Clifford L. Alexander Jr. says nobody from the news media has asked him, but that anyone who says that President Lyndon B. Johnson was at odds with Martin Luther King Jr. and other civil rights leaders over the 1964 Civil Rights Act and the 1965 Voting Rights Act is wrong.
The issue has arisen because of a portrayal in the buzzworthy film "Selma," which debuted in limited release on Christmas Day.
"On the big screen, it comes off as a scene of high drama: an icon of the civil rights movement upbraiding a hesitant president in the Oval Office, as a portrait of George Washington bears mute witness," Karen Tumulty wrote Wednesday in the Washington Post.
" 'Mr. President, in the South, there have been thousands of racially
motivated murders,' Martin Luther King Jr. says, imploring Lyndon B.
Johnson to put his weight behind ensuring voting rights for black
Americans. 'We need your help!' "
"To which he gets a pat on the shoulder. 'Dr. King, this thing's just going to have to wait,' Johnson says.
"In real life, that December 1964 meeting happened — but not that way, according to one who was there.
" 'It was not very tense at all. We were very much welcomed by
President Johnson,' recalled former Atlanta mayor and U.N. ambassador Andrew Young, who attended the session as a young lieutenant to King. 'He and Martin never had that kind of confrontation.' . . ."
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