calmWhile in the Senate, Johnson was not inclined towards strong civil rights legislation. In sharp contrast to what would occur during his Presidency, Johnson was strongly opposed as Senate Majority Leader to President Dwight Eisenhower's 1957 Civil Rights Act, fearful that its passage would tear his party apart. He and Mississippi Senator James Eastland saw to it that the bill ended up being far weaker than it originally started, but it still became law and Johnson took credit for its passage.
As a Texan, Johnson had to deal with a lot of southern resistance when he convinced Congress to pass the Civil Rights Act of 1964. That legislation outlawed most forms of racial segregation. President Kennedy had originally proposed the civil rights bill in June 1963 and as Vice-President, Johnson called the congressional leaders to the White House in late October 1963 to line up the necessary votes in the House for the bill tro pass. After Kennedy's assassination in November of 1963, it was Johnson who broke a filibuster by Southern Democrats begun in March 1964. A former senate majority leader himself, Johnson pushed the bill through the Senate. Johnson signed the bill into law on July 2, 1964. Following the signing of the bill, Johnson is reported to have said to one of his advisors "We have lost the South for a generation",
In 1965, Johnson achieved passage of a second civil rights bill, the Voting Rights Act, which outlawed discrimination in voting, allowing millions of southern African-Americans to vote for the first time.
After the murder of civil rights worker Viola Liuzzo, Johnson went on television to announce the arrest of four Ku Klux Klansmen implicated in her death. He angrily denounced the Klan as a "hooded society of bigots," and warned them to "return to a decent society before it's too late." Johnson was the first President to arrest and prosecute members of the Klan since Ulysses S. Grant about 93 years earlier. In his remarks he stressed the theme of Christian redemption to push for civil rights in an attempt to mobilize support from church groups.
In an address he gave at the Howard University commencement on June 4, 1965, Johnson said that his goals were “to shatter forever not only the barriers of law and public practice, but the walls which bound the condition of many by the color of his skin. To dissolve, as best we can, the antique enmities of the heart which diminish the holder, divide the great democracy, and do wrong — great wrong — to the children of God...”
In 1967, Johnson nominated civil rights attorney Thurgood Marshall to be the first African American Associate Justice of the Supreme Court. As a lawyer Marshall had argued many of the leading civil rights cases before the Supreme Court, including the famous case of Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas.
Following is a YouTube video containing Johnson's remarks upon the signing of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.