LBJ'S Daughter Was Wrong on 'Selma,' Dad

In an article reported by Newsmax, the daughter of former President Lyndon B. Johnson has slammed the hit new movie "Selma" for depicting her father as "a reluctant latecomer to the civil rights movement."

Saying she was "saddened" by the film, Luci Baines Johnson took to the pages of The Texas Tribune to claim her dad was instrumental in getting the Civil Rights Act and Voting Rights Act passed during his presidency while risking his own political career.

Is Luci Baines Johnson ignorant of her father’s actual record?

As a congressman, LBJ said that President Truman's civil rights program "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 have voted against the so-called poll tax repeal bill . . . I have voted against the so-called anti-lynching bill."

The truth is that Lyndon Baines Johnson was a life-long segregationist who resisted numerous attempts to eliminate the poll tax and literacy tests during his 23-year career in the House and Senate. He blocked every major and minor piece of meaningful civil rights legislation as the leader of the Southern block in the U.S. Senate, and as its powerful majority leader.

It was Lyndon Johnson who neutered the 1957 Civil Rights Act with a poison pill amendment that required violators of the act be tried before state (all-white), not federal juries.

Many contemporary liberals including Joseph Rauh, the president of Americans for Democratic Action, and A. Philip Randolph, a vice president of the AFL-CIO, called the bill worthless, and “worse than no bill at all.”

Nor did LBJ’s personal conduct reflect support for civil rights. His black chauffeur Robert Parker wrote in his book “Capitol Hill in Black and White” of his personal experiences.

“I would drive Johnson and his party up to the front gate of Navy stadium with instructions to be waiting there when they [the senators] walked out after the game. Whenever I was late, no matter what the reason, Johnson called me a lazy, good-for-nothing n*gger. He especially liked to call me n*gger in front of Southerners and racists like Richard Russell. It was, I soon learned, LBJ’s way of being one of the boys.”

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