【文章內容簡介】 e Jim CrowSouth, that meant not challenging convention. During his first 20 years in Congress,heopposed every civil rights bill that came up for a vote, once calling the pushfor federallegislation “a farce and a sham.” He was chosen as a vice presidential nominee in part becauseof hisaffinity with, and ability to deliver, that Southern white vote. And at the beginning of theKennedy administration,he shared with President Kennedy a caution towards racialcontroversy.
　　But marchers kept marching. Four little girls were killed in achurch. Bloody Sundayhappened. The winds of change blew. And when the time came, when LBJ stood in theOvalOffice I picture him standing there, taking up the entire doorframe,looking out over theSouth Lawn in a quiet moment and asked himself what thetrue purpose of his office was for,what was the endpoint of his ambitions, hewould reach back in his own memory and he’dremember his own experience withwant.
　　And he knew that he had a uniquecapacity, as the most powerful white politician from theSouth, to not merelychallenge the convention that had crushed the dreams of so many, buttoultimately dismantle for good the structures of legal segregation. He’s the only guy whocould do it and heknew there would be a cost, famously saying the Democratic Party may“have lostthe South for a generation.”
　　That’s what his presidency wasfor. That’s where he meets hismoment. And possessed withan iron will,possessed with those skills that he had honed so many years in Congress,pushedand supported by a movement of those willing to sacrifice everything for theirownliberation, President Johnson fought for and argued and horse traded andbullied and persuadeduntil ultimately he signed the Civil Rights Act into law.
　　And he didn’t stop there eventhough his advisors again told him to wait, again told himlet the dust settle,let the country absorb this momentous decision. He shook them off. “Themeat inthe coconut,” as President Johnson would put it, was the Voting Rights Act, sohe foughtfor and passed that as well. Immigration reform came shortly after. And then, a Fair HousingAct. Andthen, a health care law that opponents described as “socialized medicine” thatwouldcurtail America’s freedom, but ultimately freed millions of seniors fromthe fear that illnesscould rob them of dignity and security in their goldenyears, which we now know today asMedicare. (Applause.)
　　What President Johnson understoodwas that equality required more than the absence ofoppression. It required the presence of economicopportunity. He wouldn’t be as eloquentasDr. King would be in describing that linkage, as Dr. King moved intomobilizing sanitationworkers and a poor people’s movement, but he understoodthat connection because he hadlived it. A decent job, decent wages, health care those, too, were civil rightsworth fightingfor. An economy wherehard work is rewarded and success is shared, that was his goal. And heknew, as someone who had seen the NewDeal transform the landscape of his Texas childhood,who had seen thedifference electricity had made because of the Tennessee Valley Authority,thetransformation concretely day in and day out in the life of his own family, heunderstood thatgovernment had a role to play in broadening prosperity to allthose who would strive for it.
　　“We want to open the ga