How Did Lyndon B Johnson Start A Dbq Essay On Civil Rights

Awful politicians can do great things that benefit millions of people. President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act in 1964 which prohibited discrimination on the basis of race, color, religion, sex or nation origin, in public places, provided for the integration of schools and other public facilities, and made employment discrimination illegal. As a Southern Democrat this was in direct opposition to the wishes of his constituents. He played the political game until he was able to break free of his state obligation when he was able to do what he truly thought was right.
Johnson had experience working with a minority group. He describes his first job “My first job after college was as a teacher in Cotulla, Texas, in a small Mexican-American school. Few of them could speak English, and I couldn't speak much Spanish. My students were poor and they often came to class without breakfast, hungry. And they knew, even in their youth, the pain of prejudice. They never seemed to know why people disliked them. But they knew it was so, because I saw it in their eyes.” (Document A) He describes prejudice as pain. This experience helped lay the ground work for his Civil Rights support even before his political career started.

As a congressman, he voted against every single civil rights bill until 1956. The Chicago Tribune published a political cartoon in 1964 reminding readers that Johnson did oppose the Civil Rights Bill of 1957 by adding a provision that allowed anyone violating the bill to have a right to a jury of his peers. In the South that meant a jury of white folks and almost assuredly an acquittal. His provision was seen as a stumbling block not only for civil rights but for Johnson himself. This cartoon shows the change in his support for Civil Rights when he went from the South to Washington