Telephone Conversation on Voting Rights

LBJ: That’s exactly right. I think it’s very important that we not say that we’re doing this and we’re not doing [this] just because it’s Negroes or whites, but we take the position that every person born in this country, when they reach a certain age, that he have a right to vote, just like he has a right to fight, and [slight chuckle] that we just extend it whether it’s a Negro, or whether it’s a Mexican, or who it is.

MLK: [Unclear.] King may have said “Yes, sir,” “Exactly,” or “That’s it.”

LBJ: And number two, I think that . . . we don’t want special privilege for anybody. We want equality for all, and we can stand on that principle, but I think that you can contribute a great deal by getting your leaders and you, yourself, taking very simple examples of discrimination where a man’s got to memorize Longfellow, or whether he’s got to quote the first ten amendments, or he’s got to tell you what Amendment 15 and 16 and 17 is, and then ask them if they know and show what happens. And there are some people don’t have to do that, but when a Negro comes in, he’s got to do it. And if we can just repeat and repeat and repeat. If you can find the worst condition that you run into in Alabama, Mississippi, or Louisiana, or South Carolina … And if you just take that one illustration and get it on radio, and get it on television, and get it on . . . in the pulpits, get it in the meetings, get it every place you can, pretty soon the fellow that didn’t do anything but follow—drive a tractor, he’ll say, “Well, that’s not right, that’s not fair.”

MLK: Yes.

LBJ: And then that will help us on what we’re going to shove through in the end.

MLK: Yes. You’re exactly right about that.

LBJ: And if we do that, we’ll break through as—it’ll be the greatest breakthrough of anything, not even excepting this ‘64 act, I think the greatest achievement of my administration, I think the greatest achievement in foreign policy—I said to a group yesterday—was the passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Act. But I think this will be bigger because it will do things even the '64 act couldn't do.