Border Men: Truman, Eisenhower, Johnson, and Civil Rights

Since the end of Reconstruction, southern senators had successfully blocked numerous attempts to initiate a federal antilynching law, voting rights protections for African Americans, and legislation to abolish the poll tax. If southern politicians wanted to remain in power, they needed to feed the voracious appetite of white supremacy. [...]brilliant men like Richard Russell, and caring men like Alabama senators Joseph Lister Hill and John J. Sparkman, and young men like Lyndon Baines Johnson had to mollify the beast or else become extinct.6 Beyond Dixie, however, they were dinosaurs.