Chapter 20

Lyndon Johnson Confronts George Wallace

Summary
      This chapter centers around two "colorful characters," the intimidating president of the the United States and the stubborn, racist governor of Alabama, meeting to discuss recent violence from the government against peaceful demonstrators attempting to march from Selma to Montgomery for voting rights. Not only did police arrest and brutally beat "blacks seeking to register to vote for 'unlawful assembly'" and other flimsy charges, but days later on Bloody Sunday, state troopers used extreme violence to stop the marchers from going over the bridge to Montgomery.
       Johnson realized that he had to meet with Wallace to stop the police brutality and take a stand. He sat the governor down and intimidated him into allowing the people to march on Montgomery. He implored him to be remembered as a man who "built" instead of "hated" after he died. After the meeting, Wallace pledged that there would be "no more violent incidents" and that he would make it happen, but he broke that promise by "[shifting] responsibility for policing the march to the federal government" (330, 331). Johnson was furious, but the march happened peacefully anyway, Wallace expressed repentance (sincere or not), and it all led to President Johnson signing the Voting Rights Act of 1965 in August.

Reflection
      This was probably my favorite chapter; I loved reading about the tense meeting between Johnson and Wallace, and how the stony president towered over the nervous, squirming governor and how he got him to allow the demonstrators to march, and to let them register to vote (166,000 more voters!). It was interesting that Wallace tried to say that he didn't have the power to tell the country registrars to register African-Americans, and how Johnson countered that by "alluding to the extraordinary circumstance that in the 1964 election no Alabama voter was given the opportunity to vote for [him]" (325).
      It confused me a little bit about how Wallace was "treacherous" and how it was bad that he relinquished control of the march to the federal government. I guess Johnson just wanted him to take responsibility and deal with it himself.