Spring 2001, Vol. 33, No. 1
LBJ Fights the White Backlash
The Racial Politics of the 1964 Presidential Campaign, Part 2
By Jeremy D. Mayer
© 2001 by Jeremy D. Mayer
The General Election: Johnson's Courage
As Johnson attempted to keep "his" convention from being overtaken by racial tension, he received cheering news of an emerging "frontlash" against Goldwater. By the close of the Democratic Convention, it was clear that Goldwater's stances on Social Security, the Tennessee Valley Authority, agricultural programs, and most important, nuclear security, were causing record high levels of defections by Republicans. Surveys indicated that for every Democrat who was supporting Goldwater because of civil rights, the Democrats were winning three Republicans on other issues. However, Johnson's claim that the Republicans were losing support because "they don't want to treat people alike and they don't want to treat all people as Americans" is untenable.73 Reports that crossed his desk at this time indicated that top Democrats felt that civil rights were damaging the party. Governor Buford Ellington of Tennessee wrote to Johnson in August about feelings among Democratic governors.
The so-called backlash . . . does actually exist. . . . People holding jobs with industry and government are afraid they are going to be forced out of jobs to make room for people who are not qualified either by training or experience . . . that white people will be discriminated against in future employment. . . . I find this exists in every state. . . . There is a feeling that law violators are not being apprehended and convicted while they continue to destroy life and property . . . any effort that can be made on the part of the Federal government to change a pattern of Negro thinking that accuses the police of "brutality" for the slightest enforcement of law should be made.74
Throughout the early period of the general election campaign, Johnson maintained an extraordinarily large lead over Goldwater in every national survey. The only potential opportunities open to Goldwater revolved around racial unrest and white backlash. On nearly every other issue of concern, polls showed that Johnson was well ahead. Johnson's approval numbers never dipped far below 70 percent. As pollster Sam Lubell concluded, "The racial issue is the only one that can elect Goldwater."75
Civil rights did contribute to Johnson's support from one group: the black community. A Philip Randolph, the dean of the civil rights leadership, endorsed Johnson, breaking a vow to never support anyone but a Socialist. Similarly, the highest profile leader in the black community, King, campaigned against Goldwater if not for Johnson.76 And Johnson's reception in black areas was euphoric. On his way to Brown University for a speech, Johnson drove through a black section of Providence. Johnson's car was besieged, with onlookers pledging their support and even their love for the President.77 As the election neared, the percentage of blacks who identified as Republicans dropped precipitously, from 23 percent in 1960 to 12 percent in 1964.78 A nationwide survey had trouble finding a single black Goldwater supporter.79
Rather than writing off or catering to the backlash voters in the South, Johnson chose to confront his co-regionalists. Johnson calculated that an appeal to Southern gentility would take the sting off of opposition to black progress and sent his Alabama-born wife, Lady Bird, on a train tour of the South. Even so, Lady Bird faced counter-demonstrators and animosity during her tour, including mocking signs demanding "Black Bird Go Home."80 The tour was to end in New Orleans, after snaking through Virginia and down through the heart of the South. Johnson flew out to meet his wife and give a major address in New Orleans. In planning for his appearance, his aides recommended caution. As a memorandum from one aide noted, the situation in Louisiana was so bad that the major thrust of the Louisiana Democratic Party's campaign against Goldwater was to accuse him of being a closet integrationist. Thus, "the less said about Civil Rights, the better."81 Similarly, Bill Moyers, in a wire to fellow aide Jack Valenti, advised the President to avoid "civil rights" but perhaps mention "constitutional rights" and praise the city for its progress on "settling their problems in the spirit of the golden rule."82 Yet Johnson threw all caution to the wind, and gave perhaps the bluntest address on racial politics ever delivered by an American President. It was the speech of a populist Southerner mourning the sad effects of racism on whites and blacks alike. Rather than listening to those who shouted "Nigger, nigger, nigger!" to win elections, LBJ asked white Southerners to recognize their common destiny with Southern blacks.
Now the people that would use us and destroy us first divide us . . . all these years, they have kept their foot on our necks by appealing to our animosities and dividing us. Whatever your views are, we have a Constitution, and we have a Bill of Rights, and we have the Law of the Land, and two-thirds of the Democrats in the Senate voted for it, and three fourths of the Republicans. I signed it, and I am going to enforce it, and I am going to observe it, and I think any man that is worthy of the high office of the President is going to do the same thing. But I am not going to let them build up the hate and try to buy my people by appealing to their prejudice.83
Far from soft-pedaling civil rights, Johnson had traveled to the Deep South to deliver the message that the days of Democratic racism were numbered.84 Would the flag of racial fear be picked up by the opposing party?
Goldwater's Choices: Desperation and DecisionEven before the Republican Convention, Goldwater's chances were seen as dim. The nation was largely at peace and prosperous, and Johnson's lead in the polls was immense. Goldwater was also far to the right of the public on most issues, and the post-assassination glow of Camelot still colored the White House. Years later, Goldwater admitted that his own enthusiasm for the campaign and his hopes of winning were extinguished when John Kennedy was assassinated.
In the general election, race was seen by a number of insiders in the Goldwater camp as the only hope of a desperate campaign. Of all of Johnson's perceived vulnerabilities, an internal memorandum lists only one that could not be spun as a racial issue, the taint of corruption surrounding Johnson. The few other issues that were tilting toward Goldwater were all more or less amenable to a racial characterization in 1964 America: civil rights, juvenile delinquency, welfare cheating, crime and violence generally, and unnecessary government spending.85 As an unnamed analyst for the campaign noted, "There is considerable evidence to show that every time there is violence by Negroes, Goldwater gains supporters."86 One report that looked at the typical nonvoter argued that he might be conflicted between his traditional allegiance to the Democratic Party and "the pull of his prejudice."87 The advice was clear-exploit the backlash.
Yet Goldwater's first move following the convention was to defuse the issue. In contrast to his speeches in the primary blaming unrest on civil rights legislation, he met with the President to remove the riots from the political sphere. Goldwater's campaign missed numerous opportunities to play the race card. The general election campaign's anti-Humphrey pamphlet, for example, failed to attack "Mr. Civil Rights" on racial issues, instead focusing on foreign policy and his alleged advocacy of socialism in America.88 During the general election campaign, Goldwater attacked the Supreme Court for rulings involving morality, federalism, separation of powers, and apportionment, not school desegregation. In his speech in St. Petersburg in September, he did attack the Warren Court, but for coddling criminals.89 In a speech in October in Texas, Goldwater stayed focused on foreign policy and the dangers of communism, except for a brief screed against the court and some mention of law and order.90 Certainly Goldwater's attacks on the court were welcomed by those who saw the court as going too far in protecting minorities. Moreover, crime and law and order were racial codewords for many conservative whites. Yet by contrast, in 1961 Goldwater had attacked the court directly on integration. By the fall of 1964, he was retreating from some of the stridency of his appeals to backlashers.
Goldwater even endorsed the CRA, which had been his highest profile anti-civil rights stance, saying "I will not make civil rights an issue. Let's give this civil rights law a real chance to work. Let's use moral persuasion."91 There are two interpretations of Goldwater's shift. One is that Goldwater had been sincere in his discussions with Johnson and that, as he told the President, he did not want to be remembered by his grandchildren for whipping up racial fears.92 Alternatively, Goldwater was simply becoming subtler, attempting to attack the issue indirectly, knowing that an assault on desegregation would alienate many moderate voters. Those who were anti-black or opposed further civil rights legislation were already likely to vote for him. Perhaps Goldwater had only used race when he needed to solidify his hold on the South and the backlash states in the North during the primaries. Whatever the truth, Goldwater on at least one occasion intervened to stop his campaign from exploiting racial fears. In a long-form film intended for national broadcast, Goldwater's team included inflammatory footage of blacks rioting and looting. While the central theme is not racial unrest but an overall decline in morality, Goldwater deemed the whole film to be "racist" and canceled it, a costly choice for a strapped campaign.93
Goldwater's reluctance to use racial fear-mongering may have also stemmed from Republican leaders who put increasing pressure on him to relent on civil rights. During the convention, Governor William Scranton had penned an angry public letter that attacked Goldwater for his "irresponsibility" on racial matters.94 A number of Republicans were also unhappy that Goldwater did not immediately reject an endorsement from the Grand Dragon of Alabama's KKK. Former President Eisenhower convened a conference of leading Republicans in August, at which Goldwater promised to uphold the existing civil rights laws if elected.95 By the start of the general election season, then, Goldwater had promised two Presidents that he would moderate his rhetoric in areas that touched on race.
Still, much of the campaign staff continued to believe that the white backlash was Goldwater's only chance for victory. Thus his campaign zig-zagged on race, as it did on so many others. In the person of Goldwater's running mate, conservative New York congressman William Miller, these tensions are readily apparent. Miller on national television refused four times to disavow the endorsement of the Klan leader.96 Moreover, it was Miller who in an October speech in Philadelphia drew perhaps the crudest connection between civil rights and civil unrest:
It's all right to send hundreds of FBI agents and US Marshals into Philadelphia, Mississippi, to protect the civil rights of a few people there; but no White House effort is made to protect the property and civil rights of thousands of people in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.97
The odious comparison of the murders of SNCC workers in Philadelphia, Mississippi to civil unrest in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, could have come straight from George Wallace's mouth. In the same speech, Miller attacked police review boards and denied the very existence of police brutality.
Yet scarcely a month before, Miller attacked Johnson for hypocrisy on civil rights and used his old record of votes on lynching, poll taxes, and segregation against him.98 And it was Miller who wanted to hit LBJ hard on his use of a racist covenant on his Texas property. John Grenier, the Goldwater staffer leading the Southern campaign, opposed using the covenant issue because he felt that the attack would backfire in the South. Finally, Miller went ahead without authorization and raised the covenant in a speech in Texas and then again repeatedly in the closing days of the campaign.99 Johnson's 1945 restricted deed was also the focus of a Republican National Committee press release on September 15. The confusion among Republicans on race was aptly demonstrated when the very next day, the RNC welcomed Senator Strom Thurmond to the party.100 While attacking Johnson for supporting residential segregation twenty years earlier, the GOP welcomed the leading figure in the movement to preserve segregation.
If there was confusion about how to use racial issues at the highest levels of the Republican campaign, there was much less further down. In Southern districts, brochures featuring the worst racial stereotypes and playing to ugly white fears of black progress were endemic. If Goldwater was hesitant in some post-convention speeches to link peaceful demonstrators to violent looters, his campaign showed no such reluctance.101 And these tactics had their desired effect. An Atlanta Constitution columnist observed: "The way things are going now, it's almost dangerous for Democratic candidates for Congress in Georgia not to be for Goldwater or to pronounce the word Negro correctly."102 Perhaps the most cynical exploitation of race was performed by one of the few remaining black Republicans, Clay Claiborne, assistant to the chairman of the RNC for Negro Affairs. Over 1,500,000 leaflets were printed on election eve, urging blacks to write in Martin Luther King instead of voting for Johnson. The campaign, credited to the fictitious "Committee For Negroes in Government," was exposed by King and the media as a hoax before the election.103
In the end, Goldwater's campaign, despite its wavering on civil rights, did articulate a policy that was consistently more conservative and anti-black equality than Johnson's. The contrast between Johnson and Goldwater on race was stark for most voters, particularly blacks and Southern whites. As opposed to 1960, overwhelming majorities of voters saw the two parties as differing sharply on civil rights.104 Did Goldwater's crushing defeat therefore represent a vindication of Johnson's policies on civil rights?
The Meaning of the LandslideThe victory of Lyndon Johnson was one of the great landslides of the twentieth century. Johnson won a stunning majority in the electoral college, and his popular vote margin was nearly a postwar record. Moreover, Goldwater's name at the top of the ticket was poisonous for a number of congressional Republican incumbents and statewide officeholders. The devastation was nearly complete.
Nearly, but not entirely. The one region in which Republicans gained was in the previously solid South. The five states that Goldwater won outside Arizona (Mississippi, Georgia, Alabama, South Carolina, and Louisiana) were the top five states in terms of black population levels. Goldwater's message of racial conservatism carried the day with the white electorate of those states, sometimes by landslide numbers (87 percent in Mississippi). Of the 507 Southern counties that Goldwater carried, 233 had never voted Republican before. The Goldwater effect was present even in parts of the urban ethnic North, if more muted.105 Moreover, while Goldwater was a disaster for most Republicans, of the twenty new Republican members of Congress, nine were from the South, and five were from Alabama alone. Eisenhower and Nixon had won border Southern states like Virginia and Tennessee. Goldwater lost those states while winning the heart of Dixie, the black belt.
There is no explanation for this pattern of success other than race. Goldwater was unpopular on any number of other issues and was a weak, undisciplined, and uncharismatic candidate as well. Wild accusations that Johnson was moving toward a one-world government and unilateral disarmament fit in only too well with Goldwater's inept handling of his supporters among the John Birch Society and the Klan.106 Goldwater's loose comments on nuclear weapons (such as expressing a desire to drop a warhead in the men's room of the Kremlin) were political dynamite and frightened much of the electorate. Even within the Goldwater campaign, there were those who saw their candidate's weaknesses clearly. A Goldwater trip to the South was met with "idolatry" and reactions "wilder than the Beatles would have gotten," but the internal campaign report also notes that Goldwater's oratory was low-key, listless, and sometimes stumbling.107 Goldwater's staff also realized that his radical plan to sell the Tennessee Valley Authority was causing even racist whites to vote for Johnson.108 A Florida editorial urged Southern whites not to support Goldwater even if they agreed with his position on civil rights, because his other positions would have grave economic consequences for the region.109 Goldwater's opposition to most poverty programs, the TVA, aid to education, Social Security, the Rural Electrification Administration, and farm price supports surely cost him votes throughout the South and the nation.
Outside the Deep South, race also did not matter as much as it appeared it would in 1963 and well into the summer of 1964. The cities calmed down from the brief riots of July. The brutal murders of the three civil rights workers, as well as other killings in the South, helped the civil rights movement retain its moral high ground in the public eye. As journalist Theodore White concluded: "Backlash . . . was a midsummer political thunderhead-frightfully black and dangerous as it approached, but then over very quickly."110 Had rioting continued or worsened, there is little doubt that Goldwater would have done much better. In the end, Johnson's assessment that the election had to be about something other than civil rights for him to achieve victory was correct. One thing many Americans agreed with Goldwater about was civil rights. In a July Harris poll, 58 percent of whites feared that blacks might "take over" their jobs, while 43 percent and 38 percent of whites feared black inroads in their neighborhoods and schools respectively.111 For Goldwater, the temptation to make civil rights the dominant issue of his campaign must have been great. Civil rights was one issue that seemed to move Goldwater's crowds during the campaign. When his speeches touched on it, the response was immediate. But for the most part, Goldwater avoided the issue after the convention and instead attempted to convince his audiences to go back to the economic and regulatory system of 1931.112 Goldwater, like Johnson, devoted only one speech entirely to civil rights, and it was far more intellectual than visceral in its approach. Goldwater's decision to put economic and security policy into the foreground, rather than his opposition to civil rights, aided Johnson's effort to have the election revolve around issues other than race.
The results of the 1964 election put the Republican Party at a crossroads. For some, the Johnson landslide demonstrated that civil rights was not just another issue for the party of Lincoln but the preeminent moral issue that would splinter the party if there were "even a hint of appeasement of racists."113 For others, the choice revolved not around principles but the fact of black electoral power:
If the Republicans can do nothing to include the Negroes in their vision of America, they enter any future Presidential race with more than one ninth of the nation locked against them. Their alternatives now are clear-either to try again to divide the Negro vote with the Democrats or accept the Negro vote as permanently hostile and make strategy accepting that hostility and appealing only to whites.114
In 1960 the Republicans made a serious effort for the black vote, and failed. In 1964 they accepted black hostility and tried to win without minorities. The pendulum that had swung quite far toward civil rights in 1960 now had swung far closer to George Wallace, although it never reached his pure anti-black malice. Neither strategy was successful in the short term, but in the ashes of the Goldwater defeat, Richard Nixon and others saw hopes for a Republican renewal, based on peeling off white voters from their Democratic allegiance. One lesson of 1964 for Republicans was that the open racism practiced by Goldwater's Southern supporters must be decried, denied, and denounced. Yet the second lesson of 1964 for the GOP was central to later Republican victories. If racial politics could draw white voters into the camp of a candidate as extreme and unelectable as Barry Goldwater, then it was indeed among the most powerful forces in American politics. What might it do in the hands of a more appealing messenger? By 1968 the political alchemists of the Republican Party had refined a heady mixture of codeworded backlash appeals and surface adherence to racial egalitarianism. Nixon's 1968 and 1972 "Southern Strategy" campaigns were designed to bring in the backlash votes without alarming the rest of the electorate. More recently, the 1988 Bush campaign used the rape of a white woman by a convicted black murderer to encourage white Democrats to vote Republican, an odious campaign that Barry Goldwater would have refused to run on. While 1964 was a tremendous victory for the Democratic Party and for Lyndon Johnson, it was also the election that taught Republicans how to use racial politics to help pave the road to the White House for the next three decades.
LBJ Fights the White Backlash, Part 1
Jeremy D. Mayer is an assistant professor of political science at Kalamazoo College. He is the author of Running on Race: Racial Politics in Presidential Campaigns, 1960 - 2000, forthcoming from Random House.
Notes
1. Recording of Telephone Conversation between LBJ and Carl Sanders, July 24, 1964, 12:30 p.m., Citation #4328, Recordings of Conversations— White House Series, Recordings and Transcripts of Conversations and Meetings, Lyndon Baines Johnson (LBJ) Library, Austin, TX.
2. Edward Carmines and James Stimson, Issue Evolution: Race and the Transformation of American Politics (1989); Thomas Byrne Edsall and Mary D. Edsall, Chain Reaction (1992); Author's interview with David Broder, Dec. 31, 1998, Washington DC.
3. Goldwater was not Jewish, but his father's family was, leading to the comment by Art Buchwald that he'd always known our first Jewish President would be an Episcopalian.
4. "Some Indications of Public Opinion at the Close of 1963," January 1964, Research Division, Republican National Committee, box 3, W Series, Senator Barry M. Goldwater Papers (GP), Arizona Historical Foundation, Hayden Library, Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ.
5. John Lewis with Michael D'Orso, Walking with the Wind (1998); David J. Garrow, Bearing the Cross: Martin Luther King, Jr., and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (1986).
6. The sterling rhetoric and strong action on civil rights that characterized Kennedy in his last year also served to ameliorate some of the tension between the White House and the civil rights community. Kennedy had broken his promise to integrate public housing on his first day in office, and had appointed racist judges in the South. See Andrew Young, oral history, June 18, 1970, p. 3, LBJ Library. Had Kennedy been assassinated in November of 1962, he would be remembered as an equivocator on civil rights.
7. Peter O'Donnell, Jr., "Progress Report #2" Letter to Goldwater state chairmen, Sept. 23, 1963, box 8, W Series, GP.
8. A. Leon Higginbotham, Jr., Oct. 7, 1976, oral history, p. 20, LBJ Library.
9. Bayard Rustin, June 17, 1969, oral history, LBJ Library; Lewis, Walking with the Wind; Higginbotham oral history, LBJ Library; James Farmer, October 1969 oral history, LBJ Library.
10. Robert Caro, Means of Ascent (1990) pp. xvii - xviii.
11. Caro, The Path to Power (1982), p. 364.
12. Harry McPherson, A Political Education (1972) pp. 143 - 144.
13. Ibid., pp. 144 - 145.
14. Ibid., pp. 142 - 143; author's interview with Merle Black, Oct. 12, 1999, Kalamazoo, MI.
15. Vaughn Davis Bornet, The Presidency of Lyndon Baines Johnson (1983), pp. 96 - 97.
16. Doris Kearns, Lyndon Johnson and the American Dream (1976); Jeff Shesol, Mutual Contempt: Lyndon Johnson, Robert Kennedy, and the Feud that Defined a Decade (1997), pp. 85 - 87.
17. Lyndon Baines Johnson, The Vantage Point (1971), p. 29.
18. Yet so deep was the distrust among certain liberals of Johnson's shift on civil rights that a popular joke extending well into his presidency had him shouting "nigger" at midnight in the middle of nowhere to release his allegedly pent-up racism (Kearns, American Dream, p. 230).
19. Edwin McDowell, "Goldwater: A Portrait in Words and Pictures," Human Events, Vol. 22, Jan. 25, 1964; Gilbert A. Harrison, "Way Out West: An Interim Report on Barry Goldwater," New Republic, Nov. 23, 1963.
20. Robert Alan Goldberg, Barry Goldwater (1995), p. 34
21. George S. McMillan, "GOP Muffing Some Good Chances in the South," Washington Post, Nov. 26, 1961, p. E1.
22. Goldberg, Barry Goldwater, p. 154.
23. Barry M. Goldwater, "The GOP Invades the South," Saturday Evening Post, 1963.
24. George C. Wallace, June 17, 1969, oral history, p. 5, LBJ Library.
25. Dan Carter, The Politics of Rage (1995), p. 200.
26. Theodore White, The Making of the President: 1964 (1965) pp. 223 - 224.
27. Recording of Telephone Conversation between LBJ and Hubert Humphrey, May 13, 1964, 7:25 p.m., Citation #3450, Recordings of Conversations— White House Series— Recordings and Transcripts of Conversations and Meetings, LBJ Library.
28. So worried was the White House that they prepared four different DNC press releases on the eve of the Maryland primary— one for Wallace scoring under 30%, between 30 - 40%, between 40 - 50%, and one for the nightmare scenario of Wallace winning a majority of the vote. "Statement of John M. Bailey," Aug. 2, 1964, box 40, Moyers Files, LBJ Library.
29. Carter, The Politics of Rage, p. 214.
30. Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States, Lyndon B. Johnson, 1963 - 1964 (1965), 1: 357.
31. That a higher percentage of Republicans voted for the CRA bill in both the House and the Senate is a fact that even top scholars have forgotten. In a recent article on race politics, Virginia Sapiro and David Canon attribute passage to a Democratic Congress defeating Republican opposition. Given that Republican leaders marshaled more of their troops to vote for Johnson's bill than Humphrey was able to on the other side, this is unsustainable even as rhetoric. So deafening was the symbolism of Goldwater's anti-CRA vote that it has drowned out the fact that congressional Republicans were more pro-civil rights than the Democrats. (Virginia Sapiro and David T. Canon, "Race, Gender, and the Clinton Presidency" in Colin Campbell and Bert A. Rockman, eds., The Clinton Legacy (1999), p. 171).
32. RNC "FACT Book," 1964 Campaign, W Series, box 4, GP.
33. Karl A. Lamb, "Under One Roof: Barry Goldwater's Campaign Staff" (unpubl. ms., n.d.), 1964 Campaign, series W, box 8, pp. 18 - 30, GP.
34. The most offensive example of a fawning attempt to appeal to African Americans was certainly an RNC pamphlet entitled Who is George Lewis? The text and photographs show blacks happily laboring at the nerve center of Republicanism. The implication is that blacks hold positions of high responsibility within the RNC, but the star of the pamphlet is the head of the library, scarcely a policy position. Other featured blacks direct the printing operations and work as secretaries. The complete absence of blacks as committee members or elected officials is not mentioned. A more transparent effort at tokenism can scarcely be imagined.
35. Harrison, "Way Out West."
36. White, Making of the President, pp. 74 - 75.
37. Associated Press, "Goldwater Forces Take Control of State GOP," Macon Telegraph News, p. 1, May 3, 1964.
38. Edsall and Edsall, Chain Reaction, p. 43
39. Carter, Politics of Rage, p. 218.
40. Author's interview with David Broder, Dec. 31, 1998, Washington DC.
41. "Speech by Barry Goldwater, Columbus, GA May 1," 1964, box 1, W Series, GP.
42. Goldwater, "National Goldwater Rally, Madison Square Garden, New York," May 13, 1964, box 1, W Series, GP.
43. Carter, Politics of Rage, pp. 220 - 222.
44. "Text of Remarks by Henry Cabot Lodge, Committee on Resolutions," San Francisco, July 8, 1964, and Nelson Rockefeller, "Statement to Platform Committee," San Francisco, July 7, 1964, both in box 7, W Series, GP; Garrow, Bearing the Cross, pp. 339 - 340.
45. Rowland Evans and Robert Novak, "The White Man's Party," Washington Post, July 15, 1964.
46. The Democratic platform echoed that sentiment, in less fulsome language. "True Democracy of opportunity will not be served by establishing quotas based on the same false distinctions we seek to erase, nor can the effects of prejudice be neutralized by the expedient of preferential practices." "Laird Group File," box 7, W Series, GP.
47. Given the extraordinary irregularities in the 1960 election, it should have been expected that the Republicans would recruit poll watchers and seek to combat vote fraud. However, overzealous ballot security focusing on black areas can be interpreted as a move to keep blacks from voting.
48. "The 1964 Republican Platform, Point by Point Comment, Domestic Issues," July 16, 1964, Office Files of Bill Moyers, box 112, LBJ Library.
49. "Backlash Vote is GOP Pitfall," LIFE Magazine, July 24, 1964, p. 4.
50. Recording of Telephone Conversation between LBJ and John Connally, July 23, 1964, 5:31 p.m., Citation #4322, Recordings of Telephone Conversations— White House Series, LBJ Library.
51. Ibid., Citation #4323.
52. White, Making of the President, p. 235.
53. Lewis, Walking with the Wind, pp. 276 - 277; White, Making of the President, p. 236; Kearns, American Dream, p. 192.
54. Recording of Telephone Conversation between LBJ and George Reedy, July 20, 1964, 7:40 p.m., Citation #4286, Recordings of Telephone Conversations— White House Series, LBJ Library.
55. Recording of Telephone Conversation between LBJ and Connally, July 23, 1964, 5:31 p.m., Citation #4320, Recordings of Telephone Conversations— White House Series, LBJ Library.
56. Recording of Telephone Conversation between LBJ and Reedy, July 20, 1964, 7:40 p.m., Citation #4286, Recordings of Telephone Conversations— White House Series, LBJ Library.
57. Recording of Telephone Conversation between LBJ and Nicholas Katzenbach, July 25, 1964, 10:15 a.m., Citation #4337 - 4339, Recordings of Telephone Conversations— White House Series, LBJ Library.
58. Recording of Telephone Conversation between LBJ and Robert McNamara, July 24, 1964, 5:56 p.m., Citation #4333, Recordings of Telephone Conversations— White House Series, LBJ Library.
59. Recording of Telephone Conversation between LBJ and Connally, July 23, 1964, 5:31 p.m., Citation #4322, Recordings of Telephone Conversations— White House Series, LBJ Library.
60. Lewis, Walking with the Wind, pp. 277 - 282.
61. Recording of Telephone Conversation between LBJ and Connally, July 23, 1964, 5:31 p.m., Citation #4320, Recordings of Telephone Conversations— White House Series, LBJ Library.
62. Recording of Telephone Conversation between LBJ and Carl Sanders, July 24, 1964, 12:30 p.m., Citation #4328, Recordings of Telephone Conversations— White House Series, LBJ Library.
63. Lee C. White to LBJ, Aug. 12, 1964, Executive and General Series, PL 1/ST box 81, LBJ Library.
64. White, Making of the President, p. 236; Deke De Loach to LBJ, Aug. 19, 1964, Executive and General Series PL 1/ST, box 81, LBJ Library; White to LBJ, Aug. 19, 1964, Executive and General Series PL 1/ST, box 81, LBJ Library.
65. Lewis, Walking in the Wind, p. 281.
66. Ibid., p. 280.
67. Recording of Telephone Conversation between LBJ and James Eastland, Aug. 25, 1964, 7:45 p.m., Citation #5193, Recordings of Telephone Conversations— White House Series, LBJ Library.
68. Recording of Telephone Conversation between LBJ and Walter Jenkins, Aug. 25, 1964, 9:33 p.m., Citation #5210, Recordings of Telephone Conversations— White House Series, LBJ Library.
69. Recording of Telephone Conversation between LBJ and Bill Moyers, Aug. 25, 1964, 9:30 p.m., Citation #5208, Recordings of Telephone Conversations— White House Series, LBJ Library.
70. Recording of Telephone Conversation between LBJ and Walter Reuther, Aug. 24, 1964, 8:25 p.m., Citation #5165, Recordings of Telephone Conversations— White House Series, LBJ Library.
71. Recording of Telephone Conversation between LBJ and Connally, July 23, 1964, 5:31 p.m., Citation #4320, Recordings of Telephone Conversations— White House Series, LBJ Library.
72. Lewis, Walking in the Wind, p. 280.
73. "Remarks of the President Before the National Democratic Committee, Atlantic City, NJ," Aug. 28, 1964, box 21, Moyers Files, LBJ Library.
74. Buford Ellington to LBJ, Aug. 10, 1964, box 77, Confidential Files, LBJ Library.
75. Johnson, Vantage Point, p. 109.
76. Bayard Rustin, June 17, 1969, oral history, and Andrew Young, June 18, 1970, oral history, LBJ Library.
77. Johnson, Vantage Point, pp. 105 - 106.
78. T. W. Benham, "1964 Presidential Campaign Base Survey," Opinion Research Corporation, August, box 4, W Series, GP.
79. Bornet, Presidency of Lyndon Baines Johnson, p. 115.
80. Jan Jarboe Russell, "Lady Bird Flies South," George, August 1999, p. 89.
81. Frank Givney to LBJ, "New Orleans Speech," n.d., 1964, box 125, Confidential Files, LBJ Library.
82. Bill Moyers to Jack Valenti, Oct. 9, 1964, box 125, Confidential Files, LBJ Library.
83. "Remarks of the President at a Dinner in the Grand Ballroom of the Jung Hotel," New Orleans, Oct. 9, 1964, box 125, Confidential Files, LBJ Library.
84. Johnson did soft-pedal civil rights on occasion, as with his delicate treatment of Southern delegations at the convention. A similar event occurred in the closing weeks of the 1964 campaign; King won the Nobel Peace Prize, but Johnson failed to send congratulations, though many foreign leaders did. King believed that Johnson was trying to avoid offending white Southern sensibilities (Garrow, Bearing the Cross, p. 357).
85. "Strategy Analysis of Campaign Survey," n.d., box 4, W Series, GP; "Midwest Poll Results," Aug. 28, 1964, box 4, W Series, GP; Benham, "1964 Presidential Campaign Base Survey," GP.
86. "Illinois," n.d., box 4, W Series, GP.
87. "Characteristics of the 'non-voter,'" Sept. 1, 1964, box 4, W Series, GP.
88. "HHH Notebook," Sept. 24, 1964, Republican National Committee, box 2, W Series, GP.
89. "Speech in St. Petersburg, September 15," 1964, box 5, W Series, GP.
90. "Speech in Houston," Oct. 15, 1964, box 5, W Series, GP.
91. "Statement in Phoenix, July 18th, 1964," box 21, Moyers Files, LBJ Library.
92. Goldberg, Barry Goldwater, p. 215.
93. "Choice," 1964 Campaign Video, GP; Goldberg, Barry Goldwater, p. 231.
94. William Scranton to Goldwater, July 12, 1964, box 8, W Series, GP.
95. Goldberg, Barry Goldwater, p. 220.
96. "Statement of John M. Bailey," Aug. 2, 1964, box 40, Moyers Files, LBJ Library. Creel's statement certainly merited opprobrium from Miller or Goldwater: "I like Barry Goldwater. I believe what he believes in. I think the same way he thinks." Creel went on to add that he hated "Niggerism, Catholicism, Judaism."
97. William E. Miller, "Speech to Pennsylvania Union League Club," Oct. 13, 1964, box 5, W Series, GP.
98. "Address of Honorable William E. Miller, Wilmington Delaware," Sept. 19, 1964, box 5, W Series, GP.
99. Lamb, "Under One Roof," p. 69, GP.
100. "Miller Hits Restrictive Clause in Johnson Land Sale," Sept. 15, 1964, Republican National Committee Press Release, Austin, TX; "GOP Chairman Says Party Welcomes Sen. Thurmond Because 'He Practices His Principles,'" Sept. 16, 1964, both in box 5, W Series, GP.
101. Goldberg, Barry Goldwater, pp. 217 - 219.
102. "Georgia," n.d., box 3, W Series, GP.
103. "Write in Drive For Dr. King is Attributed to Official of GOP," St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Nov. 3, 1964; Garrow, Bearing the Cross, p. 358.
104. Edsall and Edsall, Chain Reaction, p. 35.
105. Goldberg, Barry Goldwater, p. 235.
106. "Repudiation Notebook," Sept. 24, 1964, Republican National Committee, Washington, DC, box 2, W Series, GP.
107. Dick Thompson to Pam Rymer, n.d., "The Goldwater Tour of the South," box 3, W Series, GP.
108. "Tennessee," n.d., box 3, W Series, GP.
109. "Editorial," Aug. 11, 1964, St. Petersburg Times.
110. White, Making of the President, pp. 233-234.
111. Goldberg, Barry Goldwater, pp. 196-197.
112. White, Making of the President, p. 328.
113. Stephen Hess and David Broder, The Republican Establishment (1967), pp. 401 - 403.
114. White, Making of the President,
p. 383.
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