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Books on or by
Lyndon Baines Johnson
The Path to Power: The Years of Lyndon Johnson /
Means of Ascent: The Years of Lyndon Johnson
Master of the Senate: The Years of Lyndon Johnson
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Lyndon Johnson and the American Dream
Wheeling and Dealing /
LBJ: Architect of American Ambition /
Lyndon B. Johnson: Portrait of a President
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Lyndon Johnson, Robert
Parker, and Robert Cato
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Capitol Hill in Black and White
By Robert Parker with Richard Rashke
New York :Dodd, Mead, 1986 / ix, 261
pages, [8] p. of plates: pictures
For thirty-five
years, Robert Parker had a uniquely intimate view of
wheeling, dealing, (and sometimes sinning) on
power-hungry Capitol Hill. Born a sharecropper's son, he
was befriended by Lyndon Johnson in Washington in the
early 1940's. Helped by Johnson and Hubert Humphrey,
Parker became maitre d' of the Senate Dining Room in
1964, a post he held until his retirement in 1975. He
moonlighted as a waiter for some of Washington's most
influential people at their private parties. He saw and
heard a lot (and a lot of what he wasn't supposed to)
and it's all in this remarkable book.
Lyndon Johnson is
the principal character in Parker's story. Theirs was a
dramatic love-hate relationship. These memoirs are
filled with anecdotes—sad, shocking, funny—about other
powerful Washington personalities as well:
Estes Kefauver,
John F. Kennedy,
Robert Kennedy,
Adam Clayton Powell,
Hubert Humphrey,
Everett Dirksen,
James Eastland, and others.
These pages capture
the drama of the civil rights movement from Harry Truman
and the Freedom Train to Richard Nixon. It is also the
powerful story of Robert Parker's growing commitment to
that movement. Parker was privy to important secrets as
he arranged private meetings between Dr. Martin Luther
King and senators afraid to be seen in public with him.
Parker personally integrated the Senate dining rooms and
Staff Club. Full of surprises,
often moving, Robert Parker's memoirs are the
illuminating recollections of a shrewd observant black
man in an unusual, fascinating white world.—PaperbackSwap
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Parker, the son of
a black sharecropper, grew up in East Texas during the
1930s. In the early 1940s, following a brief stint in
the army, he came to Washington, D.C., where he worked
as chauffeur and messenger for Lyndon Johnson and then,
for 13 years, as headwaiter in the Senate dining room.
This account of the behind-the-scenes Washington world
he observed for over 30 years provides fascinating
insights into such topics as the complex personality of
Johnson (who struggled hard for the civil rights
legislation of the late 1950s and early 1960s at the
same time that he often referred to Parker privately as
"boy" or "nigger"), the sexual exploits of Congressmen
(in their secret hideaways deep within the Capitol
building), and the major events of the postwar civil
rights movement. Well- written and absorbing, this is
highly recommended for most libraries.—Scott
Wright, History Dept., Coll. of St. Thomas, St. Paul,
Minn.—Library Journal
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In
Capitol Hill in Black and White, Johnson's Negro
chauffeur, Robert Parker, wrote that the “tall Texan,
who was warmhearted and caring, and vulgar and mean,”
often complained that these colored folk “are worrying
the hell out of me.” Oh, and we were.
According to
Parker, Johnson got so frustrated at times that Parker
would drive him out to the far end of the LBJ Ranch in
the Texas hill country, where Johnson would get out of
the car and scream at the top of his voice, “Ni-i-igger-r-rs!”—George
Davis.
UntilWeGoThere
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Revelations of the inside and
underside of power politics by the black former maître
d' of the Senate dining room"—Jacket.
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Though the title makes this seem
like a gossip-y expose about Washington scandals, it is
more a biography of an incredible man. Heroes like
Martin Luther King get a lot of attention, but there
were thousands of people who worked to gain civil rights
in smaller ways. I'm really glad Robert Parker wrote
this book. The only reason I gave it four stars is
because it wasn't especially focused and didn't cite
sources for its historical data.—Valerie
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This is a very informative and
enlightening read about some of the goings on in our
government from way back in the 60's...or I should say
in Washington DC at that time.—Donna
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According to Robert Parker’s
memoir,
Capitol Hill in Black and White, Sen. Lyndon B.
Johnson frequently turned his secret office into a “love
nest. He would invite a woman there at the end of the
day to ‘take dictation.’”—FindingDulcinea
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Hideaway "spaces
were highly coveted by the powerful, and particularly by
the playful," Bobby Baker, an aide to Sen. Lyndon B.
Johnson, wrote in his book,
Wheeling and Dealing: Confessions of a Capitol Hill
Operator. Johnson served in the Senate from 1949
until he was sworn in as vice president in 1961.
Johnson—and
others—used
their hideaways for more than legislative affairs, said
another former LBJ aide.
"He frequently
turned his hideaway into a love nest," Robert Parker
said in his memoir,
Capitol Hill in Black and White. "He would
invite a woman there at the end of the day to 'take
dictation'."
Parker, who
eventually became the Senate Dining Room's head waiter,
had keys to all the hideaways in use at the time. He
would check the "escape rooms" before lunch to make sure
they were stocked with wine and cocktail glasses, ice,
fresh flowers and whatever else he thought senators
wanted or needed.
Parker said
senators' wives often asked him where their husband's
hideaways were. He said he would smile politely and
feign ignorance. But "we both knew her husband was using
his hideaway for more than lunch. So were a lot of other
senators."—Pantagraph
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Robert Parker quoted in Robert A.
Caro’s
Master of the Senate: The Years of Lyndon Johnson
Robert Parker, a
native of Wichita Falls Texas, “was one of Johnson’s
‘patronage’ employees, holding down a Johnson-arranged
job as District of Columbia postman and being paid by
the Post Office Department while earning his patronage
by serving without pay as bartender and waiter at
Johnson’s parties, and, after Johnson acquitted the use
of the Democratic Leader’s limousine, filling in as his
chauffer when Johnson’s regular driver, Norman Edward’s,
had a day off.”
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Master of the Senate: The
Years of Lyndon Johnson
By Robert A. Caro
Robert
Caro's
Master of the Senate examines in
meticulous detail Lyndon Johnson's career in
that body, from his arrival in 1950 (after
12 years in the House of Representatives)
until his election as JFK's vice president
in 1960. This, the third in a projected
four-volume series, studies not only the
pragmatic, ruthless, ambitious Johnson, who
wielded influence with both consummate skill
and "raw, elemental brutality," but also the
Senate itself, which Caro describes
(pre-1957) as a "cruel joke" and an
"impregnable stronghold" against social
change. The milestone of Johnson's Senate
years was the
1957 Civil Rights Act, whose passage he
single-handedly engineered. |
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As important as the bill was—both
in and of itself and as a precursor to wider-reaching
civil rights legislation—it
was only close to Johnson's Southern "anti-civil rights"
heart as a means to his dream: the presidency. Caro
writes that not only does power corrupt, it "reveals,"
and that's exactly what this massive, scrupulously
researched book does. A model of social, psychological,
and political insight, it is not just masterful; it is a
masterpiece.—H.
O'Billovich
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As a genre,
Senate biography tends not to excite. The Senate is
a genteel establishment engaged in a legislative
process that often appears arcane to outsiders.
Nevertheless, there is something uniquely
mesmerizing about the wily, combative Lyndon Johnson
as portrayed by Caro. In this, the third installment
of his projected four-volume life of Johnson
(following
The Path to Power and
Means of Ascent), Caro traces the Texan's
career from his days as a newly elected junior
senator in 1949 up to his fight for the Democratic
presidential nomination in 1960. In 1953, Johnson
became the youngest minority leader in Senate
history, and the following year, when the Democrats
won control, the youngest majority leader.
Throughout the
book, Caro portrays an uncompromisingly ambitious
man at the height of his political and rhetorical
powers: a furtive, relentless operator who routinely
played both sides of the street to his advantage in
a range of disputes. "He would tell us
[segregationists]," recalled
Herman Talmadge, "I'm one of you, but I can help
you more if I don't meet with you."
At the same
time, Johnson worked behind the scenes to cultivate
NAACP leaders. Though it emerges here that he was
perhaps not instinctively on the side of the angels
in this or other controversies, the pragmatic
Senator Johnson nevertheless understood the drift of
history well, and invariably chose to swim with the
tide, rather than against. The same would not be
said later of the Johnson who dwelled so glumly in
the White House, expanding a war that even he,
eventually, came to loathe. But that is another
volume: one that we shall await eagerly. Photos.—Publishers
Weekly
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Content and Legacy
of the 1957 Civil Rights Act
The goal of the
1957 Civil Rights Act was to ensure that all
African Americans
could exercise their right to vote. By 1957, only about
20% of African Americans had registered to vote. The
Democratic Senate leader,
Lyndon Baines Johnson, realized that the bill and
its journey through Congress could tear apart his party,
which was at the time made up of anti-civil rights and
pro-civil rights members. Johnson sent the bill to the
judiciary committee led by Senator
James Eastland, an anti-civil rights senator from
Mississippi. Eastland changed and altered the bill
almost beyond recognition after the very public outburst
by Senator
Richard Russell from Georgia who claimed that it was
an example of the Federal government wanting to impose
its laws on states. Johnson sought recognition from the
civil rights advocates for passing the bill while also
receiving recognition from the mostly southern
anti-civil rights Democrats for "killing the bill."
Because of
opposition and amendment of The Civil Rights Act of
1957, it was largely ineffective in its enforcement and
its scope. By 1960, slightly fewer
blacks were voting
in the South than had been in 1956. It did however open
the door to later legislation that was effective in
securing voting rights as well as ending legal
segregation and providing housing rights. In particular,
it established both the
Commission on Civil Rights and the office of
Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights.
Subsequently, on December 9, 1957, the
Civil Rights Division
was established within the
Justice Department by order of
U.S. Attorney General
William P. Rogers, giving the Assistant Attorney
General for Civil Rights a distinct division to command.
Previously, civil rights lawyers enforced
Reconstruction-era laws from within the
Criminal Division.
Many
segregationists wanted to delay the vote of the bill.
These actions infuriated many people who supported the
bill including
William F. Knowland who complained calling it
“Democratic footdragging”. He stated that the democrats
had an “Apparent determination to keep this subject off
the floor until mid May.” This complaint was significant
because if time ran out as it had on different occasions
no bill could be passed. The passage of the bill was
almost practically guaranteed and they were just
delaying the inevitable.
Though only 28 at
the time
Martin Luther King Jr. would not remain silent about
this bill or the issue of white supremacists. There had
been several hate crimes around this time with African
American churches being burned down, many African
Americans, women included, being beaten and stoned. He
stated that Eisenhower needed to make a speech to the
south and use “the weight of your great office to point
out to the people of the South the moral nature of the
problem.” Eisenhower was dismissive of Martin Luther
King Jr. claiming to have made many speeches in the
North as well as the South. He stated “I don’t know what
another speech would do about the thing right now.”
Disappointed by
this
Martin Luther King sent another telegram to the
President this time stating that those comments were “a
profound disappointment to the millions of Americans of
goodwill, north and south, who earnestly are looking to
you for leadership and guidance in this period of
inevitable social change.” He then tried to set up a
meeting with President Eisenhower but instead he got to
speak with Vice President Richard Nixon for two hours.
Nixon was reported to have been impressed with Reverend
King and even told the president that he might enjoy
meeting with him in the future.
The
Civil Rights Act of 1960 addressed some of the
shortcomings of the 1957 act by expanding the authority
of federal judges to protect voting rights and requiring
local authorities to maintain comprehensive voting
records. The
Civil Rights Act of 1964 made racial discrimination
and segregation illegal.
Much more effective
in terms of ensuring equality at the polls was the
Voting Rights Act of 1965, which abolished the
poll tax and other means of keeping blacks from the
voting booths.—Wikipedia
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James O. Eastland:
Views on civil rights and race
Eastland did not
mince words when it came to his feelings about the races
mingling. He testified to the Senate 10 days after the
Brown decision came down:
The Southern
institution of racial segregation or racial separation
was the correct, self-evident truth which arose from the
chaos and confusion of the Reconstruction period.
Separation promotes racial harmony. It permits each race
to follow its own pursuits, and its own civilization.
Segregation is not discrimination... Mr. President, it
is the law of nature, it is the law of God, that every
race has both the right and the duty to perpetuate
itself. All free men have the right to associate
exclusively with members of their own race, free from
governmental interference, if they so desire.
While patently
offensive today, at that time many white southerners
held such views.
When three civil
rights workers
Mickey Schwerner,
James Chaney, and
Andrew Goodman
went missing in Mississippi on June 21, 1964, he
reportedly told President
Lyndon Johnson that the incident was a hoax and
there was no
Ku Klux Klan in the state, surmising that the three
had gone to Chicago:
Johnson:
Jim, we've got three kids missing down there. What can I
do about it?
Eastland:
Well, I don't know. I don't believe there's . . . I don't
believe there's three missing.
Johnson:
We've got their parents down here.
Eastland: I
believe it's a publicity stunt...
Johnson once said that, "Jim Eastland
could be standing right in the middle of the worst
Mississippi flood ever known, and he'd say the niggers
caused it, helped out by the
Communists."
Eastland, along with
Senators
Robert Byrd,
John McClellan,
Olin D. Johnston,
Sam Ervin, and
Strom Thurmond, made unsuccessful attempts to block
Thurgood Marshall's confirmation to the Federal
Court of Appeals and the
Supreme Court. Often, offensive statements related
to race were attributed to Eastland during this period
even though they may have been made by other speakers.
Although Eastland was a staunch segregationist, he
refrained from the most extreme rhetoric that
characterized other civil rights opponents.
Eastland opposed the
Civil Rights Act of 1964. Its passage caused many
Mississippi Democrats to openly support
Barry Goldwater's presidential bid
that year, but Eastland did not publicly oppose the
election of Lyndon Johnson. In fact, four years earlier
he had quietly supported John F. Kennedy's presidential
campaign. Although Goldwater was heavily defeated by
incumbent Lyndon Johnson, he carried Mississippi with
87% of the popular vote (his best showing in any state
due to his opposition to the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
Eastland was often at
odds with Johnson's policy on civil rights, but their
friendship remained close and Johnson often sought
Eastland's support and guidance on other issues, such as
the failed
Chief Justice nomination of
Abe Fortas in 1969. In the 1950s, Johnson was one of
three Senators from the South who didn't sign the
Southern Manifesto, as did Eastland and most
Southern Senators.—Wikipedia
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Q&A with
Robert Caro
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Lyndon Baines
Johnson Signs 1964 Civil Rights Act
The Civil Rights Act of 1964
was passed after increasing political pressure
and violence against African-Americans. The drive for its
passage was boosted by the assassination of JFK. This was the
most far-reaching legislation of its kind since
Reconstruction. It included 11 titles which dealt with voting
practices, segregation, provided financial aid to
desegregating schools, extended the life of the Civil Rights
Commission for four more years, outlawed federal funds for
educations institutions or programs practicing discrimination,
outlawed employment and union discrimination, required
gathering census data by race in some areas, prevented federal
courts from sending a civil rights case back to state or local
courts, established the Community Relations Service (CRS) to
arbitrate local race problems and provided right of jury trial
in any case that arose from any section of the act.—Civil
Rights Acts and Other Remedies
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The Civil Rights Act of
1964 (Pub.L.
88-352, 78 Stat. 241,
enacted July 2, 1964) was a landmark piece of legislation in the
United States that outlawed major forms of discrimination
against African Americans and women, including racial
segregation. It ended unequal application of voter registration
requirements and
racial segregation in schools, at the workplace and by
facilities that served the general public ("public
accommodations").
Powers given to enforce the
act were initially weak, but were supplemented during later
years. Congress asserted its authority to legislate under
several different parts of the
United States Constitution, principally its power to
regulate
interstate commerce under
Article One (section 8), its duty to guarantee all citizens
equal protection of the laws under the
Fourteenth Amendment and its duty to protect voting rights
under the
Fifteenth Amendment. The Act was signed into
law by
President
Lyndon B. Johnson, who would later sign the landmark
Voting Rights Act into law.— Wikipedia
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Jerusalem: The Biography
By Simon Sebag Montefiore
Jerusalem is the universal city, the capital of two peoples, the shrine of three faiths; it is the prize of empires, the site of Judgment Day and the battlefield of today’s clash of civilizations. From King David to Barack Obama, from the birth of Judaism, Christianity and Islam to the Israel-Palestine conflict, this is the epic history of three thousand years of faith, slaughter, fanaticism and coexistence. How did this small, remote town become the Holy City, the “center of the world” and now the key to peace in the Middle East? In a gripping narrative, Simon Sebag Montefiore reveals this ever-changing city in its many incarnations, bringing every epoch and character blazingly to life. Jerusalem’s biography is told through the wars, love affairs and revelations of the men and women—kings, empresses, prophets, poets, saints, conquerors and whores—who created, destroyed, chronicled and believed in Jerusalem. As well as the many ordinary Jerusalemites who have left their mark on the city, its cast varies from Solomon, Saladin and Suleiman the Magnificent to Cleopatra, Caligula and Churchill . . . |
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The Years of Lyndon Johnson: The Passage of Power
By Robert Caro
A breathtakingly dramatic story [told] with consummate artistry and ardor . . . It showcases Mr. Caro’s masterly gifts as a writer: his propulsive sense of narrative, his talent for enabling readers to see and feel history in the making and his ability to situate his subjects’ actions within the context of their times . . Johnson emerges as both a larger-than-life, Shakespearean personage –with epic ambition and epic flaws—and a more human-scale puzzle . . . Taken together the installments of Mr. Caro’s monumental life of Johnson so far not only create a minutely detailed picture of an immensely complicated and conflicted individual, but they also form a revealing prism by which to view the better part of a century in American life and politics.” —Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times |
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The White Masters of the
World
From
The World and Africa, 1965
By W. E. B. Du Bois
W. E. B. Du Bois’
Arraignment and Indictment of White Civilization
(Fletcher)
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Ancient African Nations
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The Death of Emmett Till by Bob Dylan
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The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll
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Only a Pawn in Their Game
Rev. Jesse Lee Peterson Thanks America for
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George Jackson /
Hurricane Carter
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The Journal of Negro History issues at Project Gutenberg
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Haitian Declaration of Independence 1804
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January 1, 1804 -- The Founding of
Haiti
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