Teacher Key - Fasttrack to America's Past

Fasttrack to America's Past
Teacher Key

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Page 215

Page 215 - LBJ Calls for Racial Justice

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 held high, 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.

Group discussion questions

   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 new federal law is needed to strike down illegal barriers to voting that deny blacks the right to vote.

   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 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."

Copyright 2018 by David Burns. All rights reserved. Illustrations and reading selections appearing in this work are taken from sources in the public domain and from private collections used by permission. Sources include: the Dover Pictorial Archive, the Library of Congress, The National Archives, The Hart Publishing Co., Corel Corporation and its licensors, Nova Development Corporation and its licensors, and others. Maps were created or adapted by the author using reference maps from the United States Geological Survey and Cartesia Software. Please see the home page for this title for more information.