It was 53 years ago today that President Lyndon B. Johnson stood before a joint session of Congress and delivered the finest address given by an American president in my lifetime. A week earlier, peaceful civil rights marchers were brutally attacked in Selma, Alabama, by the state-sanctioned forces of white supremacy. John Lewis was nearly killed. A minister from Boston named Jim Reeb actually was.

Then, on March 15, LBJ came to Capitol Hill, a speech largely crafted by the great Dick Goodwin in his pocket, and he laid it on the line in front of god, Richard Russell, Strom Thurmond, and the world. The president of the United States, a son of Texas, had had by god enough of this.

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There is no Negro problem. There is no Southern problem. There is no Northern problem. There is only an American problem. And we are met here tonight as Americans -- not as Democrats or Republicans-we are met here as Americans to solve that problem. This was the first nation in the history of the world to be founded with a purpose. The great phrases of that purpose still sound in every American heart, North and South: "All men are created equal"--"government by consent of the governed"--"give me liberty or give me death."

Well, those are not just clever words, or those are not just empty theories. In their name Americans have fought and died for two centuries, and tonight around the world they stand there as guardians of our liberty, risking their lives. Those words are a promise to every citizen that he shall share in the dignity of man. This dignity cannot be found in a man's possessions; it cannot be found in his power, or in his position. It really rests on his right to be treated as a man equal in opportunity to all others. It says that he shall share in freedom, he shall choose his leaders, educate his children, and provide for his family according to his ability and his merits as a human being.

To apply any other test -- to deny a man his hopes because of his color or race, his religion or the place of his birth -- is not only to do injustice, it is to deny America and to dishonor the dead who gave their lives for American freedom.

Mr. Jefferson, your great bluff is called.

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He went on to educate the country on the many ways petty local dictators worked to deny African-Americans in their counties and towns—what he called, in Goodwin’s lovely phrase, “systematic and ingenious discrimination.” He’d seen them all growing up. He referred to himself throughout as “your president,” which always was his way. He mentioned Abraham Lincoln as a “great president of another party,” because he was Lyndon Johnson, dammit. And then he stunned the chamber.

So, I ask you to join me in working long hours -- nights and weekends, if necessary -- to pass this bill. And I don't make that request lightly. For from the window where I sit with the problems of our country I recognize that outside this chamber is the outraged conscience of a nation, the grave concern of many nations, and the harsh judgment of history on our acts. But even if we pass this bill, the battle will not be over. What happened in Selma is part of a far larger movement which reaches into every section and State of America. It is the effort of American Negroes to secure for themselves the full blessings of American life. Their cause must be our cause too. Because it is not just Negroes, but really it is all of us, who must overcome the crippling legacy of bigotry and injustice.

And we shall overcome.

It’s the accent that makes this passage echo through history. A deep Hill Country Texas accent telling the country, and all of his mentors in politics, that the words of a folk song trumped all their fancy words and complicated constitutional dodges. That was a moment. It’s a good one to remember these days when one party is committed entirely to even more “systematic and ingenious discrimination” in new forms and strategies.

In related news, Ruth Bader Ginsburg turns 85 today.

In other related news, Kris Kobach continues to foul himself in public in a federal courthouse.

The losing side of history is awfully stubborn.

Charles P. Pierce Charles P Pierce is the author of four books, most recently Idiot America, and has been a working journalist since 1976.

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