| The
Reading Selection:
This selection is from a televised address President Lyndon
Johnson made in 1965 in the wake of a civil rights march in Selma, Alabama.
African Americans there were protesting against election officials who
conspired to keep blacks from registering to vote. The march was
violently disrupted by police almost as soon as it started. One man,
a minister, died as a result.
Johnson declared his support for a new law that would
guarantee - with federal backing - the right of black citizens to register
and vote. He also arranged for federal protection for the Selma marchers.
By the time the reorganized march arrived in Montgomery,
the state capital, many whites had joined in a display of support.
With American flags waving in the vanguard, it was one of the most moving
and hopeful sights of the decade.
Congress quickly approved the president's proposed law,
which became the Voting Rights Act of 1965.
The
Picture:
Lyndon Johnson, president in the mid-1960s. He pushed Congress to
adopt important new laws that banned discrimination in public places and
protected the voting rights of African Americans. |
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Group
Discussion, p. 8 - 18:
President Johnson tells the American
public that experience had shown that systematic discrimination could not
be defeated within the framework of existing laws. African Americans
were kept from voting in a number of Southern states and localities through
various tricks. Without the vote, they had no real political power
to seek change.
Johnson says a federal law is needed
to strike down illegal barriers to voting that deny blacks the right to
vote.
But President Johnson also says
the voting issue is only one part of a larger issue, which is "the effort
of American Negroes to secure for themselves the full blessings of American
life."
Racism had long held a powerful
and cruel grip on American society. That grip could only be broken
by the American people themselves, and only by honestly confronting the
injustice of racial division.
Johnson declares, "The time of justice
has now come." He reminds his audience that America can offer great
opportunities to all its citizens, black and white, if the barriers of
race can be left behind. Poverty, ignorance, and disease, he says,
are the enemy, and "not our fellow man, not our neighbor."
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