Nicolaus Mills: Who Passed the Civil Rights Act of 1964?
Source: Dissent Magazine (Winter 2008) (2-1-08) [Nicolaus Mills is a professor of American Studies at Sarah Lawrence College and author of Like a Holy Crusade: Mississippi 1964The Turning of the Civil Rights Movement in America and most recently, Winning the Peace: The Marshall Plan and America s Coming of Age as a Superpower.] LIKE SO many of my generation who did voter registration work in the South during the 1960s, I have been saddened by the debate that Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama sparked over whether Martin Luther King or President Lyndon Johnson was responsible for the landmark 1964 Civil Rights Act that outlawed discrimination in hiring and public accommodations. Instead of providing voters with a thoughtful view of the recent past, Clinton and Obama combined to offer a crude, great man theory of history in which King’s vision and Johnson’s pragmatism were portrayed as antithetical forces. The debate has quieted down. But it should not be allowed to fade from the headlines
