6-4-02, Voice in the Crowd
Legends of Abe
Lincoln and LBJ
By Pete Chaney
IPS Features
When legend and fact meet on the battlefield of history, legend invariably triumphs. No real event or individual can withstand the power of the imagination and the admiration that leads to legend.
Richard the Lion Hearted was in reality a cold blooded
tyrant who murdered thousands out of whim or revenge. Robin Hood, if there was one, lived centuries after
Richard’s demise. But who can
beat legend, Hollywood and Errol Flynn. Richard
marches on as the beloved monarch and Robin as the benevolent thief who robbed
the rich and gave to the poor.
Two men who have their niche in history, legend and fact
were Abraham Lincoln and Lyndon B. Johnson.
Lincoln is idolized as the President who freed the slaves.
Johnson is lionized as the President who gave their descendants the right
to vote. Folklore heaps praise on
them as loving and protecting the downtrodden minorities.
Truth is drowned in praise for their real and imagined
accomplishments.
No where in Abraham Lincoln’s writings or speeches can
anyone find him preaching equality or voting rights for the slaves of the mid
Nineteenth Century. He always said
he opposed the principle of slavery, but did not campaign for the presidency on
a platform declaring he would abolish slavery.
Hotheaded Southerners angry over tariffs and Northern power used slavery
as an excuse to break away from the Union.
Read the Emancipation Proclamation.
It does not even remotely abolish slavery.
It does not even free all slaves everywhere in the continental United
States. The proclamation was a military maneuver to create havoc in
the states that seceded. This
document freed the slave in the states in rebellion.
Exempted were the states such as Maryland and Kentucky that stayed within
the Union. Likewise, for other
northern states. Exempted was the
city of Norfolk which was in Union control.
Slavery was still legal—everywhere except in the Confederate states.
On the eve of a union victory, Lincoln was concerned
over the adjustment of those who had previously been in slavery.
He wondered how they would meld in with a white society.
A meeting was held by the President with prominent black leaders where he
suggested helping them return to Africa for colonization.
The idea was ridiculous to them.
Even though many had suffered the shackles of slavery, they were far
removed from their ancestors still living in the jungles.
These people felt they had earned their rights to a share of freedom in
America.
It took society a hundred years, despite an amendment to
the Constitution, to get them to the polling booth.
In the tenure of President Dwight Eisenhower, school
desegregation was ended. President
Jack Kennedy sent US Marshals south to institutions of higher education to
implement the law of the land. But
it was Johnson who saw that the ballot box was available to everyone despite
poll taxes, literacy tests and other barriers.
He saw the passage of the civil rights legislation. When he said, “We shall overcome” to a cheering Congress,
Martin Luther King wept.
Johnson was an unlikely candidate to lead the battle for
minorities. Growing up in the
segregated days of Texas, he went to Congress with the power of the
overwhelmingly white majority. Non-white
votes were insignificant. If they
were ever sought, it was on the quiet, surreptitiously.
Johnson knew who elected him.
When he was 41, political skills propelled him into
becoming the youngest man ever to become Senate majority leader.
In 1948 the widow of a Hispanic soldier killed in World
War II wanted his body sent back from the Philippines to be buried in his
hometown of Three Rivers in South Texas. The
Rice Funeral Home refused her the use of the chapel because his white patrons
would object. Johnson was contacted
and Felix Longaria was given a full military funeral at Arlington Cemetery.
Unprepared for the national spotlight and the heat of his white
constituents, Johnson backpedaled and asked not to be given the credit his heart
earned him.
Known for the use of the “n” word, Johnson often
called black men “boy.” He
explained it was a hard world and they had to be accustomed to being non-white.
His jokes were ethnic and he never completely shook the idea that people
of color were lazy.
Richard the Lion Hearted was a ruthless king. But, with the help of a dominant mother named Eleanor of Aquitaine, he brought order to Europe in the 12th Century.
Lincoln and Johnson shared the poverty of youth, and
they knew what it was like to be poor. Neither
had the burning desire to crusade for the oppressed minorities.
History put them in the right place at the right time.
They did what needed to be done.
Legend and myth will overshadow any shortcomings of
personal virtue. The good that they
did is imbedded in fact and the legend will ride on.
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