Sunday, May 30, 2021

In addition to hating and trying to destroy Martin Luther King, Lyndon Johnson was a "dyed in the wool" racist

Nicholas Katzenbach on LBJ’s racial attitudes and his telling of “nigger jokes”

“After that he would get on an old fire engine that some admirers had presented to him and drive me around – me sitting beside him in my Brooks Brothers suit and tie, LBJ driving in his ten-gallon hat, flannel shirt, and blue jeans. He would point out sights of interest, and when he saw one of his black workers in a field he would stand up (the fire engine still moving), wave his hand, sound the siren, and shout, “Come over here, boy, and meet your attorney general.”

            I would cringe beside him. It was almost as if he did not associate any of his workers with the civil rights leaders he regularly met with in Washington, although I am sure in fact he did. It was just a southern way of life that he was used to and felt comfortable with, just as he often did with the stories and jokes he told about blacks. They made me feel uncomfortable, but this president who did so much to secure equal rights saw no impropriety and no inconsistency between his stories, where blacks were the butt of a joke and his convictions about racial equality.”

[Nicolas Katzenbach, Some of It Was Fun: Working With RFK and LBJ, p. 207 ]

Luci Johnson screaming: "Damn you. You go find my nigger right now!"

 

I wonder where Luci got that from? http://books.google.com/books?id=lJz-yIZNE2sC&pg=PA33&lpg=PA33&dq=luci+johnson+where+is+my+nigger?&source=bl&ots=4OU7dKaT1H&sig=k6tUPI_cdZJrpDIyGzq3bWRIBFc&hl=en&sa=X&ei=RBQfUrPfOZK5sQTAo4GwBA&ved=0CDEQ6AEwAQ#v=onepage&q=luci%20johnson%20where%20is%20my%20nigger%3F&f=false

 

bottom of page 33, top of page 34 "Inside the White House"

 

Lyndon Johnson explaining to George Wallace how to manage those “Goddamn niggers” in 1965

In honor of yesterday's Civil Rights Summit at the LBJ Library, I would like to give you a little tidbit about Lyndon Johnson as president, his take on civil rights & his attitudes towards black Americans. LBJ called up George Wallace to visit him in the White House, probably in 1965. Wallace brought along his right hand man and #1 Alabama political operative Seymore Trammell. His son Warren Trammell is one of my Facebook friends.

Here is how the meeting of Lyndon Johnson and George Wallace went. This meeting was on March 13, 1965. It was the following Saturday after the previous "Bloody Sunday" in Selma. Actually this meeting was highly publicized, but the actual contents of it as relayed by Warren Trammell are not well known. Also, I do not know if the USA was bombing the Ho Chi Minh trail at that time, but I think Trammell catches the unvarnished behind the scenes "flavor" of LBJ quite well.

Go to LBJ's presidential schedule and look up March 13, 1965: http://www.lbjlibrary.net/collections/daily-diary.html

On the diary it says 12:05PM Meeting - LBJ, George Wallace, Seymour Trammell, Katzenbach, Bill Moyers and Burke Marshall.

By the way, like Wallace and the Trammells, I am a native of Alabama so this is of special interest to me.

WARREN TRAMMELL:

On Wed, Aug 28, 2013 at 5:52 PM, Warren Trammell  wrote to Robert Morrow:

"To Robert Morrow: to whom it may concern....my father's (Seymore Trammell) memories of his and Alabama Governor George Wallace's private and not really publicized meeting, with President Lyndon Johnson in his Oval Office, concerning the racial violence in the Southeast in the 60s. It's been impossible to nail down the exact day since it was not well publicized.

 

     In the mid 1960s in America, white/black racial unrest had reached the most violent levels the South had ever seen in modern times! Alabama Governor George Wallace and his number one adviser my father Seymore Trammell had their hands full "managing" the black/white racial violence all the Southern politicians thought was caused by the Reverend Martin Luther King and his growing crowds of black followers!  

     At the same time in a lesser known part of the world, the LBJ's USA was deeply embroiled in a massive war in North Viet Nam over oil (the real reason we know today). America's President at that time, in charge of "managing" these two violent situations, was Lyndon Baines Johnson, affectionately know by his Southern political buddies as just LBJ or just Lyndon. Unknown to the public, Southern politicians privately shared Lyndon's hatred of what he called in private, "niggers". Lyndon hated "niggers'! He called them "niggers" in private. He cussed "niggers" every day, my father said, and called them all kinds of vile names!  He had his hands full with the Viet Nam war and hated being "bothered by those G--damned niggers" my father said Lyndon said.

     To rid his hands of those "G-damned niggers" he called my father and Governor Wallace to his Oval Office officially to have a "friendly informative talk" about the disturbing violence in the South. George and Seymore were very excited! They just knew their buddy Lyndon was going to give the massive help in "managing those niggers" Lyndon said. 

     However, in typical trickster style, when George and Seymore got into Lyndon's Oval Office, they were shocked! Lyndon began to cuss like a sailor and ask them, "What in the hell are you boys (Lyndon called them boys) doing with those G--damned niggers down there?" Shocked and taken back, the "Guvna" said "Well Mr. President, we're doing the best we can! What do ya want us to do?" 

     At that Lyndon began to cuss "niggers" again. They were sitting on either side of a narrow coffee table in the Oval office and big Lyndon with his long strong arms and big powerful Texas rough hands reached over and slapped both Seymore and George hard on their knees and held their legs a moment and said "Now you boys, you gotta get your G--damned asses back down to Alabama and make those G--damned niggers act right and calm the hell down! I am G--damned tired of hearing 'bout those G--damned niggers on the G--damned news every night!  Every night at midnight, I hafta get on that damned Red Phone over there on my desk and give the G--damned orders for the B-52 Bombers to fly over the Ho Chi Minh trail  and all over that G--damned North Viet Nam and bomb the the hell outta the whole G-damned country every G--damned night and this G--damned war is killing me!" 

     "You boys got it lucky. Hell George (Lyndon called him George and "boy"), all the hell you got is those G--damned niggers throwing rocks and tot'in signs! Hell, here, I had to get the Secret Service to put-up double thick bullet proof glass to the White House windows cause these G--damn niggers and hippies up here are shootin' bullets at me and my wife and 2 little girls are scared to death!  I hate those G--damned niggers and hippies"

     At that point my father tried to tell Lyndon something but again Lyndon slapped him hard on his knee and said "Now be quiet boy, here, take this pad and pencil and take some G--damned notes". My father gave me the pad and pencil with the Presidential Seal on them!  

     The short meeting was over and Lyndon lastly said "You boys go back to Alabama and get them G--damned niggers quiet! And I don't want to hear nothin' else on the news about them G--damned niggers!"  At that point Lyndon said to the "Guvna", "Come-on boy we gotta go outside, wave at the press and tell'em we had a very productive meeting 'bout them G--damned niggers!" As they stepped up to the mic, Lyndon said kind words about the blacks in the South and indicated that the "Guvna" agreed with him and was going back to Alabama to help them get their justice.

      Lyndon grabbed George by the arm before he could speak, turned him around and with his huge hand on the Govna'a back, pushed him back into the Oval Office and out the door to get on one of the Presidential Planes back to Alabama! The "Govna" and Seymore were sadly disappointed and grumbled all the way back to Alabama, the Guvna angrily chewing on his cigar and Seymore clutching his blank Presidential note pad with great frustration."

 

LBJ the Sadist Terrifying Negroes with Snakes

 

"A stereotype that had currency in the Hill Country was that Negroes were terrified of all snakes. Sometimes Johnson or one of his Hill Country friends would catch a snake, sometimes a harmless snake, sometimes a rattlesnake. Johnson would put in the trunk of his car, and drive to a gas station at which a Negro was working as the gas pump attendant. Pulling up to the pump to get gas, he would tell the attendant that he thought the spare tire in his trunk might need air, and would ask him to take a look at it. Often this practical joke was successful; relating this story, he said, about one Negro attendant, 'Boy, you should have seen that big buck jump!' He went on playing this joke not only when he was in college, but when he was a congressional assistant -- when he was a congressman, in fact. Once, when he played it while he was a congressman -- in 1945 or 1946 at a service station at the corner of First Street and Congress Avenue in Austin -- the joke had a different denouement. While Lyndon was 'standing there laughing' at the attendant's shock, the black man picked up a tire iron and, threatening to wrap it around Johnson's neck, shouted, 'I'll make you a bow tie out of this!' The manager of the service station had to hustle Johnson out a back door to get him away."

 

[Robert Caro. Master of the Senate, The Years of Lyndon Johnson, Volume 3, p. 715. 2002]

 

LBJ on Civil Rights in 1948:

https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Lyndon_B._Johnson

Speech in Austin (1948)[edit]
  • This civil rights program about which you have heard so much is a farce and a sham; an effort to set up a police state in the guise of liberty. I am opposed to that program. I fought it in the Congress. It is the province of the state to run its own elections. I am opposed to the anti-lynching bill because the federal government has no business enacting a law against one kind of murder than another... If a man can tell you who you must hire, he can tell you who not to employ. I have met this head on.

LBJ “Nigger quotes” https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Lyndon_B._Johnson

 

Attributed[edit]

 

If you can convince the lowest white man he's better than the best colored man, he won't notice you're picking his pocket. Hell, give him somebody to look down on, and he'll empty his pockets for you.

Negroes, they're getting pretty uppity these days and that's a problem for us since they've got something now they never had before, the political pull to back up their uppityness. Now we've got to do something about this.

I'll have them niggers voting Democratic for two hundred years.

  • As long as you are black, and you're gonna be black till the day you die, no one's gonna call you by your goddamn name! So no matter what you are called, nigger, you just let it roll off your back like water, and you’ll make it! Just pretend you're a goddamn piece of furniture!
    • Said to his chauffeur, Robert Parker, when Parker said he’d prefer to be referred to by his name rather than "boy," "nigger" or "chief." As quoted in Parker, Robert; Rashke, Richard L. (1989). Capitol Hill in Black and White. United States: Penguin Group. p. v. ISBN 0515101893. Retrieved on 6 January 2015. 
  • These Negroes, they're getting pretty uppity these days and that's a problem for us since they've got something now they never had before, the political pull to back up their uppityness. Now we've got to do something about this, we've got to give them a little something, just enough to quiet them down, not enough to make a difference. For if we don't move at all, then their allies will line up against us and there'll be no way of stopping them, we'll lose the filibuster and there'll be no way of putting a brake on all sorts of wild legislation. It'll be Reconstruction all over again.
    • Said to Senator Richard Russell, Jr. (D-GA) regarding the Civil Rights Act of 1957. As quoted in Lyndon Johnson and the American Dream (1977), by Doris Kearns Goodwin, New York: New American Library, p. 155.
  • Son, when I appoint a nigger to the court, I want everyone to know he's a nigger.
  • I'll have them niggers voting Democratic for two hundred years.
    • Said to two governors regarding the Civil Rights Act of 1964, according to then-Air Force One steward Robert MacMillan. As quoted in Inside the White House (1996), by Ronald Kessler, New York: Simon and Schuster, p. 33.
  • , The Years of Lyndon Johnson: Means of Ascent, p. 70]

 

Lyndon Johnson saying that he talked about his political problems over with his “nigger maid” and Lady Bird

QUOTE

          Once, in Austin, with a group of people present, he was asked if he discussed his political problems with Lady Bird. He replied that of course he did. “Of course,” he said, “I talk my problems over with a lot of people. I have a nigger maid, and I talk my problems over with her too.”

UNQUOTE

[Robert Caro, The Years of Lyndon Johnson: Means of Ascent, p. 70]

LBJ: “I’ll have them niggers voting Democratic for two hundred years.”

Luci Johnson: “Damn you. You go find my nigger right now!”

            During one trip, Johnson was discussing his proposed civil rights bill with two governors. Explaining why it was so important to him, he said it was simple: “I’ll have them niggers voting Democratic for two hundred years.”

            “That was the reason he was pushing the bill,” said MacMillan, who was present during the conversation. “Not because he wanted equality for everyone. It was strictly a political ploy for the Democratic party. He was phony from the word go.”

            MacMillan said Johnson’s younger daughter, Luci, then seventeen, was a “wretched witch.” On one stopover in Florida, she was having a tantrum because she did not know where a servant was. She blamed MacMillan for it.

            “She said, ‘Damn you. You go find my nigger right now,’” MacMillan said. Playing dumb MacMillan asked for a description of the man.

            “She screamed again. ‘Find my nigger.’ People around were smiling. She drew her hand back as if she was going to slap me. I said, ‘Miss Johnson, I don’t think that would be a good idea.’ She said, ‘Dammit, I’ll find him myself.’ This was the attitude of these people who were championing civil rights.”

[Ronald Kessler, Inside the Whitehouse, pp. 33-34]

Lady Bird Johnson was delighted by Jefferson Davis statue and American flag

 

 

 Lady Bird Johnson Home Movie #9: Austin 1943

         

Web Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jdjV1AVdynA

 

Pretty good article on LBJ’s racism from Snopes https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/lbj-voting-democratic/

 

2014 Adam Serwer article on LBJ’s racism

 

https://www.msnbc.com/msnbc/lyndon-johnson-civil-rights-racism-msna305591

 

Doris Kearns on LBJ’s racist attitude toward blacks aka “Uppity Negroes”

 

These Negroes, they’re getting pretty uppity these days and that’s a problem for us since they’ve got something now they never had before, the political pull to back up their uppityness. Now we’ve got to do something about this, we’ve got to give them a little something, just enough to quiet them down, not enough to make a difference. For if we don’t move at all, then their allies will line up against us and there’ll be no way of stopping them, we’ll lose the filibuster and there’ll be no way of putting a brake on all sorts of wild legislation. It’ll be Reconstruction all over again.

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