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PART SEVEN Cut Offat the Pass CHAPTER 28 BETRAYAL ON THE POTOMAC PRESIDENT JOHNSON'S GIANT FRAME leaned sideways over the arm of the leather upholstered chair in which he was sitting. His face was turned fully toward me. "Mr. Farmer, I've got to get this civil rights bill through Congress, and I'm going to do it. If I never do anything else in my whole life, I'm going to get this job done. It won't be easy, but I'm going to do it. I have to get some of the Republicans on our side. You civil rights leaders can help me on that. You all should tell the Republicans that if they vote for this bill, you'll tell your people to vote for them. And I think you should, too; if they vote for this bill, you should tell people to vote for them. If I can't get the Republicans, then I'm going to have to get the Dixiecrats. That's the southern Democrats, you know. That's really going to be hard. I don't know how I'm going to do it, but somehow I'm going to have to break down their resistance. Somehow I've got to get my hand under their dress." We were interrupted by several incoming phone calls-senators returning the president's calls. He twisted arms, threatened and cajoled, and then looked up to make sure I was duly impressed with his efforts on behalf of the bill. Between the calls, I asked, "Mr. President, how did you get to be this way? You're a southerner, and your congressional record on civil rights was not very good. What changed you?" "I'll answer that question by quoting a friend of yours," he replied. " 'Free at last, free at last, thank God almighty, I'm free at last.' " 294 LAY BARE THE HEART What he meant by that reference to King's march on Washington speech, of course, was that, as president, he was freed from accountability to a southern constituency and could be responsive to the needs of all the people. "The southerners tell me," he went on, "that they'll buy this bill if I take the public accommodations section out. But I won't do that. The public accommodations part is the heart and the guts of this measure, and I will not remove it." I asked him how he came to view public accommodations to be so important and he related a story in response. "One day down in Texas many years ago, my maid was going on vacation with her husband. Lady Bird-that's Mrs. Johnson, you know-told the maid to take our dog with her; we had a little beagle. My maid said, 'Mrs. Johnson, please don't make me take that dog with me. My husband and I will be driving across the South and it's going to be tough enough finding places to stay, just being black, without having a dog with us.' "Mr. Farmer, that made me cry. Just to think that a wonderful woman like my maid couldn't stay in any hotel she wanted to. It made me mad. I'd lived in Texas all my life and I'd never thought about it before. Right then I swore that if I ever got any power, I would do something about it. Now I have some power and by God I'm going to do something about it." I looked at him and said nothing. I found myself thinking of that terrible day less than a month earlier when President Kennedy's brains were blown out in Texas, and of the call I received from Johnson three days later. "Mr. Farmer, this is Lyndon Johnson. I first wanted to call and tell you that I remember when you came to my office when I was vice-president. You made a good suggestion to me that helped me a lot. And I asked you to do something for me, and you followed through on that. I just want you to know that I appreciated that a lot." "Thank you, Mr. President." "Now, we're going to have to pick up this ball and run with it. I'm going to need your help in the months and maybe the years that lie ahead, and I hope I'll get it." "If we're going the same way, Mr. President, we...

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