Doris Kearns Goodwin on LBJ's Civil Rights Speech

Doris Kearns Goodwin on LBJ's Civil Rights Speech: "I think this really was probably the moment that mattered most to my husband in public life. And it was one of Johnson's crowning moments. The Selma demonstrations had taken place and the Edmund Pettus Bridge that we all remember, the peaceful marchers were coming across the bridge. They encountered the Alabama state troopers. They were fell to the ground. The horses went into the ground. The Billy clubs and whips were used on them, hospitalized. And it was all captured on television. So it fired the conscience of the country. And Johnson decided all of a sudden, I've got to give a speech on voting rights. He was going to plan for voting rights to be in '66. So '65 could be the Great Society year. But he knew he had to do it right then, which meant that Dick had only one day to write that speech. Normally, as you know, it would take weeks to write a speech to a joint session of Congress. So he got in his office at 9:00. He's told he has to have it done by 6:00 at night. So what does he do? First he puts his watch away. Somehow you put your watch away. Time won't go by. And it took him two hours to write the first line any of us have written. Know that first line of a chapter. The first line of a book is the hardest thing of all. But he came up with such a beautiful line. I speak tonight for the dignity of man and the destiny of democracy. And then he said, every now and then, history and fate meet at a certain time in a certain place. So it was in Lexington and Concord. So it was at Appomattox. So it was in Selma, Alabama. That meant he was placing this in the history of big moments in time. Then he said, there's no Negro problem, no wide problem, no northern problem, no southern problem. This is an American problem. And we are all here not as Democrats, not as Republicans, to to meet this problem. And then he said, it's not a moral problem, is simply wrong to deny your fellow Americans the right to vote.

SUNDAYAmerica's Book Club with Doris Kearns Goodwin 6pm ET on CSPAN

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