an American problem

Still so relevant...

Thanks to Charles Pierce and Esquire magazine, and Hermit-the-Prog on Democratic Underground for this piece.

Oh, and thanks to LBJ, for finally helping us legislate equal rights for blacks. Geez, it took another 100 years after we "freed" the slaves to quit discriminating against black people. And it took a fucking law to do it. But it still happens here and there, of course. Racists tend to teach their kids to be racist.

"There is no Negro problem. There is no Southern problem. There is no Northern problem. There is only an American problem." 

-LBJ, 3/15/65

By Charles P. Pierce
Mar 15, 2018 

It was 53 years ago today that President Lyndon B. Johnson stood before a joint session of Congress and delivered the finest address given by an American president in my lifetime. A week earlier, peaceful civil rights marchers were brutally attacked in Selma, Alabama, by the state-sanctioned forces of white supremacy. John Lewis was nearly killed. A minister from Boston named Jim Reeb actually was.

Then, on March 15, LBJ came to Capitol Hill, a speech largely crafted by the great Dick Goodwin in his pocket, and he laid it on the line in front of god, Richard Russell, Strom Thurmond, and the world. The president of the United States, a son of Texas, had had by god enough of this.