Chapter III
Retiring from the campaign trail in November of 1964, President Connally and Vice President-elect Mike Mansfield met with Attorney General Robert Kennedy to develop a strategy to pass Civil Rights through Congress. Southern Democrats were using Congressional Procedure in order to prevent the bill from even going to the floor to vote, and Mansfield knew exactly how to get around that problem. To overcome the Rules Committee and get it to the House Floor, the Connally Administration would use a discharge petition, and in late November the Rules Committee would okay the bill to be voted on by the floor so that their power would not be usurped by the Presidency. The House easily passed the bill, and it was on to the Senate.
Mansfield, who was still technically a Senator and working with new Senate Majority Leader Hubert Humphrey (D-MN), knew it would be a fight on the Senate Floor. Southern Democrats were promising to filibuster the bill until Congress left Washington for the Holidays, and indeed took up that promise as soon as they could. The solution would be thought up by President Connally when Bobby Kennedy offhandedly said “I wish we could just get rid of the Southern Senators!” In retrospect, the solution was obvious to them, albeit an underhanded maneuver.
In the second week of December, roughly an hour before midnight of December 9th, Hubert Humphrey entered the Senate Floor with Mike Mansfield. The two men were alone with the Sergeant at Arms of the Senate, but bells were rung throughout the Capitol alerting all Senators still working they were needed on the Senate Floor. Within a few minutes, the Senators numbered roughly a dozen, at which point Mansfield suggested to the Senate Majority Leader they did not have a quorum. The Sergeant at Arms was directed to assemble the Senate so that a quorum of at least a majority of the members could be met, and by 2 A.M. they had gathered 62 Senators in the Chamber. Voting took place shortly afterwards, and the body unanimously passed the Civil Rights Act of 1964. President Connally did not delay signing it into law. Legend states that Connally told an aide as he signed, “George Wallace will be back with a vengeance four years from now.”
The next day, as Connally was figuring out how to restructure his Cabinet, Robert Kennedy again stated his hope to become Defense Secretary, but the President again brushed this off, claiming he would need him in the Justice Department if they were to enforce the Civil Rights Act. This was the beginning of the fracturing in their relationship. Instead, it was Assistant Secretary Roswell Gilpatric that would be promoted to fill McNamara’s shoes, who was taking over the Treasury Department.
If the rumors are true, many historians agree President Connally should have looked just around the corner instead of all the way down the block. Governor George Wallace (D-AL) was looking for blood immediately after the passage of the Civil Rights Act, and he once again declared “Segregation today; Segregation tomorrow; Segregation forever!” on the steps of the Alabama Capitol Building in a speech denouncing President Connally’s machiavellian maneuvers to pass Civil Rights.
In protest of this, Civil Rights leaders organized what was originally called the Lincoln Day Sit-In for taking place on Abraham Lincoln’s birthday. There goal was to see Governor Wallace resign his post. It has since been called the Lincoln Day Massacre. They did not succeed in their aims. Before the sun rose on Montgomery, Alabama, thousands of protesters, both black and white, gathered in front of the Alabama Capitol Building preventing state legislators from attending to their work. The police and Alabama State Troopers were quickly called up to break up the sit-in, and they did so mercilessly. By the time the affair was done, 15 protesters had been beaten to death. Including Martin Luther King, Jr.
Robert Kennedy delivered a press conference later that day to discuss the Lincoln Day Massacre and how the Justice Department would respond to it when he was interrupted by an aide rushing to him and alerting him of Mr. King’s death. The Attorney General broke down into tears, told the reporters what he had heard, and left immediately.
The President’s response was much more subdued. It came in the form of his signature on the Voting Rights Act of 1965, with a press release issued concurrently: “To Southern Governors, Remember what Roger Sherman did to you?” It was a warning, the President would insist in later years, and he never wanted to follow through on it, but as time would tell, John Connally would have his hand forced.
Next on President Connally’s legislative agenda was Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965 which would increase federal spending on education from $4 Billion to $6 Billion, being signed into law in early June. In practice ESEA meant helping all public school districts, with more money going to districts that had large proportions of students from poor families, these funds administered by local officials. This was followed quickly by the Higher Education Act of 1965, which expanded funding to lower income students, including grants, loans, and work-study programs.
President Connally sought to expand his War on Poverty, crafting legislation for food stamps, federal work-study programs, and other welfare programs. He also put focus on hospital insurance for the aged under Social Security, in a program largely designed by Chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee Wilbur Mills, who designed a “three-layer cake” which provided for hospital insurance under Social Security, a voluntary insurance program for doctor visits, and an expanded medical welfare program for the poor, known as Medicaid. Connally gave the first two Medicare cards to former President Harry S Truman and his wife Bess after signing the Medicare bill at the Truman Library in Independence, Missouri, again drawing connections between the two men. By the 1968 Election, President Connally had reduced those living in poverty in America from 23 percent to about 11 percent.
On August 11, 1965 in Watts, Los Angeles, a black man was arrested for drunk driving. A roadside argument quickly escalated into what would become a week of arson and looting, largely of the businesses of white business owners. The police required the support of over 4000 California Army National Guardsmen in order to regain control of the city. When all was said and done, there were 53 people dead and nearly 1500 injured, as well as over $45 Million in property damage.
The Watts Riots were only the beginning of a series of riots that would come to plague the country, and completely stalled President Connally’s legislative agenda. And when the 1966 Midterms came around, conservative strength was bolstered in Congress even more, putting an end to the expansion of the programs the Connally Administration thought up, and the President was forced to put most of his focus on foreign policy.
While this was going on, President Connally had been escalating the war effort in Vietnam discreetly, having begun a bombing campaign in December. With its conclusion in February, President Connally agreed to increase the presence of American ground troops to twenty five thousand, and, on the suggestion of General William Westmoreland, he agreed to use some of the American forces to advance into Laos to cut off communist supply lines. His overarching goal was to force the North Vietnamese to the table and bring the Soviet Union to the table with them and then draw concessions that would ultimately weaken the Soviet Union’s grip as a global power and isolate it on the world stage, an idea he developed by mixing the ideas of Truman-era foreign policy advisors, National Security Advisor Carl Kaysen and other Kennedy Administration officials, as well as a few talks he had with former Vice President Richard Nixon in the wake of the 1964 Election. In subsequent years this policy would come to be known as “Confinement” and was meant to be a successor to “Containment”.
After reports came back in April from General Westmoreland and Ambassador Maxwell Taylor that more troops were needed, President Connally approved an increase to eighty thousand troops. In June this was increased to one hundred fifty thousand troops. By October, there were 225000 American troops in Indochina, and it continued to rise. President Connally is rumored to have said “Whatever it takes to keep Kheim and Tho in power,” in response to his Generals, “We can only win the war if they win the people.” Trần Thiện Khiêm and Nguyễn Ngọc Thơ had taken power in May, in the third coup in South Vietnam in the past two years and President Connally wanted to enforce stability within the country.
In the culmination of a series of events which began at the 1964 Democratic National Convention, Attorney General Robert Kennedy was left out of foreign policy decisions made by President Connally, which he felt he had a right to because his brother had consulted him on those issues. The President, however, felt the Attorney General’s place was in the Justice Department and on domestic affairs. Robert Kennedy resigned in late October, upset with the President’s handling of the Watts Riots and being left out of discussions on the Vietnam War.
As 1966 dawned, General Westmoreland and Ambassador Taylor convinced President Connally to take a new approach to the war. In April of 1966, President Connally held his first rally in support of the Vietnam War, charging up support from hawks across the country while also rallying moderates to his position.
These rallies, were, however, protested - particularly by American college students. These anti-war protests were generally small and mostly stuck to the message of bringing American troops home, but in a few instances became violent like some of the Civil Rights protests across the nation. Overall, however, a majority of Americans were beginning to become accustomed to hearing about protests becoming violent, and almost unresponsive to such news. Instead, it was the “Connally Charisma” and the President’s optimism most people were drawn to support, an escape from the news of riot after riot on television.
In the summer of 1966, the North Vietnamese seemed to be stalled in making progress against the South, which the President attributed to Westmoreland’s efforts to cut off their supply lines. President Connally expanded the bombing campaign, hoping he could force the North Vietnamese to the negotiating table before the 1968 election. While President Connally continued to increase the amount of troops in the country, he agreed with Ambassador Taylor and Carl Kaysen to pause bombing in early 1967 and seek to open negotiations, despite General Westmoreland urging for continued bombing.
It was around this same time, as casualties began to pile up, that public opinion of the war first started to turn against President Connally. The timing, then, proved perfect to shore up support with moderates when he announced the peace negotiations were to begin in Paris in May of 1967, but this did upset many hawks who felt the country ought to be pushing for victory.
As 1967 went on, the whole country seemed to slow down compared to the high intensity of the years before. JFK’s assassination, an intense election cycle, the War on Poverty, Civil Rights, and Vietnam all seemed to fade as the riots subsided, both Civil Rights and anti-war, and the war diminished from news in favor of trying to figure out what was going on at the Paris Peace Talks.
That was when two policemen in Newark, New Jersey arrested a black cab driver for improperly passing them. It was September 12th, 1967. After rumors of improper conduct and police brutality, what followed was over a week of rioting, looting, and arson which left 38 dead and nearly a thousand injured, only ended when Attorney General turned Governor Robert Kennedy (D-NY) made his way to the city to plead for peace. George Wallace announced his intention to challenge President Connally for the Democratic Nomination for President weeks later, claiming it was the President’s push for “Negro Rights” that had caused all the riots that plagued the country.
