972, I, LBJL; James Rowe OH, September 16, 1969, II, LBJL; Bobby Baker OH, VII, October 11, 1984, LBJL; Goodwin to President, July 29, 1964, Diary Backup, Box 7, LBJL; LBJ to Udall, January 21, 1965, LBJ Handwriting File, Box 5, LBJL; Paul South-wick to Make Manatos, September 7, 1965, Diary Backup, Box 232, LBJL; and “Remarks at a Meeting of the Water Emergency Conference,” August 11, 1965, in Public Papers: LBJ, 1965, vol. II, 868.

17. Melosi, “Environmental Policy,” 188.

18. Irving Bernstein, Guns or Butter: The Presidency of Lyndon Johnson (New York, 1996), 259. John Vrevelli asserts that Johnson was “not generally recognized as a conservationist” but might have come close to being “the greatest conservation president.” In part his reputation suffered because of a feud with Udall that occurred late in LBJ’s presidency. Johnson chose to sign a bill designating 300,000 acres as new parkland instead of the 78 million Udall had wanted. Melosi, “Environmental Policy,” 192–193. Johnson believed Udall had overreached and suspected that at heart the Interior secretary was loyal to Bobby Kennedy rather than him.

19. “LBJ and the Fabulous 89th Go Home,” Newsweek, November 1, 1965, 21–22.

20. Ibid.

21. See Emmet John Hughes, “The Two Presidents,” Newsweek, September 6, 1965, 13.

22. “I thought of this opening as a way of being ingratiating since I had some doubt whether this Congress really was as important as those early in the New Deal,” the historian wrote of his encounter with the president.

23. William E. Leuchtenburg, “A Visit with LBJ,” American Heritage, May/June 1990, 47–64.

24. Diaries of Orville Freeman, September 30, 1965, PP/Orville Freeman, Box 10, LBJL.

25. LBJ and Ford and Boggs Conversation, October 22, 1965, TCC, 9045, LBJL.

CHAPTER 11: GUNS AND BUTTER

1. J. K. Galbraith to President, October 19, 1965, LBJ Handwriting File, Box 10, LBJL.

2. Robert C. Wood, Whatever Possessed the President? Academic Experts and Presidential Policy, 1960–1988 (Amherst, MA, 1993), 77–78.

3. Report to President and Cabinet on the Economic Situation by the CEA, April 20, 1965, Cabinet Papers, Box 2, LBJL; Gardner Ackley to President, June 19, 1965, LBJ Handwriting File, Box 8, LBJL; Troika Staff Memorandum, September 10, 1964, Diary Backup, Box 9, LBJL.

4. LBJ and McNamara Conversation, December 2, 1965, TCC, 9305, LBJL.

5. Gardner Ackley to President, December 17, 1965, LBJ Handwriting File, Box 11, LBJL.

6. LBJ and M. Bundy Conversation, December 3, 1965, WH Tapes WH6512.01, LBJL.

7. John L. Sweeny to President, December 13, 1965, OF/H. McPherson, Box 50, LBJL.

8. Stewart Alsop, “The McNamara Equation,” Saturday Evening Post, May 16, 1964, 12.

9. LBJ and McCormack Conversation, August 23, 1965, WH Tapes, WH 6508.10, 8620, LBJL.

10. Ibid.

11. LBJ and R. Clark Conversation, August 20, 1965, WH Tapes, WH6508.08, LBJL.

12. LBJ and McCormack and Rovers Conversation, August 23, 1965, WH Tapes, WH6508.10, 8621, LBJL.

13. Deborah Shapley, Promise and Power: The Life and Times of Robert McNamara (Boston, 1993), 384.

14. Moynihan to McPherson, July 16, 1965, OF/H. McPherson, Box 21, LBJL; McNamara Interview with Rostow, January 8, 1975, Reference File, LBJL.

15. Daniel P. Moynihan, “Who Gets in the Army?” New Republic, November 5, 1966, 20–21.

16. Shapley, Promise and Power, 385; David Sanford, “McNamara’s Salvation Army,” New Republic, September 10, 1966, 14.

17. Minutes of Cabinet Meeting, November 1, 1967, LBJ Handwriting file, Box 11, LBJL.

18. McNamara Interview with Rostow, January 8, 1975, Reference File, LBJL.

19. Moynihan to McPherson, July 16, 1965, OF/H. McPherson, Box 21, LBJL.

20. LBJ and McNamara Conversation, December 22, 1967, WH6512.04, LBJL.

21. LBJ and Moyers Conversation, December 31, 1965, TCC, 9349, LBJL.

22. Shapley, Promise and Power, 384.

23. LBJ and McNamara Conversation, November 14, 1964, White House Telephone Tapes, WH6411.20, LBJL.

24. Moyers to Bob Kinter, May 5, 1966, OF/Bill Moyers, Box 12, LBJL.

25. Valenti OH, July 12, 1972, LBJL.

26. Harry McPherson OH, May 16, 1985, LBJL.

27. Ibid.

28. See Joseph A. Califano Jr., Inside: A Public and Private Life (New York, 2004), 3–45.

29. McPherson OH, LBJL.

30. Eric F. Goldman, The Tragedy of Lyndon Johnson (New York, 1969), 266–267.

31. Quoted in Joseph A. Califano, The Triumph and Tragedy of Lyndon Johnson: The White House Years (College Station, 2003), 114–115.

32. Robert Dallek, Flawed Giant: Lyndon B. Johnson and His Times, 1961–1973 (New York, 1998), 299.

33. Schultz to President, November 7, 1966 Diary Backup, Box 49, LBJL.

34. Califano, Triumph and Tragedy, 51.

35. From the President’s Pocket, March 8, 1966, LBJ Handwriting File, Box 13, LBJL.

36. “Remarks in Baltimore at the Celebration of the Bicentennial of American Methodism,” April 22, 1966, in Public Papers of the Presidents: LBJ, 1966, vol. I (Washington, DC, 1967), 447.

37. Califano, Triumph and Tragedy, 115.

38. Dallek, Flawed Giant, 302.

39. “Annual Message to the Congress on the State of the Union,” January 12, 1966, in Public Papers: LBJ, 1966, vol. I, 3–6.

40. Ibid.; “U.S. Can Continue the ‘Great Society’ and Fight in Vietnam . . . LBJ Hands Congress Massive Work Load,” read a Washington Post headline. Quoted in Dallek, Flawed Giant, 300.

41. See Minutes of the Meeting between the President and the Bi-Partisan Leaders of the House and Senate, July 18, 1966, Diary Backup, Box 39, LBJL.

42. Diaries of Orville Freeman, April 4, 1966, PP/Orville Freeman, Box 10, LBJL.

43. Ackley to Califano, June 16, 1966, LBJ Handwriting, Box 24, LBJL; see also Fowler to President, January 7, 1966, LBJ Handwriting File, Box 11, LBJL.

44. Califano to President, February 9, 1966, LBJ Handwriting File, Box 12, LBJL.

45. LBJ and Meany Conversation, February 22, 1966, WH Tapes, TCC, February 1966, LBJL.

46. Martin to President, March 15, 1966, LBJ Handwriting File, Box 13, LBJL; and Califano to President, June 14, 1966, Diary Backup, Box 37, LBJL.

47. See Middleton Notes of an Interview with LBJ During Research and Writing of The Vantage Point, OF/Harry Middleton, Box 79, LBJL.

48. Califano to President, June 22, 1966, Diary Backup, Box 38, LBJL.

49. “Rising Prices: How Long, How High?” Newsweek, September 5, 1966, 69.

50. Redmon to Moyers, August 31, 1966, OF/Bill Moyers, Box 12, LBJL.

51. Congressional Briefing, September 6, 1966, Congressional Briefings, Box 1, LBJL.

52. mjdr to President, September 12, 1966, LBJ Handwriting File, Box 31, LBJL.

53. “Special Message to the Congress on Transportation,” March 2, 1966, in Public Papers: LBJ, 1966, vol. I, 250–258.

54. Quoted in Califano, Triumph and Tragedy, 125.

55. Quoted in ibid., 126.

56. Fifteen years later, Congress placed the shipping industry in the Department of Transportation.

57. Quoted in Califano, Triumph and Tragedy, 131.

58. Irving Bernstein, Guns or Butter: The Presidency of Lyndon Johnson (New York, 1996), 462–463.

59. See Milton P. Semer to President, June 10, 1966, LBJ Handwriting File, Box 15, LBJL.

60. Quoted in Califano, Triumph and Tragedy, 132.

61. Bernstein, Guns or Butter, 465.

62. Gareth Davies, From Opportunity to Entitlement: The Transformation and Decline of Great Society Liberalism (Lawrence, KS, 1996), 137–138.

63. Califano, Triumph and Tragedy, 135.

64. LBJ, The Vantage Point: Perspectives of the Presidency, 1963–1969 (New York, 1971), 330.

65. Bernstein, Guns or Butter, 469.

66. Davies, From Opportunity to Entitlement, 137.

CHAPTER 12: THE SEARCH FOR A NEW KIND OF FREEDOM

1. “Remarks to the Delegates to the White House Conference ‘To Fulfill These Rights,’” June 1, 1966, in Public Papers of the Presidents: LBJ, 1963–1964, vol. I (Washington, DC, 1965), 573.

2. “Crisis of Color ’66,” Newsweek, August 22, 1966, 20–26; Robert Dallek, Flawed Giant: Lyndon B. Johnson and His Times, 1961–1973 (New York, 1998), 323.

3. Fortas to Valenti, January 17, 1966, LBJ Handwriting File, Box 11, LBJL.

4. Ibid.

5. Dewey W. Grantham, The South in Modern America: A Region at Odds (New York, 1994), 255.

6. Thomas J. Sugrue, Sweet Land of Liberty: The Forgotten Struggle for Civil Rights in the North (New York, 2009), xiii.

7. This had been historically true of labor forces as economies made the transformation from agricultural to industrial bases.

8. Christopher Lasch, “The Trouble with Black Power,” New York Review of Books, February 29, 1968, 4–14.

9. Sugrue, Sweet Land of Liberty, xv.

10. Ibid., 361.

11. Terry H. Anderson, The Pursuit of Fairness: A History of Affirmative Action (New York, 2004), 83.

12. Carl Holman to Lee White, December 16, 1965, OF/H. McPherson, Box 21, LBJL.

13. Ibid.

14. Sugrue, Sweet Land of Liberty, 401–402.

15. Quoted in Thomas F. Jackson, From Civil Rights to Human Rights: Martin Luther King, Jr., and the Struggle for Economic Justice (Philadelphia, 2007), 2.

16. Ibid., 189.

17. Ibid., 204.

18. Ibid., 20–21.

19. Ibid.

20. Notes on Meredith March, June 25, 1966, OF/H. McPherson, Box 22, LBJL.

21. “The March Meredith Began,” Newsweek, June 20, 1966, 28–29.

22. John Dittmer, Local People: The Struggle for Civil Rights in Mississippi (Urbana, IL, 1994), 396. See also Stokely Carmichael, “What We Want,” New York Review of Books, September 22, 1966, 5–6.

23. “Crisis of Color ’66,” Newsweek, August 22, 1966, 34.

24. Harry McPherson OH, V, April 9, 1969, LBJL.

25. Jackson, Civil Rights to Human Rights, 137.

26. Quoted in Doris Kearns Goodwin, Lyndon Johnson and the American Dream (New York, 1991), 320.

27. “Remarks to Members of the Bishops’ Council, African Methodist Episcopal Church,” September 27, 1966, in Public Papers of the Presidents: LBJ, 1966, vol. II (Washington, DC, 1967), 945; “Remarks at a Reception for Members of the American Society of Newspaper Editors,” April 17, 1964, in Public Papers: LBJ, 1963–1964, vol. I (Washington, DC, 1965), 1072–1073.

28. Adam Cohen and Elizabeth Taylor, American Pharaoh: Mayor Richard J. Daley: His Battle for Chicago and the Nation (Boston, 2000), 335. See also Cater to President, March 25, 1966, LBJ Handwriting File, Box 13, LBJL.

29. Stephen C. Halpern, On the Limits of the Law: The Ironic Legacy of Title VI of the 1964 Civil Rights Act (Baltimore, 1995), 45–52. See also McPherson to President, May 12, 1966, OF/H. McPherson, Box 52, LBJL.

30. “What Grenadans Are Like,” Newsweek, September 26, 1966, 33–34.

31. Cohen and Taylor, American Pharaoh, 161.

32. See Ed Weisl OH, October 30, 1968, LBJL.

33. Cater to President, May 19, 1966, LBJ Handwriting File, Box 14, LBJL.

34. Cohen and Taylor, American Pharaoh, 351–353; Cater to President, October 4, 1965, Box 23, LBJL; W. Wilbur Cohen OH, December 8, 1968, I, LBJL; “Leaning on HEW,” Newsweek, October 18, 1966, 98.

35. On Thanksgiving Day 1962, JFK had signed a fair housing order prohibiting the Federal Housing Authority (FHA) from insuring any mortgages benefiting discriminatory home builders. But the FHA insured only 20 percent of newly constructed homes, so FHA director Robert Weaver urged Kennedy to extend the prohibition to all financial institutions. Pressured by big-city Democratic legislators, the president exempted banks, savings and loans, and two million federally insured housing units already under construction. Jackson, Civil Rights to Human Rights, 128–129.

36. Henry Wilson to President, March 11, 1966, and Katzenbach to President, March 15, 1966, LBJ Handwriting File, Box 13, LBJL.

37. Byron C. Hulsey, Everett Dirksen and His Presidents: How a Senate Giant Shaped American Politics (Lawrence, KS, 2000), 68–69.

38. Dallek, Flawed Giant, 324. Johnson was then under increasing pressure from black leaders who had embraced the concept of a multi-billion-dollar “Marshall Plan” for African Americans. And this at a time when Congress was pressing for a $6 billion cut in domestic spending. Housing was an area where Johnson could do something for civil rights that would not cost any money.

39. Ramsey Clark OH, IV, April 16, 1969, LBJL.

40. McPherson to President, September 12, 1966, Katzenbach Papers, Box 15, JFKL.

41. “Special Message to the Congress Proposing Further Legislation to Strengthen Civil Rights,” April 28, 1966, in Public Papers: LBJ, 1966, vol. I, 461–468.

42. Katzenbach to Wilson, March 15, 1966, LBJ Handwriting File, Box 13, and Katzenbach to President, March 17, 196, Diary Backup, Box 37, LBJL.

43. “Remarks of the President at the Olive Medal of Honor Ceremony,” March 21, 1966, Diary Backup, Box 33, LBJL; see also Sparks and Hardesty to Valenti, April 1, 1966, Diary Backup, Box 33, LBJL.

44. Sugrue, Sweet Land of Liberty, 416–417.

45. “The Touchiest Target,” Newsweek, August 15, 1966, 29.

46. “Colorful Campaign,” Newsweek, October 17, 1966, 29.

47. McPherson to Katzenbach, September 20, 1966, Katzenbach Papers, Box 15, JFKL.

48. Moynihan to McPherson, September 22, 1966, OF/H. McPherson, Box 22, LBJL.

49. Andrew Kopkind, “Soul Power,” New York Review of Books, August 24, 1967, 3.

50. Roche to President, February 16, 1967, LBJ Handwriting File, Box 20, LBJL.

51. McPherson to President, December 19, 1966, and Moynihan to McPherson, September 22, 1966, OF/H. McPherson, Box 22, LBJL.

52. Bernstein, Guns or Butter: The Presidency of Lyndon Johnson (New York, 1996), 439.

53. McPherson to President, April 14, 1966, OF/H. McPherson, Box 52, LBJL.

54. “Statement by the President Upon Signing Bill Providing for the Joseph H. Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden,” November 7, 1966, in Public Papers: LBJ, 1966, vol. II, 1345.

55. Irving Bernstein, Guns or Butter, 440–441, 444–457.

56. Quoted in ibid., 273.

57. “Remarks to Members of the National Recreation and Park Association,” October 13, 1966, in Public Papers: LBJ, 1966, vol. II, 1174.

58. Bernstein, Guns or Butter, 278–279.

59. “Remarks to Members of the National Recreation and Park Association,” October 13, 1966, in Public Papers: LBJ, 1966, vol. II, 1176.

CHAPTER 13: THE IMP OF THE PERVERSE: COMMUNITY ACTION AND WELFARE RIGHTS

1. Quoted in Jim Wright, Balance of Power: Presidents and Congress from the Era of McCarthy to the Age of Gingrich (Atlanta, 1996), 41.

2. Califano Commencement Address at Mercy College, Califano to LBJ, June 4, 1968, OF/Joe Califano, Box 17, LBJL.

3. Robert Dallek, Flawed Giant: Lyndon B. Johnson and His Times, 1961–1973 (New York, 1998), 330.

4. Califano Commencement Address at Mercy College, Califano to LBJ, June 4; Dallek, Flawed Giant, 330.

5. See Gareth Davies, From Opportunity to Entitlement: The Transformation and Decline of Great Society Liberalism (Lawrence, KS, 1996), 89.

6. Sidney M. Milkis, President and the Parties: The Transformation of the American Party System since the New Deal (New York, 1993), 182.

7. “Bill Moyers Talks about LBJ, Power, Poverty, War and the Young,” The Atlantic 22, no. 1 (July 1968): 22.

8. Davies, From Opportunity to Entitlement, 91.

9. Dallek, Flawed Giant, 331.

10. Theda Skocpol, Protecting Soldiers and Mothers: The Political Origins of Social Policy in United States (Cambridge, MA, 1992), 1.

11. Michael McGerr, A Fierce Discontent: The Rise and Fall of the Progressive Movement in America (New York, 2003), 11.

12. Ibid.

13. Skocpol, Soldiers and Mothers, 5.

14. Michael B. Katz, In the Shadow of the Poorhouse: A Social History of Welfare in America, Tenth Anniversary Edition (New York, 1996), ix–x.

15. Eileen Boris, “Contested Rights: The Great Society between Home and Work,” in The Great Society and the High Tide of Liberalism, ed. Sidney M. Milkis and Jerome M. Mileur (Amherst, MA, 2005), 130–131.

16. Suzanne Mettler, “Social Citizens of Separate Sovereignties: Governance in the New Deal Welfare State,” in The New Deal and the Triumph of Liberalism, ed. Sidney M. Milkis and Jerome M. Mileur (Amherst, MA, 2002), 246.

17. Frances Fox Piven and Richard A. Cloward, “The Politics of the Great Society,” in Great Society, ed. Milkis and Mileur, 261–62.

18. Boris, “Contested Rights,” 116.

19. Ibid., 188–189.

20. Ibid., 131.

21. LBJ and Elmer Staats Conversation, January 25, 1964, White House Telephone Tapes, WH6401.22, LBJL.

22. Thomas J. Sugrue, Sweet Land of Liberty: The Forgotten Struggle for Civil Rights in the North (New York, 2009), 383–385.

23. See Davies, From Opportunity to Entitlement, 115–118.

24. Piven and Cloward, “Politics of the Great Society,” 261–262.

25. Edward D. Berkowitz, Creating the Welfare State: The Political Economy of Twentieth Century Reform (Lawrence, KS, 1992), 117–119.

26. Quoted in Sugrue, Sweet Land of Liberty, 375.

27. “War on Poverty: Present Danger,” Newsweek, August 8, 1966.

28. Edward R. Schmitt, “The War on Poverty,” in A Companion to Lyndon B. Johnson, ed. Mitchell B. Lerner (Malden, MA, 2012), 96–97.

29. J. Roche OH, I, July 16, 1970, LBJL.

30. Quoted in Jeff Shesol, Mutual Contempt: Lyndon Johnson, Robert Kennedy, and the Feud That Defined a Decade (New York, 1998), 172.

31. McPherson to LBJ, June 24, 1965, OF/H. McPherson, Box 21, LBJL.

32. “The Bobby Phenomenon,” Newsweek, October 24, 1966, 30–31.

33. See, for example, “Robert Kennedy Tops Johnson in California Test,” Los Angeles Times, June 29, 1966, and “The President’s News Conference of August 24, 1966,” Public Papers of the Presidents: LBJ, 1966, vol. II (Washington, DC, 1967), 880.

34. LBJ and Daley Conversation, July 19, 1966, WH Tapes, WH660702, LBJL.

35. Wilbur Cohen OH, December 8, 1968, LBJL.

36. McPherson to President, June 24, 1965, OF/H. McPherson, Box 21, LBJL.

37. Califano to LBJ, June 4, 1968, OF/Joe Califano, Box 17, LBJL.

CHAPTER 14: REFORM UNDER SIEGE

1. “Fulbright Fears Y. S. Eliminating Chance for Peace,” Arkansas Gazette, February 11, 1966.

2. Quoted in “The Late, Great Society,” New Republic, April 9, 1966.

3. Ronald Steel, “A Visit to Washington,” New York Review of Books, October 6, 1966, 5–6.

4. Hans J. Morgenthau, “Truth and Power,” New Republic, November 26, 1966, 8–11.

5. Hans J. Morgenthau, “The Colossus of Johnson City,” New York Review of Books, March 31, 1966.

6. See Redmon to Moyers, July 27, 1966, OF/Bill Moyers, Box 12, LBJL.

7. LBJ and George Brown Conversation, June 13, 1966, WH Tapes, WH6605.04, LBJL.

8. Gardner Ackley to LBJ, February 27, 1967, LBJ Handwriting File, Box 20, Presidential Papers of LBJ, LBJL.

9. Diaries of Orville Freeman, September 21, 1966, PP/Orville Freeman, Box 11, LBJL.

10. Douglass Cater to the President, January 12, 1967, LBJ Handwriting File, Box 11, Presidential Papers of LBJ, LBJL.

11. Sean J. Savage, JFK, LBJ, and the Democratic Party (Albany, 2004), 139.

12. Quoted in Sidney M. Milkis, The President and the Parties: The Transformation of the American Party System since the New Deal (New York, 1993), 189.

13. James Rowe OH, II, September 16, 1969, LBJL.

14. “Nixon and the GOP Comeback,” Newsweek, October 10, 1966, 30–33.

15. “Martin Luther King, Jr. and Stokely Carmichael, FBI Confidential Report,” October 4, 1966, OF/Mildred Stegall, Box 32, LBJL.

16. “The [Republican] resurgence is a welcome antidote to the flagrant abuses of unchallenged power which we have suffered since January 1965.” Walter Lippmann, “The War and the Election,” Newsweek, December 5, 1966, 23.

17. Quoted in Jeff Shesol, Mutual Contempt: Lyndon Johnson, Robert Kennedy, and the Feud That Defined a Decade (New York, 1998), 347. See also “T.R.B. from Washington,” New Republic, June 27, 1966.

18. UPI 10, December 1, 1966, Diary Backup, Box 49, LBJL.

19. See LBJ to Nelson Rockefeller, November 18, 1966, LBJL Handwriting File, Box 18, LBJL.

20. Quoted in Robert Dallek, Flawed Giant: Lyndon B. Johnson and His Times, 1961–1973 (New York, 1998), 294.

21. Quoted in Joseph A. Califano, The Triumph and Tragedy of Lyndon Johnson: The White House Years (College Station, 2003), 178–179.

22. Ibid., 179–180.

23. Quoted in ibid., 182–183.

24. Lady Bird Johnson, A White House Diary (New York, 1970), 471. A House investigation had found Powell guilty of misusing public funds.

25. See Robert Kintner to President, January 11 and 13, 1967, LBJ Handwriting File, Box 19, LBJL.

26. James Reston, “Johnson and the Age of Reform,” New York Times, January 15, 1967.

27. “Annual Message to Congress on the State of the Union,” January 10, 1967, Public Papers of the Presidents: LBJ, 1967, vol. I (Washington, DC, 1968), 2–14.

28. “‘Help Party, Don’t Run’ Dissenters Tell Johnson,” Washington Evening Star, July 31, 1967.

29. Ibid.

30. McPherson to President, February 2, 1967, OF/H. McPherson, Box 53, LBJL.

31. “Remarks at a Ceremony at the Lincoln Memorial,” February 12, 1967, Public Papers: LBJ, 1967, vol. I, 176–178.

32. “Commencement Address at Catholic University,” June 6, 1965, Public Papers: LBJ, 1963–1964, vol. II, 641–642.

33. Nick Kotz, Judgment Days: Lyndon Baines Johnson, Martin Luther King Jr., and the Laws That Changed America (Boston, 2005), 354.

34. Ibid., 346.

35. Watson to the President, September 15, 1965, OF/Mildred Stegall, Box 31A, LBJL.

36. Charles DeBenedetti, An American Ordeal: The Antiwar Movement of the Vietnam Era (Syracuse, 1990), 172–173.

37. Quoted in Kotz, Judgment Days, 375.

38. McPherson to President, April 4, 1967, OF/H. McPherson, Box 53, LBJL.

39. Kotz, Judgment Days, 377.

40. McPherson to President, April 4, 1967, OF/H. McPherson, Box 53, LBJL.

41. Marvin to the President, September 15, 1965, and September 26, 1967, OF/Mildred Stegall, Box 31A, LBJL.

42. Actually, Levison had been urging MLK to tone down his antiwar statements, and the FBI knew it. Kotz, Judgment Days, 354.

43. James Farmer OH, II, July 20, 1971, LBJL.

44. Califano to President, July 25, 1966, and Lodge to M. Bundy, July 26, 1966, Diary Backup, Box 40, LBJL.

45. Clifford Alexander to President, April 18, 1967, Diary Backup, Box 62, LBJL.

46. Califano to President, June 28, 1967, LBJ Handwriting File, Box 23, LBJL; “Negro Casualties in Vietnam,” 1961–1965, n.d., OF/H. J. McPherson, Box 22, LBJL.

47. Wilson to LBJ, February 4, 1966, WHCF, Box 322, LBJL.

CHAPTER 15: WHIPLASH: URBAN RIOTING AND THE WAR ON CRIME

1. See Robert V. Spike, “Fissures in the Civil Rights Movement,” Christianity and Crisis, February 21, 1967, 18–20. See also Moynihan to McPherson, April 15, 1966, OF/H. McPherson, Box 21, LBJL.

2. McPherson to President, January 19, 1967, OF/H. McPherson, Box 53, LBJL.

3. “Special Message to the Congress on Equal Justice,” February 15, 1967, Public Papers of the Presidents: LBJ, 1967, vol. I (Washington, DC, 1968), 188–189. See also Califano to President, February 10, 1967, LBJ Handwriting File, Box 20, LBJL.

4. “Something Borrowed,” Newsweek, July 24, 1967, 28.

5. See “Newark Boils Over,” Newsweek, July 24, 1967, 21–22.

6. Quoted in Joseph A. Califano, The Triumph and Tragedy of Lyndon Johnson: The White House Years (College Station, 2003), 210.

7. “You Can’t Run Away,” Newsweek, July 31, 1967, 17.

8. Califano, Triumph and Tragedy, 212–213.

9. Ibid.

10. Thomas J. Sugrue, Sweet Land of Liberty: The Forgotten Struggle for Civil Rights in the North (New York, 2009), 290.

11. Ibid., 319–321.

12. Ibid., 343.

13. Ibid., 344–345.

14. “An American Tragedy, 1967,” Newsweek, August 7, 1967, 19.

15. Ramsey Clark OH, IV, April 16, 1969, LBJL.

16. Quoted in Califano, Triumph and Tragedy, 214.

17. Notes of the President’s Activities During the Detroit Crisis, July 24, 1967, Diary Backup, Box 71, LBJL.

18. Ibid.

19. Quoted in Califano, Triumph and Tragedy, 217.

20. See the Detroit Riots Chronology, July 23–25, 1967, and AP208 ff., July 24, 1967, Diary Backup, Box 71, LBJL. In truth, the situation improved dramatically after regular Army troops arrived. Under the command of General John Throckmorton, a veteran of World War II, Korea, Vietnam, and Mississippi, the paratroopers from the 101st and 82nd Airborne, some of whom had protected black children at Central High and James Meredith at Ole Miss, soon restored relative peace with minimal force. Michael W. Flamm, Law and Order: Street Crime, Civil Unrest, and the Crisis of Liberalism in the 1960s (New York, 2005), 92–93.

21. “An American Tragedy, 1967,” Newsweek, 18.

22. Flamm, Law and Order, 125–127.

23. Ibid., 99.

24. Ibid.

25. Ibid., 84–85.

26. Ibid., 111.

27. “Havana: Fanning the Guerrilla Flames,” Newsweek, August 14, 1967.

28. “SNCC and the Jews,” Newsweek, August 28, 1967, 22; “What Has Become of the Treason Laws?” Congressional Record, April 12, 1967, LBJ Handwriting File, Box 21, LBJL.

29. “There have been no indications in the clandestine operations field that Cuba or Red China have engaged in promoting rioting or mass violence in the United States,” Langley reported to the White House. Castro had infiltrated some intelligence agents into the country, but their primary task was to gather information on Cuban exiles plotting to overthrow the communist regime in Havana. Cuba/Red China Involvement in Promoting Violence in the United States, CIA Report, July 26, 1967, NSF Memos, Box 20, Rostow, LBJL.

30. Edward Schmitt, President of the Other America: Robert Kennedy and the Politics of Poverty (Amherst, MA, 2010), 120–121.

31. Ibid., 140.

32. Ibid., 184–185.

33. Ibid., 170.

34. See Larry Levinson, Memo for the Record, July 31, 1967, Diary Backup, Box 72, LBJL; Emmet John Hughes, “The Great Disgrace,” Newsweek, August 7, 1967.

35. See Summary of the President’s Meeting with HUD’s Urban Development Advisory Committee, July 31, 1967, Diary Backup, Box 72, LBJL.

36. Emmet John Hughes, “A Curse of Confusion,” Newsweek, May 1, 1967, 17.

37. Quoted in Califano, Triumph and Tragedy, 220. See also the President’s Meeting with the National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders, July 29, 1967, Diary Backup, Box 72, LBJL.

38. Sidney M. Milkis, “Lyndon Johnson, the Great Society, and the Modern Presidency,” in The Great Society and the High Tide of Liberalism, ed. Sidney M. Milkis and Jerome M. Mileur (Amherst, MA, 2005), 26.

39. McPherson to Johnson, July 29, 1967, Diary Backup, Box 72, LBJL.

40. “After the Riots: A Survey,” Newsweek, August 27, 1967, 18.

41. Diaries of Orville Freeman, May 6, 1967, PP/Orville Freeman, Box 11, LBJL.

42. “LBJ at Low Ebb,” Newsweek, August 21, 1967, 15.

43. Sugrue, Sweet Land of Liberty, 341.

44. Milkis, “Lyndon Johnson, the Great Society, and the Modern Presidency,” 27.

45. Ibid.

46. “Too Much Good News Is Bad,” Newsweek, April 29, 1968.

47. Minutes of a Cabinet Meeting, November 20, 1967, Cabinet Papers, Box 11, LBJL.

48. “LBJ’s War Budget—and Its New Math,” Newsweek, February 6, 1967, 30–31.

49. Jytte Klausen, “Did World War II End the New Deal? A Comparative Perspective on Postwar Planning Initiatives,” in The New Deal and the Triumph of Liberalism, ed. Sidney M. Milkis and Jerome M. Mileur (Amherst, MA, 2002), 197.

50. Gardner Ackley to the President, September 21, 1967, LBJ Handwriting File, Box 2, LBJL.

51. McPherson to Califano, OF/H. McPherson, Box 50, LBJL.

52. See Emmet John Hughes, “The Great Disgrace,” Newsweek, August 7, 1967.

53. Diaries of Orville Freeman, December 8, 1967, PP/Orville Freeman, Box 4, Vol. 8, LBJL.

54. Califano, Triumph and Tragedy, 242.

55. Diaries of Orville Freeman, June 10, 1967, PP/Orville Freeman, Box 11, LBJL.

56. Barefoot Sanders to the President, July 20, 1967, Diary Backup, Box 72, Presidential Papers of LBJ, LBJL.

57. Califano, Triumph and Tragedy, 244.

58. Notes on Meeting of the President with Joseph Kraft, September 27, 1967, White House Aides, George Christian, Box 1, LBJL.

59. Quoted in Califano, Triumph and Tragedy, 245.

60. Ibid., 245–246.

CHAPTER 16: A “RICE-ROOTS REVOLUTION”: THE GREAT SOCIETY IN VIETNAM

1. The Selective Service and Training Act, first passed in 1917 and renewed in 1940, 1947, and 1967, required all American males between the ages of eighteen and thirty-five years to register for military service. Full-time students in colleges and training programs were exempt as long as they stayed in school. During the Kennedy administration, married men were exempt, but that deferment was canceled by President Johnson. Permanent health conditions or injuries were also grounds of deferment.

2. Quoted in Randall Bennett Woods, Quest for Identity: America Since 1945 (New York, 2005), 258.

3. David Ekbladh, The Great American Mission: Modernization and the Construction of an American World Order (Princeton, NJ, 2010), 4–5.

4. Ekbladh, American Mission, 190.

5. Quoted in ibid., 191.

6. Ibid., 193.

7. Ibid., 195.

8. Ibid., 207.

9. Quoted in ibid., 209.

10. Richard Helms, with William Hood, A Look over My Shoulder: A Life in the Central Intelligence Agency (New York: 2003), 321; author interview with Frank Scotton, October 12–14, 2007.

11. Randall B. Woods, Shadow Warrior: William Egan Colby and the CIA (New York, 2013), 207–208.

12. Tran Ngoc Chau, “Hawks, Doves and the Dragon” (unpublished memoir in the possession of author), 364.

13. Neil Sheehan, A Bright Shining Lie: John Paul Vann and America in Vietnam (New York, 1988), 538.

14. Quoted in Randall B. Woods, LBJ: Architect of American Ambition (New York, 2006), 436.

15. Ibid., 608.

16. Ibid., 719.

17. Robert Komer to LBJ, May 9, 1966, NSF, Komer Files, Box 4, LBJL; Robert Komer to LBJ, April 19, 1966, NSF, Komer Files, Box 2, LBJL; Robert Komer to Colonel Robert I. Channon, June 20, 1974, Box 22, Colby Papers, Texas Tech University.

18. William Colby, Lost Victory: A Firsthand Account of America’s Sixteen-Year Involvement in Vietnam (Chicago, 1989), 206; Thomas L. Ahern Jr., CIA and Rural Pacification in South Vietnam (Washington, DC, Center for the Study of Intelligence, August 2001), 205. Available at National Security Archive: http://nsarchive.gwu.edu/NSAEBB/NSAEBB284/3-CIA_AND_RURAL_PACIFICATION.pdf.

19. Chau, “Hawks, Doves and Dragons,” 368, 374.

20. Quoted in Ahern, CIA and Rural Pacification, 244.

21. Author interview with Mike Hacker, October 13, 2007.

22. Author interview with Mike Hacker, October 23, 2007; author interview with Louis Jankowski, November 7, 2007; author interview with Bruce Kinsey, September 20, 2007.

23. As Colby would later admit, the PRUs contained some of South Vietnam’s most unsavory citizens—criminals, soldiers of fortune, turncoat VC, henchmen of local war-lords. In some provinces the PRUs fought with valor against the VC; in others they acted as extortionists and bagmen for corrupt officials.

24. William E. Colby to Michael Forrestal, November 16, 1964, CREST, National Archives II.

25. Rostow to President Johnson, July 31, 1967, National Security File Memos, Box 20, Vol. 36, Presidential Papers of LBJ, LBJL.

26. Ed Lansdale to Ellsworth Bunker, June 7, 1968, NSF Memos to President, Rostow, Box 35, LBJL; author interview with James Nach, September 2, 2008. See also Douglas Blaufarb to William E. Colby, December 1, 1989, Box 6, F20, Colby Papers, Texas Tech University. Blaufarb lamented “the failure of the Thieu government to develop a popular political base, choosing instead to rely on the officer corps as its base. That led to the massive corruption within the military and the assignment and promotion of unqualified leaders. . . . It also led to an immense gap between the provincial and district governments and the peasant population.”

CHAPTER 17: ABDICATION

1. Edward R. Schmitt, “The War on Poverty,” in A Companion to Lyndon B. Johnson, ed. Mitchell B. Lerner (Malden, MA, 2012), 96–97.

2. B. Baker OH, II.

3. Quoted in Charles DeBenedetti, An American Ordeal: The Antiwar Movement of the Vietnam Era (Syracuse, 1990), 192.

4. Ibid.

5. Diaries of Orville Freeman, August 10, 1967, PP/Orville Freeman, Box 11, LBJL.

6. Jones to President, November 4, 1967, FRUS, 1964–1968, V, 917.

7. Randall B. Woods, Fulbright: A Biography (New York, 1995), 464.

8. Sean J. Savage, JFK, LBJ, and the Democratic Party (Albany, 2004), 162.

9. Ibid., 163.

10. “Dump LBJ?” Newsweek, October 9, 1967, 25.

11. “The Move to ‘Dump’ Johnson,” Newsweek, November 27, 1967, 25.

12. Roche to President, March 15 and June 6, 1967, LBJ Handwriting File, Boxes 21 and 22, LBJL.

13. “Meet Candidate Lyndon Johnson,” Newsweek, November 13, 1967, 31.

14. James Reston, “Johnson’s Theme of ‘Little Time’ Puzzles Friends,” New York Times, November 30, 1966.

15. Roche to President, July 6, 1967, LBJ Handwriting File, Box 23, LBJL.

16. Quoted in Joseph A. Califano, The Triumph and Tragedy of Lyndon Johnson: The White House Years (College Station, 2003), 254.

17. “Annual Message to Congress on the State of the Union,” January 17, 1968, Public Papers of the Presidents: LBJ, 1968–1969, vol. I (Washington, DC, 1970), 31.

18. “Backlash in Boston—and across the U.S.,” Newsweek, November 6, 1967.

19. Quoted in Theodore H. White, The Making of the President 1964 (New York, 1965), 259.

20. See Cater to President, October 11, 1967, Cabinet Papers, Box 11, LBJL.

21. Califano, Triumph and Tragedy, 223.

22. Ibid., 225–226.

23. “Special Message to the Congress: ‘To Earn a Living: The Right of Every American.’” January 23, 1968, Public Papers: LBJ, 1968, vol. I, 46–47.

24. Califano, Triumph and Tragedy, 225–226. See also Califano to President, March 11, 1968, OF/Joe Califano, Box 16, LBJL; “Remarks at a Meeting of the National Alliance of Businessmen,” March 16, 1968, Public Papers: LBJ, 1968, vol. I, 402–405.

25. Temple to President, January 19, 1968, LBJ Handwriting File, Box 27, LBJL.

26. Clark to President, February 12, 1968, PP/W. Christopher, Box 1, LBJL.

27. Ramsey Clark OH, V, June 3, 1968, LBJL.

28. Michael W. Flamm, Law and Order: Street Crime, Civil Unrest, and the Crisis of Liberalism in the 1960s (New York, 2005), 106.

29. Ibid., 109.

30. Ramsey Clark OH, IV, April 16, 1969, LBJL.

31. “Guilty or Not?” Newsweek, March 18, 1968, 46.

32. Flamm, Law and Order, 105.

33. Ibid., 109–110.

34. Notes on Meeting with Negro Editors and Publishers, March 15, 1968, Diary Backup, Box 93, LBJL. See also Califano to President, March 2, 1968, OF/Joe Califano, Box 16, LBJL.

35. Harry McPherson OH, IV, March 24, 1969, LBJL.

36. “Special Message to the Congress: ‘To Protect the Consumer Interest,’” February 6, 1968, Public Papers: LBJ, 1968–1969, vol. I, 174; “Meet Ralph Nader,” Newsweek, January 22, 1968, 65.

37. “Special Message to the Congress: ‘The Fifth Freedom,’” February 5, 1968, Public Papers: LBJ, 1968–1969, vol. I, 165–167.

38. Informal Stag Dinner, HHH, Mansfield, Long, Hayden, Clark, Church et al., September 21, 1967, Papers of George McGovern, Box 1A, Mudd Library, Princeton.

39. McPherson to the President, March 18, 1968, OF/H. McPherson, Memos to the President, Box 53, LBJL.

40. Robert Dallek, Flawed Giant: Lyndon B. Johnson and His Times, 1961–1973 (New York, 1998), 24–25.

41. Ibid.

42. John Gardner OH, II, December 20, 1971, LBJL.

43. Roche to LBJ, December 4, 1967, PP/A. Schlesinger, Box W59, JFKL.

44. Diaries of Orville Freeman, March 22, 1968, PP/Orville Freeman, LBJL.

45. See Weisl to President, January 26, 1968, LBJ Handwriting File, Box 27, LBJL; Rostow to LBJ, February 22, 1968, NSF Country File, Vietnam Box 102, LBJL.

46. C. Clifford OH, III, July 14, 1969, LBJL. According to Richard Daley’s biographers, the idea had come from him. “Rather than go through the divisiveness of a primary challenge to a sitting president, Kennedy should get Johnson to agree to submit the future of the Vietnam War to binding arbitration. It must have seemed odd to Kennedy that his presidential candidacy, viewed by his supporters as a moral crusade, was being reduced to the level of a truckers’ strike.” Adam Cohen and Elizabeth Taylor, American Pharaoh: Mayor Richard J. Daley: His Battle for Chicago and the Nation (Boston, 2000), 450.

47. Notes Taken at Meeting, March 14, 1968, PP/C. Clifford, Box 1, LBJL.

48. “Remarks at a Dinner of the Veterans of Foreign Wars,” March 12, 1968, Public Papers: LBJ, 1968–1969, vol. I, 381. Johnson and his lieutenants had long held McCarthy in mild contempt. “Around 1960–61,” Harry McPherson said, “I began to realize that he [McCarthy] was spending all of his time down in the Senate Restaurant making bon mots for the press and no time on the floor helping with legislation or in committee. He was a master of what Hermann Hesse called feuilleton, extraneous information.” McPherson OH, III.

49. Diaries of Orville Freeman, March 22, 1968, PP/Orville Freeman, Box 11, LBJL.

50. Ibid.

51. George C. Herring, America’s Longest War: The United States and Vietnam, 1950–1975 (New York, 1996), 225–226; Summary of Meeting, March 26, 1968, Meeting Notes File, Box 2, LBJL.

52. Herring, Longest War, 225.

53. Quoted in Califano, Triumph and Tragedy, 268. See also Joe Califano, Memo of Conversation, July 25, 1971, PP/A. Schlesinger, Box W59, JFKL.

54. Ibid.

55. Buzz to President, March 29, 1968, LBJ Handwriting File, Box 29, LBJL.

56. Jan Jarboe Russell, Lady Bird: A Biography of Mrs. Johnson (New York, 1999), 300.

57. James Jones, “LBJ’s Decision Not to Run in ’68,” New York Times, April 16, 1988.

58. George Gallup, “Johnson’s War and Job Ratings Sink,” Washington Post, March 31, 1968.

59. Christian to President, March 31, 1968, Diary Backup, Box 94, LBJL.

60. Rostow Memorandum for the Record, March 31, 1968, NSF Memos, Box 31, LBJL.

61. Arthur Krim OH, IV, November 9, 1982, LBJL; Marie Fehmer Notes, July 30, 1968, Diary Backup, Box 94, LBJL. See also Clark Clifford OH, August 7, 1969, LBJL.

62. “The President’s Address to the Nation Announcing Steps to Limit the War in Vietnam and Reporting His Decision Not to Seek Reelection,” March 31, 1968, Public Papers: LBJ, 1968–1969, vol. I, 469–476.

63. Ibid.

64. Simon and Vickie McHugh OH, June 9, 1975, LBJL.

65. Marie Fehmer to Dorothy, July 30, 1968, Diary Backup, Box 94, LBJL.

CHAPTER 18: AMERICAN DYSTOPIA

1. Quoted in Randall Bennett Woods, Quest for Identity: America Since 1945 (New York, 2005), 273.

2. Joseph A. Califano, The Triumph and Tragedy of Lyndon Johnson: The White House Years (College Station, TX, 2003), 274.

3. McPherson and Califano to President, April 5, 1968, Diary Backup, Box 95, LBJL.

4. Talking Points for Civil Rights Meeting, April 5, 1968, OF/Joe Califano, Box 17, LBJL.

5. Quoted in Califano, Triumph and Tragedy, 275.

6. LBJ to Mrs. King, April 5, 1968, OF/Joe Califano, Box 17, LBJL.

7. Situation Room Information Memorandum, April 5, 1968, Diary Backup, Box 95, LBJL.

8. Visits to Washington, January 28, 1973, Box 30, PP/W. Westmoreland, LBJL.

9. Situation Room Information Memorandum, April 6, 1968, Diary Backup, Box 95, LBJL.

10. Quoted in Califano, Triumph and Tragedy, 279.

11. Adm. S. D. Cramer Memo for the Record, April 5, 1968, Diary Backup, Box 95, LBJL. See also Califano, Triumph and Tragedy, 279–280.

12. Situation Room Information Memorandum, April 6, 1968, Diary Backup, Box 95, LBJL; Califano, Triumph and Tragedy, 281–282.

13. Jim Jones to President, April 5, 1968, Diary Backup, Box 96, LBJL.

14. Califano, Triumph and Tragedy, 282; UPI 030A, April 7, 1968, Diary Backup, Box 95, LBJL.

15. “Special Message to the Congress on Equal Justice,” February 15, 1967, Public Papers of the Presidents: LBJ, 1967, vol. I (Washington, DC, 1968), 188–189.

16. Increasingly, nonwhites were being concentrated in the central cities, but employment opportunities were growing only in outlying sections and suburbia where nonwhites were denied access to accommodations. Despite the growing number of nonwhite central city residents, jobs actually declined in Philadelphia and St. Louis central city areas. In Baltimore and San Francisco, only 11,000 jobs were added in the ghettoes, while the nonwhite population in these areas had grown by 150,000 during the previous ten years. In all four cities, plus New York City, suburban jobs increased in excess of one million. McPherson to the President, April 3, 1968, OF/H. McPherson, Box 53, LBJL.

17. Nick Kotz, Judgment Days: Lyndon Baines Johnson, Martin Luther King Jr., and the Laws That Changed America (Boston, 2005), 390.

18. Quoted in ibid.

19. Ibid., 392.

20. Quoted in ibid., 396.

21. Califano to President, April 10, 1968, LBJ Handwriting File, Box 29, LBJL; Barefoot Sanders to President, April 5, 1968, Diary Backup, Box 95, LBJL; Harold “Barefoot” Sanders OH, November 3, 1969, LBJL.

22. Thomas J. Sugrue, Sweet Land of Liberty: The Forgotten Struggle for Civil Rights in the North (New York, 2009), 423.

23. Barefoot Sanders to President, April 5, 1968, Diary Backup, Box 95, LBJL.

24. Califano to President, May 2, 1968, OF/Joe Califano, Box 17, LBJL.

25. Notes of meeting, April 11, 1968, FRUS, 1964–68, VI, 568.

26. Califano to President, May 2, 1968, OF/Joe Califano, Box 17, LBJL.

27. “The President’s News Conference of May 3, 1968,” Public Papers: LBJ, 1968–1969, vol. I, 561.

28. Quoted in Califano, Triumph and Tragedy, 286.

29. See LBJ, The Vantage Point: Perspectives of the Presidency, 1963–1969 (New York, 1971), 453–456. See also Okun to President, April 27 and May 13, 1968, Diary Backup, Box 97, LBJL.

30. Amy Nathan Wright, “Civil Rights ‘Unfinished Business’: Poverty, Race, and the Poor People’s Campaign” (PhD diss., University of Texas at Austin, 2007), 240.

31. Kotz, Judgment Days, 387.

32. Ibid., 401.

33. Quoted in “Do or Die,” Newsweek, May 6, 1968, 30.

34. Gerald McKnight, The Last Crusade: Martin Luther King, Jr., the FBI, and the Poor People’s Campaign (Boulder, CO, 1998), 107–108, 111–112.

35. Warren Christopher to Califano, April 27, 1968, LBJ Handwriting File, Box 29, LBJL.

36. McKnight, Last Crusade, 89.

37. Minutes of the Meeting, May 1, 1968, Cabinet Papers, Box 13, LBJL.

38. Cater to President, May 2, 1968, LBJ Handwriting File, Box 29, LBJL.

39. “Russell Long Hits March of the Poor,” New York Times, April 26, 1968.

40. Wright, “Civil Rights ‘Unfinished Business’,” 357–361.

41. Kotz, Judgment Days, 422.

42. Diaries of Orville Freeman, May 21, 1968, PP/Orville Freeman, Box 12, LBJL.

43. Califano to President, May 17, 1968, OF/Joe Califano, Box 17, LBJL.

44. Christian Notes on President’s Meeting with Ken Crawford, May 23, 1968, WH Aides, George Christian, Box 1, LBJL.

45. A Minnesota poll taken on the 18th revealed that 60 percent of the people questioned opposed the Poor People’s March and the whole concept of Resurrection City. This from one of the most liberal states in the Union. Diaries of Orville Freeman, June 22, 1968, PP/Orville Freeman, Box 12, Vol. 9, LBJL.

46. Califano to the President, June 22, 1968, OF/Joe Califano, Box 18, LBJL.

47. McKnight, Last Crusade, 357–361.

48. Diaries of Orville Freeman, May 21, 1968, PP/Orville Freeman, Box 12, LBJL.

49. Minutes of the Meeting, May 1, 1968, Cabinet Papers, Box 13, Presidential Papers of LBJ, LBJL.

50. Charles Zwick to the President, June 19, 1968, LBJ Handwriting File, Box 30, Presidential Papers of LBJ, Box 30, LBJL.

51. Kotz, Judgment Days, 395.

52. Green and Gwirtzman Conversation, April 4, 1972, and Hackman and Edelman Conversation, July 29, 1965, Box F59, PP/A. Schlesinger, JFKL.

53. Quoted in Edward Schmitt, President of the Other America: Robert Kennedy and the Politics of Poverty (Amherst, MA, 2010), 177–179.

54. “Poverty: ‘Lord, I’m Hungry,’” Newsweek, July 24, 1967.

55. Diaries of Orville Freeman, June 19, 1967, PP/Orville Freeman, Box 11, Vol. 8, LBJL.

56. David T. Ballantyne, “Ernest F. Hollings and the Transformation of South Carolina Politics, 1948–1975” (PhD diss., Cambridge University, 2013), 160–190.

57. Diaries of Orville Freeman, June 12, 1968, PP/Orville Freeman, Box 12, Vol. 9, LBJL.

58. Joe Califano to the President, June 25, 1968, OF/Joe Califano, Box 18, LBJL.

59. Diaries of Orville Freeman, July 11, 1968, PP/Orville Freeman, Box 12, Vol. 9, LBJL.

60. Ibid., June 26, 1968.

61. Diaries of Orville Freeman, May 2, 1968, PP/Orville Freeman, Box 12, LBJL.

62. Califano, Triumph and Tragedy, 288.

63. Congressional Leadership Breakfast, April 2, 1968, Meeting Notes File, Box 2, LBJL.

64. Diaries of Orville Freeman, April 24 and 26, 1968, PP/Orville Freeman, Box 12, LBJL.

65. Quoted in Califano, Triumph and Tragedy, 289.

66. MR to Marie, April 23, 1968, Diary Backup, Box 97, LBJL.

67. Diaries of Orville Freeman, May 26, 1968, PP/Orville Freeman, Box 11, LBJL.

68. Quoted in Woods, Quest for Identity, 274.

69. “Bobby’s Last, Longest Day,” Newsweek, June 17, 1968, 22.

70. “Address to the Nation Following the Attack on Senator Kennedy,” June 5, 1968, Public Papers: LBJ, 1968–1969, vol. I, 692.

71. Diaries of Orville Freeman, June 5, 1968, PP/Orville Freeman, Box 12, LBJL.

72. Califano, Triumph and Tragedy, 304. See also Christian to President, June 10, 1968, LBJL Handwriting File, Box 30, LBJL.

73. Quoted in Michael W. Flamm, Law and Order: Street Crime, Civil Unrest, and the Crisis of Liberalism in the 1960s (New York, 2005), 145.

74. Ibid., 135.

75. “Special Message to the Congress on Crime and Law Enforcement: ‘to Insure the Public Safety,’” February 7, 1968, Public Papers: LBJ, 1968–1969, vol. I, 183.

76. Quoted in Flamm, Law and Order, 135. Conviction rates had actually remained steady in the wake of Miranda.

77. Ibid., 136.

78. Ibid.

79. Christopher to the President, June 14, 1968, PP/W. Christopher, Box 1, LBJL.

80. Flamm, Law and Order, 138.

81. Ramsey Clark to President, June 14, 1968, PP/W. Christopher, Box 1, LBJL.

82. As Michael Flamm has observed, all of the law-and-order activity had little impact on the commission of crimes. Police interrogations without the Miranda warning were unlikely to lead to more convictions based on confessions. Phone taps were not going to prevent the commission of most street crimes, and restrictions on the sale of guns were unlikely to prevent career criminals from acquiring firearms. Flamm, Law and Order, 199.

83. See “LBJL Picks a New Chief Justice,” Newsweek, July 8, 1968, 18.

84. Laura Kalman, Abe Fortas: A Biography (New Haven, 1990), 15–16.

85. Califano, Tragedy and Triumph, 308.

86. Henry J. Abraham, “Justices and Justice: Reflections on the Warren Court’s Legacy,” in The Great Society and the High Tide of Liberalism, ed. Sidney M. Milkis and Jerome M. Mileur (Amherst, MA, 2005), 352.

87. Ibid., 353–355.

88. Christopher to Temple, December 20, 1968, PP/W. Christopher, Box 3, LBJL.

89. See George Christian OH, IV, June 30, 1970, LBJL.

90. Christopher to Temple, December 20, 1968, PP/W. Christopher, Box 3, LBJL.

91. McPherson to Manatos, OF/H. McPherson, Box 51, LBJL.

92. Quoted in Califano, Triumph and Tragedy, 312.

93. Christopher to Temple, December 20, 1968, PP/W. Christopher, Box 3, LBJL.

94. Eugene Rostow to Walt Rostow, October 29, 1968, NSF Memos to President, Rostow, Box 41, LBJL.

95. Quoted in Califano, Triumph and Tragedy, 311.

96. Ibid.

97. Christopher to Temple, December 20, 1968, PP/W. Christopher, Box 3, LBJL.

98. Ibid., 276.

99. “Mule Teams at Work,” Newsweek, September 9, 1968.

100. Tom Johnson to the President, June 11, 1968, WHCF, Box 89, Presidential Papers of LBJ, LBJL.

101. See Hubert H. Humphrey, The Education of a Public Man: My Life and Politics, ed. Norman Sherman (New York, 1976), 396.

102. “Drafting Lyndon Johnson: The President’s Secret Role in the 1968 Democratic Convention” (unpublished manuscript, LBJL).

103. John B. Connally with Mickey Herskowitz, In History’s Shadow: An American Odyssey (New York, 1993), 203.

104. Arthur Krim OH, November 9, 1982, LBJL.

105. Quoted in Ronald Radosh, Divided They Fell: The Demise of the Democratic Party, 1964–1996 (New York, 1996), 121.

106. Quoted in Woods, Quest for Identity, 276.

107. Quoted in ibid., 277.

108. Ibid.

109. Quoted in ibid., 278.

110. Flamm, Law and Order, 163–164.

111. Woods, Quest for Identity, 279.

112. Diaries of Orville Freeman, September 11, 1968, PP/Orville Freeman, Box 12, Vol. 9, LBJL.

113. Quoted in Woods, Quest for Identity, 279.

114. Quoted in ibid., 280.

CONCLUSION

1. Lester Thurow, “A Liberal Look at Income Distribution,” New York Times, February 7, 2007.

2. James McGregor Burns, “What Worked? What Failed? Why?” in The Great Society: A Twenty Year Critique, ed. Barbara Jordan and Elspeth Rostow (Austin, 1986), 137.

3. Sidney M. Milkis, “Lyndon Johnson, the Great Society, and the Modern Presidency,” in The Great Society and the High Tide of Liberalism, ed. Sidney M. Milkis and Jerome M. Mileur (Amherst, MA, 2005), 2.

4. Edward Berkowitz, “The Great Society’s Enduring National Health Insurance Program,” in Great Society, ed. Milkis and Mileur, 322–323.

5. Sean J. Savage, JFK, LBJ, and the Democratic Party (Albany, 2004), 139.