In 1957 he had engineered the passage of a civil rights bill. The mere fact of its passage in the face of Southern senatorial power  it was the first civil rights bill to be enacted in 87 years  made it a significant benchmark in the history of American government, and the guile and determination with which Johnson drove it to passage made it a landmark of legislative mastery as well. But he was forced to weaken it to get it through, and liberals, not understanding the obstacles he had surmounted, blamed him for not making it stronger.

Some civil rights leaders who had been talking to Lyndon Johnson since he became president were now, by the spring of 1965, convinced of his good faith, but most were not, and the mass of the movement, symbolized by those protesters outside the White House gates, still distrusted him.

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Men and women who knew Lyndon Johnson, however, felt there was another element to the story. They included the Mexican-American children of impoverished migrant workers he had taught as a 21-year-old schoolteacher in the little town of Cotulla, Tex.; to the ends of their lives they would talk about how hard he had worked to teach and inspire them. “He used to tell us this country was so free that anyone could become president who was willing to work hard enough,” one student said.

Others remember what one calls the story about the “little baby in the cradle.” As one student recalled, “He would tell us that one day we might say the baby would be a teacher. Maybe the next day we’d say the baby would be a doctor. And one day we might say the baby  any baby  might grow up to be president of the United States.”

His former students weren’t alone. Men and women at Georgetown dinner tables were also convinced of the sincerity of Johnson’s intentions. “I remember at this dinner party, Johnson talking about teaching the Mexican-American kids in Cotulla, and his frustration that they had no books,” recalls Bethine Church, the wife of Senator Frank Church of Idaho. “I remember it as one of the most passionate evenings I’ve ever spent.”

Image Credit... Ronald J. Cala II

These men and women felt Johnson truly wanted to help poor people and particularly people of color, and that he was held back only by his ambition: his desire to be president, and because he was a senator from a Southern state. But when, in 1957, ambition and compassion were finally pointing in the same direction  when he realized that he would never become president unless he removed the “magnolia scent” of the South  he set out to pass a civil rights bill, he did it with a passion that showed how deeply he believed in what he was doing.