Robert A. Caro at Key West Literary Seminar 2017

[Applause] [Music] [Music] good evening I'm Diane Shelby board president of the Key West literary seminar yall are the best audience in the world on behalf of the seminars Board of director actors Michael blades Judy Bloom Cynthia Crossen Jim Glick Mary Gruen Lynn celt Nancy kinger Liz leer Annette liot Carrie Winfrey and Suzanne Woods I welcome you to the 35th annual Key West literary seminar revealing power the literature of politics we have a timely topic before us personally I am a complete wreck over the current political environment and I and I'm really tempted to share all my anxieties with you but I won't I will share one thing one one thing however and that is that weekends at the Key West literary seminar always enlighten me and lift me up and and this weekend I expect to be enlightened and lifted it up again the board of direct thank you the board of directors and I thank Carrie Winfrey and the 2017 program committee for bringing us this Marvel marvelous program we thank our executive director Arlo hll who not only implements our vision but often improves upon it [Applause] we we thank this seminar staff Freya Katie Lindsay and Ian and our volunteer chairman Michael blades and all of our volunteers for handling the astonishing number of details that are critical to the seminar we thank our patrons it's the generosity of both our patrons and our panelists that makes the seminar possible and we also thank our panelists for being here to share their wisdom with us and we thank you our audience for coming thanks so much for being here and I'm pleased to introduce to Arlo hasell [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] thank you hello everyone my name is Arlo hasell And I am executive director of The Key West literary seminar it is a complete joy to Welcome All of You to Key West to the seminar and to the historic San Carlos Institute a venue whose proud political history you will learn more about tomorrow morning I would like to Echo the thanks and praise that Diane offered to our board of directors and especially to our program chair Carrie Winfrey Carrie and I actually had competing ideas for this seminar two years ago and we each advocated strongly for our own vision of it as the day of 2016 rolled over us I was reminded over and over again of car's wisdom and of our board's wisdom in setting out what is surely the right Topic at the right time and thank you especially to Diane Shelby for your remarkable leadership of the seminar now Robert a Caro is the sort of writer about whom people say he needs no introduction and here at the seminar we generally don't introduce anybody on the theory that you didn't come here to see us but the writers and so we should just Clear the Stage as quickly as possible but Robert Carol is so extraordinary that I feel compelled to overrule both prevailing wisdom and our own practices and at least try to set the stage when I first became aware of Caro's of the impact of Caro's work I didn't even know his name all I knew was this at the small New York College I attended everybody was talking about a New York city planner named Robert Moses I had no idea that City Planning was even a thing and yet at Bard College my 19-year-old peers were so familiar with one particular city planner and knew so much about his life and his work that they could have passionate and well-reasoned arguments about what Robert Moses had done and why it was so great or so terrible it was only years later that I realized that this was not simply another example of a Key West boy being out of his depth among New York sophisticates but that in fact all of these students were operating under the influence of Robert Carol and that they had all been reading Caro's great biography of Robert Moses the power broker every writer likes a good blurb on their book jacket but Caro is the only writer I know who can call upon presidents of the United States of America to blurb his books Bill Clinton has called him brilliant important and remarkable President Obama has said I think about Robert Caro and reading the power broker back when I was 22 years old and just being mees mized as unusual as it is to see American Presidents praising a writer it is just as startling to witness the number of other writers who feel such deep respect for Caro's work one of the most striking things that I've discovered over the past two years as we've planned for this weekend is how many of the writers who are joining us here all of them so accomplished so eloquent in their own right how many of these writers have said something to me whether in an email or in a phone call about the great admiration they feel for Robert kol this is my 10th year behind the scenes of the seminar in one role or another and I've never before witnessed such a show of so many writers expressing such Wonder for the literary skill and accomplishments of a single peer we are blessed be measure to have Robert Carol here with us tonight we owe him a debt before he even Begins for providing us with the very title of this year's program revealing power ladies and gentlemen to deliver the John hery Memorial address and begin the 35th annual Key West literary seminar please welcome Robert Carol [Applause] thank well that was such a wonderful introduction that I'm reminded of what Lyndon Johnson used to say when he got an especially wonderful introduction he used to say he wished his parents were alive to hear it because his father would have loved it and his mother would would have believed [Music] it well you know when Lyon when Winston Churchill was writing his great biography of Lord mbor somebody asked him how he was doing and he said I'm working on the fourth of a projected three volumes I'm not in any way comparing myself with Winston Churchill instead in this one except in this one way we're sort of in the same boat and I'm going to talk about something that I learned on this trip through my books I started out being a right of believing in Lord Acton's adage that all power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely and certainly the man I wrote about in the power broker Robert Moses lived up to that adage in Spades but as I've gone on writing I have come to believe that Lord Acton's adage isn't always true that in fact power doesn't always corrupt that in fact sometimes power can do the opposite it can cleanse but I've also come to believe that if Acton's adage is not always true there is something about power that is always true and that is that what power always does is reveal when a person is climbing in during his career rising to power trying to get power it's necessary for him to conceal it but when someone has power when he's acquired it you see then that what he or she wanted to do all along then you see what he or she has wanted to do all alone when a person is climbing trying to persuade others to give him power concealment is necessary he has to hide traits that might might make others reluctant to give him power he has to hide also what he wants to do with that power if he gets it because if men recognize the traits or realize the aims they might refuse to give him what he wants they might be afraid of him but as a man obtains more power camouflage is less necessary the curtain begins to rise the revealing begins and when he has the power he has always wanted absolute power the revealing is complete so I want to talk this evening about one of the reasons I've come to believe this I'll do it first through telling you a scene and what I figured out while I was writing or tried to or think I figured out while I was writing about power the scene takes place on November 26 1963 4 days after President Kennedy is is assassinated in the kitchen of Lyndon Johnson is not yet even in the Oval Office he's still living in his home in Washington but the next day Wednesday the 27th he has to give his first speech and address to the Joint a joint session of Congress and four or five of his speech writers are sitting around the dining the kitchen table at the dining room table in his kitchen working on the speech and after a while Lyndon Johnson comes down in his pajamas and sits down and basically asks them what they've come up with the one they say well we're not really set yet but the one thing we're all agreed on is that you can't make much of an issue of civil rights don't make that any kind of a PRI priority it'll just antagonize the southerners in Congress they control Congress Kennedy introduced a Civil Rights bill 6 months ago it's going nowhere it's dead in the in the water and because he introduced it the southerners are standing in the way of his entire program and there's no hope of a Civil Rights bill passing anyway so it's a noble cause civil rights but it's a lost cause don't make it any kind of a priority one of them says a president you know shouldn't spend his time on lost causes because no matter how Noble the cause might be it's a lost cause and Lyndon Johnson says well what the hell is the presidency for then and in his speech the next day he makes civil rights a priority the first priority he makes a point of using the word first he says first no Memorial origin or eulogy could more eloquently honor President Kennedy's memory than the earliest possible passage of the Civil Rights bill we have talked long enough in this country about equal rights we have talked about it for 100 years or more it is time now to write the next chapter and to write it in the books of law now at that point in Lyndon Johnson's life looking at his whole life up to then it would have been very hard to believe that Lynden Johnson was really for civil rights he had come to Congress in 1937 he was in the con and then he went of course to the Senate so from 1937 until 1957 20 years every vote he cast was a vote on the side of the of the South he had it unbroken record of 20 years of opposing civil rights every civil rights vote that had ever come to a vote he had voted against voting rights bills against bills that would have struck a job discrimination even against votes that would have protected blacks from lynching his first speech when he gets to the house he his first words are we of the South and thereafter he had been not merely a reliable vote for the South every time but he became a strategist for the South he was one of the men who worked with the leader of the Southern caucus we then called it the southern block that that controlled Congress Richard bravard Russell of Georgia he was one of Russell's strategists and Russell thinks he's going to be a great leader for the fight against civil rights after his first speech he comes up that first speech the we of the South speech which was defending the filibuster against civil rights Russell says that's the ablest speech against civil rights that I've ever heard and Russell makes him his Protege and basically lifts him the southern block lifts Lindon Johnson to power in the Senate they controll the they they controll both houses of Congress and the Senate I forgot to look this up but if I have the right year they are 16 great standing committees of the Senate and they they are the chairman of nine of them and their allies are the chairman of three others so in order for Johnson to rise to to through through the agency of the Southern block he has to H hi his feelings his true feelings from the southern senators and he h he hides them perfectly perfectly well I remember once that I went to see an old southern Senator named Herman Talmage who was the senator from G Georgia Herman Talmage was the son of his father Jean Talmage who had been governor of Georgia for several decades he was known quite literally as whipping Jean hmage because because that was his solution for what would be should be done with black people who were trying to rise above his station talage still had this great power in Georgia I remember he sent the chairman of the state democratic party up to be My Chauffeur to take me down to his house you drove down there on Herman Talmage Highway you got off at an exit marked Herman Talmage Boulevard you drove to following signs that said Lake Talman and and when you got when I got to his house which is a grand house of course with white pillars outside a black man in a waste coat answered the door and said the senator is waiting for you in the library I said I am Jack Burton I'm in All the King's Men so Talmage Talmage was a man with a very uh high regard from himself and uh we had a we having a long talk and I finally got to the subject of Lyndon Johnson and I asked him um what did you think of Johnson's views towards uh African-Americans he said he was with us in his heart I knew that I said well what exactly was his view of white men and black people and he said master and slave so I said so then when he became president did he betray you there was a pause because this was not a man who liked to admit he had been wrong and he said yes then I said you mean did he fool you there was a long of pause and Herman talage said yes but while the southern Senators believed for 20 years that Lyndon Johnson was with them I believed that Lyndon Johnson was always for civil rights because when I had been researching Johnson's early life I had learned about something he had done during the early part of that life before he was elected to anything Lyndon Johnson was a very poor boy from the Hill Country of Texas and he went to a college Southwest Texas State Teachers College it was a small College little more than a high school really in the middle of Hill Hill Country and it was known as a the poor boys school if you had enough money for tuition not that the tuition was very high at the University of Texas you went to the University of Texas if you couldn't you went to the poor boy school and he was so poor that between his sophomore and his Junior years he had to take a year or from college to earn enough money so he could go on and what he did during that year was teach at a little town in uh down near the Mexican border called Cula Cula was a town that had a very large uh you could say Mexican American but they weren't citizens they they were really Mexicans and they lived in uh they they were there to pick the crops and they lived in a really a shanty town of tin shacks and with tin corrugated uh Roose and I after learning about how he what Johnson was like this was it was called the Mexican school and I wrote after I learned about his year there I said no teacher had ever cared if these kids learned or not this teacher cared uh he was he believed firmly that it was important for them to learn to speak English if they wanted to get ahead of in the world and he would fly into a rage if he heard somebody one of the kids speaking in Spanish if he was sitting in the classroom during a recess and he heard a boy shouting in Spanish playing in the yard he would run out and spank him with the girls he would tongue lash them uh so you could say that this was just an example of lynon Johnson doing the best job he could the job he had which was a characteristic and Johnson but I felt that it was really something much more than that that he really meant what he was doing because he didn't just teach the kids at the school he taught the janitor the janitor's name was Thomas Coronado and Johnson wanted him to learn to speak and read English so he bought carado a textbook and every day before and after school he would sit with carado on the steps of the school and in carado says Johnson would pronounce I would repeat Johnson would spell I would repeat so I felt ever since I learn that story that there was something inside him that really cared about helping people of color something that was true genuine deep passionate feeling inside him but as I say it would have been hard to believe that for other people that night around his kitchen table it would be hard for them to believe that Lyndon Johnson really meant what he was going to do about civil rights and in fact quite a few people didn't one of his speech writers Richard Goodwin basically asked him um forget the exact words but he was basically saying do you really mean it or do you just think it's a polit it's just good for you politically and Johnson says to him you remember dick I once told you about teaching those kids down in catula I remember how how I used to see it in their eyes the question why do people hate me because I'm Brown I always vowed that if I ever had the power I was going to help them now I have the power and I'll tell you something I'm going to use it and we see in in the next months after that kitchen table scene in 1964 how he uses it he wants to pass the first meaningful Civil Rights bill it will be the first meaningful Civil Rights bill since reconstruction since 1875 you know I never from the first time I started writing biographies I never always felt that I didn't regard my books on Robert Moses and Lyndon Johnson as biographies I never had the slightest Interest really in writing a book just to tell the life of a great man from the first time I thought of writing biographies I thought of them in terms of using the life of a great man to illustrate the great forces that shaped his time and particularly the force that is political power because political power is a force that shapes all our lives in the case of Robert Moses Urban political power power in cities in the case of Lyndon Johnson National political power and looking at his passage of that act the Civil Rights Act of 1964 to see how he got that act through a congress so dominated by the south provides us with an opportunity to look at gave me a chance to do what I was trying to do I don't say I succeeded in doing it but what I'm trying to do to look at a very specific and very rare form of political power to see lynon Johnson in action passing the Civil Rights bill is to see a skill at passing legislation that was beyond just skill was to see a talent that's beyond just Talent a gift that was really justify the word of Genius political genius you know when you talk right about Lyndon Johnson there's always this very poignant element that he's always very aware of his lack of Education that he went to this college he could turn it into a joke after he becomes president he once says to somebody that was quite a a cabinet meeting today there were 13 people there who went to the ivy league and one graduate of Southwest Texas they teach his college but it really wasn't a joke to him he didn't like to travel to other countries very much he hadn't traveled very much in his in his entire career uh he has to go uh when he's uh Kennedy's vice president because Kennedy sends him to a NATO conference in Paris and he goes with a A young speech young speech writer and Native his named harus Busby who knew him very well understood him very well I think and Busby said you know he was so afraid of making a fool of himself when they had we had a state dinner I'd keep looking up and I'd see Lyndon Johnson looking down the table at me to make sure that I wasn't using the wrong Fork he's afraid to go out and shop so he wants needs to buy a present for ladybird so he asks the wife of another Senator William Fulbright to go out and shop for him so he won't have to do it and he doesn't go to a lot of the events that he's supposed to go to and buz and um at one of them uh a British Minister says to harrus Busby I'm so sorry that your boss isn't here I was so looking forward to meeting the greatest parliamentarian in the Western World the greatest parliamentarian in the western world and he was afraid to walk around Paris so looking at Lyndon Johnson passing the Civil Rights Act of 1964 gives us a chance to understand I think what that Minister meant when he called him the greatest parliamentarian when he first begins writing uh Kennedy's proposed civil rights book into the books of lore it seems like a very long shot that he's going to succeed he had a course of great Advantage the sympathetic atmosphere that was generated in Washington by Kennedy's death but to be honest when you read the private correspondence of of the Southern Senators you realize there wasn't all that much sympathy uh among them but sympathy for civil rights majority opinion in the nation majority opinion even in the senate had collided with the Senate's Southern block before and had lost every time the Senate of course was the traditional graveyard of the Civil Rights bill because if everything else failed and everything else that usually didn't fail fail because they controlled the Committees the senate had the filibuster at that time you needed a 67 votes not 60 as today 67 votes were required to end the filibusta by imposing clure that meant that 34 votes would be enough to make sure that you couldn't cut off off the B and pass the bill and you had just the start there were 22 Southern senators and in addition to that you had about the same number of of Republican Midwest conservatives who were against civil rights and in addition to them you also had the Senators who when you started studying the Senate then I they were for civil rights with their lips but not with their hearts and they would take advantage of voting for any procedural thing a committee something in committee or something that that would actually slow down civil rights so they used to say 34 votes would would stop a filibuster if everything else failed and there was a saying in the Senate you get up to 34 real fast in fact they had never failed to get up to 34 yet and this bill President Kennedy's bill wasn't even in the Senate yet the house where it had been introduced hadn't even passed the bill Bill and sent it to the senate in fact the bill wasn't even at a stage in the house where it could be voted on it wasn't being allowed to come to the floor of the house for a vote the the after 6 months the bill was in still in the house rules committee in the House of Representatives no bill can come to the floor of the house without going first through the rules committee which sends it to the floor for uh with what they call a rule how long can be debated what amendments can be introduced and the bill and the day on the day Kennedy died this bill is still in the house rules committee and it looks like it's going to stay there indefinitely the chairman of the house rules committee then was Judge Howard W Smith of Virginia judge Smith was refusing to say even when the rules committee might hold hearings and Report the bill to the floor he had been chairman seemingly forever he was a member of the Bird Machine of Virginia ruled by Harry bird of Virginia Harry bird of Virginia was a man who hated African-Americans and hated the idea of integration so much that he would fly into a fury at any mention of school busing and school integration if I I was trying to find some quote that I wouldn't feel too bad repeating and he said you realize if they do that six-year-old children of both races will be packed into school buses like sardines can you imagine what will happen by this close intimate social contact future Generations will inter marry misation and judge Smith's racism was of the same intensity he viewed the Civil Rights bill with hatred and he wasn't about to let it out of his house rules committee on the day President Kennedy was killed Smith had still hadn't scheduled any hearings that very morning the house Speaker John McCormack had asked Smith when the rules committee might take up the bill so the house could vote on it and Smith said he he didn't know the Christmas recess was already here it was already November 22nd he said he would have to discuss the schedule of hearings with the members of his committee and he wouldn't begin discussing the Senate the schedule until the house reconvened in January and he also refused to say how long the hearings might go on after they did begin the rules committee had already heard uh a lot of witnesses but the rules committee might want to hear quite a few of them again and there were scores and scores of witnesses still that he wanted to call so that was the situation on the day President Kennedy died that very day a Washington Post reporter had asked judge Smith what plans he had for scheduling hearing on the Civil Rights bills and he had said flatly no plans and an interesting thing was that when you read the newspapers of the time that statement of Judge Smith's no plans didn't arouse any great Outburst of indignation that was just business as usual in Congress there was just a general acception acceptance there was just the general acceptance that nothing was going to be done until after Christmas until January and the The Washington Post editorialized from time in Memorial these two Virginia chairman buron Smith have frustrated presidents and it appears they have done it again everyone was sort of resigned to the fact that there wouldn't be any more discussions about rescheduling the rules committee hearings until January the delay didn't seem all that important to anyone what did that have to do with the fact that that a Civil Rights bill would have to would be voted on perhaps sometime in 1964 no one no one in Washington seemed to see any great significance in what Smith was doing no one except the new president Lyndon Johnson because we're talking here as I said about a gift for political strategy that was really a genius he had this ability to see the whole picture in Congress no matter how confusing that picture might be and seeing the whole picture he sees what strategy the south is using and he sees that when Smith is saying I have can't make any plans for hearings until after Christmas until the new year that's a very important part of the strategy because when the bill gets to the Senate if it ever gets to the sener there will be a filibuster you need a lot of time to break a filibuster you need a lot of time to let the southern Senators talk themselves out or not that this had ever happened but if you wanted to ever do it you would need a lot of time for the southern Senators to Tor themselves out you would need a lot of time to round up the 67 votes it would take weeks if not months and the period of time to do that as nobody seems to to realize was that they didn't have that much time you don't have a limitless period of time to pass a bill each Congress is in session for two years a bill that has not passed at the end of a congress dies and must start over from scratch in the next Congress must be reintroduced must negotiate again all the preliminary procedures in both houses must be passed Again by both houses and in 1964 the Republican National Convention begins in July the Democratic Convention 1964 is a presidential year the Democratic Convention begins in August senators are going to want to be at their conventions they're not going to be in Washington passing bills and 33 of the Senators a third of the Senate of course are running again themselves for office they're going to be comparing campaigning so there isn't Limitless time to pass this bill and J Smith's tactics are eating up that time and that's what they were intended to do and seeing seeing the strategy Johnson sees that it's working as it's always worked in the past South is delaying the bill in committees so there won't ever be enough time to pass it on the floor judge isn't judge Smith wasn't saying to The Washington Post or anybody else that the hearings won't begin until January he's saying that the disc discussions about when to hold the hearings won't begin until January and Johnson understands that Smith cannot be allowed to do this because if he is allowed to do this there won't be enough time to pass the Civil Rights bill in 1964 everyone is thinking in terms of 1964 and the Civil Rights bill Johnson knows that what happens in 1964 is going going to be largely decided by what happens in 1963 in December November and December 1963 right now he sees what no one else at least no one else on the liberal side sees so he also sees that it gives Senators an excuse the ones who are really don't want civil rights but don't want to say they're against civil rights can say well it's a sacred rule of the house that when a bill is in committee it's up to the committee chairman to decide the schedule that that's a that's a rule of the house we can't think of interfering with these sacred rules of the house so Johnson sees that this strategy is working as it always works and that what judge Smith is doing is a key part of it if Smith is allowed to continue by the time the Senate finally gets the bill there's not going to be enough enough time to break a filibuster and pass it when I say no one understands it we have a lot of Johnson telephone tapes and in in November in the early part of uh the end of November and the early part of December right after Kennedy's assassination a lot of these tapes are him trying to explain to people and I don't mean just reporters I mean members of the House of Representatives and Senators Publishers news paper editors trying to explain what's happening uh there's one conversation with Katherine Graham where he hears we hear him she's the publisher of the Washington Post The Washington Post is not criticizing judge Smith they're they're saying we're for civil rights the Senate has to pay civil rights but they never say a word about the fact that hearings in the house rules committee are not being scheduled now and he tries to expl I read you a couple of paragraphs that Lyon Johnson says to Katherine Graham he says K Smith's idea is that he'll run the discussions over till January he he means the discussions about uh scheduling the rules committee K Smith's idea is that he'll run the discussions over until January and then in January he'll PID along and get it into February then they'll have hearings in the rules committee until about the middle of March and by the time they pass it out of the house it will be Easter and the Senate will say it's time for the East to recess if the Senate doesn't get the Civil Rights bill until March the South will screw it to death and the Senate will be able to screw it to death until it goes off for the conventions and there'll be nothing done about civil rights again you can hear him he's really begging he says K if we want to pass that bill we have to do it now so Johnson sees what no one else seems to see that if you want to pay us civil rights in ' 64 you have to do this in 63 and he sees a way Johnson not only can see the whole legislative landscape if you want to call it that he sees the only way to change this there's something called a discharge petition it's a p it's a a thing where the house votes as a whole if it feels a committee is holding up a bill too long the house can vote as a whole to discharge it to take it away from the committee and bring it directly to the floor for joke and he remembers that a freshman representative who didn't know anybody Richard bowling didn't know any better Richard bowling of Missouri did in fact months before introduce a discharge petition but of course no one was interested in it and it's just been put aside no one thinks about it the New York Times editorialized at the time this is a procedure rarely invoked because it offends traditionalists to whom the time hallowed house rules are sacred the sacred powers of a committee chairman are not about to be abrogated by a young Congressman so the petition had just gone away and there would never be enough Democratic votes to pass it anyway because you had 257 Democrats in the house but about 60 of them were from the south so you needed about 60 Republicans and the Republican leader was Charles hoc of Indiana he was a tough cookie and he said I never signed a discharge petition in my life and I'm not going to sign one now and these were the days of real party discipline and hoc had ordered all the Republican members of the House the whole Republican corcus not to vote for this petition so it had just gone away but Johnson sets out to get it passed so he has to find the way of educating not only the members of the house but the public their constituents that this petition means civil rights that this they can call it a procedural thing but one is the same as the other if they don't change the procedure if they don't have a they don't pass a discharge petition they're not going to have civil rights he works on the Democratic leaders we hear his voice on these telephone tapes he says to them basically don't let them say they're for civil rights but they won't sign the petition make everyone understand make them understand that if they're against the petition they're against civil rights don't let them use a procedural thing as an excuse but of course he needs Republicans he needs 60 Republicans which means he needs hoc to change his point of view part of it is just Johnson had a genius for the phrase and he said he calls hoc to his office just before Lincoln's birthday and he says you know I wouldn't dare I hear you making a speech on Lincoln's birthday he says I wouldn't dare if I were you to go out and try to make a Lincoln's birthday speech when judge Smiths got his name got his foot on Lincoln's neck the layer few out of the park I'll explain it to people you'd better let that Bill come out he uses blun through weapons the largest single employer hak is from Indiana the largest single employer in his congressional district is Purdue University and Johnson remembers that because he doesn't forget anything that hoc has gotten a bill through that basically financed a uh Purdue building a new laboratory building for for Aeronautics and Space Administration so they need contracts from the NS na NASA the National Aeronautics and Space Administration so he calls pal cak to his office and while hoc is sitting there Johnson picks up the phone in the Oval Office and calls the NASA administrator May named James web and he says I'm sending Charlie HCK over to talk to you and I want you you guys to have a nice talk so web we have this on tape so I know exactly the words that he used so Webb says oh I'll certainly talk to him Mr President and I hope he'll be satisfied so Johnson says goodbye to H H leaves and Johnson picks up the phone again you have to hear the tone in his voice hoping was not what he had in mind he said says to web if he's not satisfied then I'll be talking to you again hoc is satisfied the New York Times reports all all this morning members Republican members they all all this morning Republican members were leaving their committee hearings to take calls from their party leaders and all of a sudden there are Republican votes for the discharge petition but he they still don't have enough votes where is is he going to get these votes so he calls to his office the five major africanamerican political leaders of the time Roy Wilkins of the NAACP Whitney Young of the National Urban League Martin Luther King Jr James Farmer of the Congress of racial equality and A Philip Randolph of the Brotherhood of rail railro Railway Porters it's very interesting uh people who knew Lindon Johnson one of them who knew him very well said to me you know one onone lynon Johnson was the greatest salesman who ever lived so his secretary W to robbert says to him do you want them all here at once for a group meeting and Johnson says no I want them one at a time and he doesn't just talk to these africanamerican leaders he gives them a focus don't just talk about civil rights talk about the discharge petition he says to to one of them can't remember who but one of them I'll take I'll take care of the Civil Rights bill he says but you have to help me on the petition he and when he's talking to Roy Wilkins Wilkins describes a spell very eloquently Johnson had a thing in his office so he sat in Kennedy's rocking chair which was a which sort of had a high seat and there are two couches in the Oval Office you see them even today John joh son had the stuffing taken out of the cushions of those two couches so the people who sat on the couches sunk down and he was towering over them so he pulls the rocking chair over to Wilkins and he explains what has to be done he says we've got to get the petition passed the public has to be made to understand that the this charge petition is not just a procedural matter but a vote against civil rights if you vote against the discharge petition you're voting against civil rights we've got to make people understand somehow that they either sign the petition or they're against civil rights and they get it Roy Wilkins goes home and announces that the NAACP will in the next election Purge any congressman who does not sign to this charge petition and Wilkins is very interesting Wilkins has known Lyon Johnson for a long time he says something with Johnson you never know whether he was trying to pick your heart or pick your wallet but he says I had never before sat so close to him and seen these Texas eyes boring into mine he says I was struck by the enormous difference between Johnson and Kennedy Kennedy was not naive but as a legislator legislator he was very green he didn't really know what was possible and what wasn't possible in Congress Johnson knew exactly what was possible that's was the end of the quote and he makes these five leaders understand that nothing is going to be possible in 1964 if judge Smith isn't made to give a date right now for the when the hearings are going to start and when they're going to end so he gives them more than a focus he gives more than a generalized thing he gives them a specific thing to focus on he gives M Martin Luther King he get right when King comes in he gives Martin Luther King a remember Johnson still needs some Republican votes he hands King a list of five Republican congressmen who are were expected to win a reelection easily but they're all in districts that have heavy africanamerican registration Martin Luther King comes out of the office and feels he says it just might be that he's going to get us where John Kennedy couldn't now an interesting thing happened if you're a writer and you're trying to understand all the levels of things that are going on an interesting thing happened to me when I was um really learning the details about his discussion with these five civil rights leaders because these are men King Wilkins Randolph the rest who are very hard to fool about what's in a white man's heart they're very good at knowing what a white man's true feelings are and they see his feelings now and what they feel now or his true feelings or what I felt with the feelings he has always had because I knew what he had done in coutula so their attitude changes so Wilkins who was afraid that Johnson was going to pick his pocket there's a telephone call that occurs at 10:30 on the night of December 23rd 1963 Johnson calls Wilkins he's still working at his desk and he wants suggestions from Wilkins about what to put in the State of the Union bill and he also wants to know the name of a Mexican American to put on a civil right the government the United States Civil Rights Commission because there's never been on a Mexican American on hisi on the Civil Rights Commission so the conversation ends and Johnson say starts to say something like okay thanks good night and Wilkin says now Mr President may I just say a word to you please take care of yourself and Johnson says I'm going to I'm going to and Wilkin says Mr President please take care of yourself we need you Johnson does things to get this Civil Rights bill passed I'll just give you one of them but there there there are many he realizes he says well who can I get to work on these Midwest Republicans conservatives who will Who will they listen to well it's a very religious part of the country so he gets he he realizes that he's seen a little item in the paper that says that that week in December the national Council of Church's convention is having their annual convention in Philadelphia they have 4,000 clerics coming and they're meeting in philadelph and he sends word when they come don't go directly home after the convention come through Washington say hello to me say hello to your Congressman say hello to your your Senators let them know how you feel about civil rights and all of a sudden the newspapers are writing the Halls were filled yesterday the halls of Congress were filled yesterday with cleric's collars Negroes are streaming into Washington Anthony Lewis and Anthony Lewis writes in the New York Times there was a dramatic change on Capitol Hill yesterday you could feel the mood shifting President Johnson threw his full weight today behind the effort to pry the Civil Rights bill out of the house rules committee and Johnson does it he priz the bill out he gets it to the Senate the Senate's a very different story he has to get 67 votes he gets them it's very in the Johnson Library I found the actual tally sheets that Johnson used day by day in getting this bill through the Senate a t Senate tally sheet is a very long strip of paper with a hundred names the names of the Senators down the center on each side there's a blank line and you could check it if you wanted to see what's uh what saw the senator was coming down on yes or no Johnson did it differently he counted next to senator's name was a number as he as he worked to get a 67 votes the interesting thing to me about those tally sheets was that they were very smudged and I asked uh I remember I asked George REI who was his press secretary I said what how come they're so smudged however I I put it and read he says that was John johs son's thumb he'd put his thumb by the name of the senator and he would never move it down to the next name until he knew how he could get that Senator to vote with him there there are moments I I don't want to go on too long tonight I'm always going on too L but I'll tell you one thing that Johnson did maybe I can do really fast so the senate had a committee tactic also it was in the Senate finance committee which seemed to have nothing nothing to do with civil rights but Harry bird who was the chairman of it could delay things there Johnson gets a call at 1234 one day the tax bill is the is before the finance committee and he's he's thought he's he's getting it out of the committee and he suddenly that it's going through and he suddenly gets a call from George smers a senator who was on his side who says it all fell apart right now three Democrats changed their votes AB ribov of Connecticut Vance hary of uh Indiana and Clinton Anderson of New Mexico and Johnson says well what what can be done SM says there's nothing that can be done they all say that the Exile the excuse they're using is that the exis provision tax Provisions in the bill hurts individual Industries in their states Johnson says to his secretary line them up for me which means get them all on on the phone I'll talk to One his first call is to riov and riov says you know I've given my word on this to my constituents I'd really lose face if I voted for the bill now and again you have to hear lynon Johnson's voice when he says Abe you save my face today and I'll save your face tomorrow riov knows what Senators know that Lyndon Johnson is a good guy to have on your side and he's a very bad guy to cross Johnson says something very similar to Clint Anderson and then there's Vance hary Johnson knows everything about the senator he knows the real reason that that hary is against the Exile tax provision is that it hurts a firm in his district that makes musical instruments now heartkey starts to say I can't possibly change Mr President I think the bill is Johnson says I'll take care of musical instruments next year save my face now and hary says all right the three calls took nine a total of nine minutes he's changed the vote in the committee it comes out that afternoon and the bill is getting ready to go through it so the Civil Rights Act of 1964 is one of History's great triumphs for social justice I wrote that almost almost a century after Abraham Lincoln had freed black men and women from slavery black men and women and Mexican American women and men still did not enjoy many of the rights which America supposedly guaranteed its its citizens it was lynen Johnson who gave them those rights Lincoln was of course president during the 19th century during the 20th century of all its americ presidents lynon Baines Johnson was the greatest champion that black Americans and Mexican Americans and indeed all Americans of color had in the White House the greatest champion they had in all the halls of government with a single exception of Lincoln he was the greatest champion with the white skin they had in the history of the Republic he was to become the law maker for the poor and the downtrodden and the oppressed he was to be the bearer of at least a measure of dignity to those who so desperately needed to be given some dignity he was the Redeemer of the promises made to them by America so the Civil Rights Act of 1964 as I've tried to explain is the Triumph of man who brought to the fight not only political genius a gift that was beyond the gift but it's the Triumph also of a man whose belief in the cause of Civil Rights was true deep passionate and of course it is the Triumph of a man who kept those feelings concealed for 20 years until he got power power reveals thank you all [Applause] [Applause]

Channel: Key West Literary Seminar

Views: 9,207

Keywords: Robert A. Caro, Key West Literary Seminar

Id: C1AhV9MQHgQ

Length: 59min 9sec (3549 seconds)

Published: Fri Jan 13 2017