Reply #37: Civil rights legislation passed because people were marching in the streets and forcing the courts

[Empowerer]

to change laws.

In other words, extreme external pressure was exerted on Congress - and society, in general.

While it's pleasant to "remember" that LBJ simply marched up to Congress and forced them to pass the Civil Rights Act and Voting Rights Act, LBJ was responding to an incredible public wave. The pressure to pass this legislation came from the people. Absent that, Congress would NOT have moved these bills and there wasn't a damned thing LBJ could have done to make them.

Where were the people in the past couple of years? The loudest and most organized voices were on the right, not the left.

Frankly, I'm a little tired of Democrats sitting back and watching the President from the sidelines and then getting angry at him because we don't think he's doing enough - while we don't do anything other than talk at him and each other, as if that's going to effect change. Change is hard, politics is hard. It requires us to try to convince people who don't agree with us at all to shift their thinking and do something we want them to do. That's not easy. It's so much easier for us to demand that our President do it for us while we critique him from ringside . . . "GRAB HIM BY THE ANKLE!!!" Well, sometimes, we have to jump in the ring and hold down somebody's arms so that the President CAN grab him by the ankle.

And, fyi, the revisionism also extends back to John Kennedy, who was harshly criticized by the civil rights community for not doing enough on civil rights. The Civil Rights Act was going nowhere and Kennedy did little to push it until the March on Washington - and even then, he did not fight as hard for it as many felt he should.