Sublime

Johnson’s voting record—a record twenty years long, dating back to his arrival in the House of Representatives in 1937 and continuing up to that very day—was consistent with the accent and the word. During those twenty years, he had never supported civil rights legislation—any civil rights legislation.

The chairman had introduced me simply by saying, "Here, in the flesh, is a living, breathing enemy of free speech, one who, by contagious hyperbole, was able to talk a jury into foregoing our sacred rights to free speech and to thereafter award his client twenty-five million dollars in damages for her alleged hurt feelings. That's justice, rig

Writing of the last of the compromises—the Compromise of 1850—and of the senators who had created it, Senator Byrd was to say, “Perhaps the greatest credit we can give them is to note that the Civil War began in 1861 rather than in 1851; for, if the war had broken out during the 1850’s, when … public opinion in the North was still divided over the

“Let me make one principle of this administration abundantly clear,” Johnson said. “All of these increased opportunities—in employment, in education, in housing, and in every field—must be open to Americans of every color. As far as the writ of federal law will run, we must abolish not some, but all racial discrimination. For this is not merely an

To a considerable extent, the machinery was his machinery; he, more than any other individual, had drafted the executive budget system, the departmental consolidation and the hundreds of bills that implemented those constitutional amendments. He, more than any other individual, knew the considerations—constitutional, legal and political—that lay be

“Our Constitution is color-blind,” U.S. Supreme Court Justice John Harlan proclaimed in his dissent to Plessy v. Ferguson, the case that legalized Jim Crow segregation in 1896. “The white race deems itself to be the dominant race in this country,” Justice Harlan went on. “I doubt not, it will continue to be for all time, if it remains true to its g