Roy Wilkins: The Quiet Revolutionary and the NAACP

5. All the Way with LBJ

123 5 All the Way with LBJ President Kennedy’s death left everything in limbo, and it was far from clear what Lyndon Johnson’s sudden elevation to the Oval Office would mean for the pending legislation. Still, Wilkins tried to reassure NAACP members that the new president was a friend of black Americans. “As Vice-President,” he asserted, “Mr. Johnson has given active personal and affirmative leadership to the equal-opportunity phase of the JFK program .” For proof, Wilkins referred to a speech Johnson made on Memorial Day that year at Gettysburg, which was entirely devoted to a plea for equality for black Americans. “His speech at Gettysburg, PA last spring placed him irrevocably in the civil rights camp. No one as well aware of political implications as Lyndon B. Johnson would have made such a speech inadvertently. It is a fair and justified estimate that it represents our new President’s personal conviction and his commitment to continued advancement in the crusade for racially unrestricted opportunity, dignity and justice.”1 Johnson quickly began to court the main black leaders. He had made it clear to aides Bill Moyers and Jack Valenti that passage of Kennedy’s civil rights legislation was a priority and that securing the support of Wilkins, Whitney Young, and Martin Luther King was essential in making that happen.2 To make his determination clear, Johnson addressed a joint session of Congress five days after Kennedy’s death and made a plea that was almost impossible to rebuff: “No oration or eulogy could more eloquently honor President Kennedy’s memory than the earliest passage of the civil rights bill for which he fought so long. We have talked long enough in this country about equal rights. We have talked for one hun- 124 ROY WILKINS dred years or more. It is time to now write the next chapter, and to write it in the books of law.”3 Wilkins’s initial reaction to Johnson’s address was measured. “The whole message had a strong tone affirming basic Americanism,” he stated . “It cannot but assure all our citizens that our country will move forward and that President Johnson is ready to lead the Congress and the people in any action in the national interest.” Wilkins’s caution was understandable , given Johnson’s role in the passage of the 1957 civil rights bill and the tortuous route the present legislation had already taken to get through the House of Representatives. Wilkins’s political pragmatism soon took over, however, and he followed his earlier remarks with a press statement in which he said, “Mr. Johnson would push for enactment of the Kennedy civil rights package because of his ‘own conviction that it was essential and because of the political necessity’ of it.”4 Wilkins was enthusiastic when talking about the speech to the press. He told the New York Times that the speech was a “rallying cry against bigotry and hate and violence” and said that it showed Johnson to be a “civil rights leader in his own right and not just a follower of President Kennedy.” Johnson had, according to Wilkins, “left no doubt as to his recognition of the urgency of the civil rights issue or of his commitment of full support to the cause of equal rights for all Americans.”5 White House advisers such as Lee White and Bill Moyers, some of whom had worked closely with civil rights leaders during the Kennedy administration, also recognized the need for urgent action, and they encouraged the president to meet with each of the black representatives as quickly as possible. Johnson originally wanted to invite the leaders to his ranch in Texas, arguing that entertaining such a group at his home would “be a pretty dramatic thing for the nation.”6 It certainly would have been a striking confirmation of his commitment to equal rights, but Johnson was eventually advised against doing so for fear of looking “phony.”7 Nevertheless , he did manage to make one public declaration when he intervened to add Wilkins and Whitney Young to the guest list for President Kennedy’s funeral when he noticed they had not been invited.8 The unlikely political alliance between Wilkins and Johnson began to take shape on November 29, when Wilkins became the first civil rights leader to meet with the new president. The “dean” of the group, as Rob- All the Way with...