Nation: A Meeting of History & Fate

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Into the House of Representatives moved the stately procession of legislators, Government officials, honored guests. The President of the Senate, Hubert Horatio Humphrey, presiding over his first joint session, sat pink-cheeked and solemn in his chair. Speaker John McCormack, seated next to Humphrey, gazed sternly into space.

There was the familiar cry from Doorkeeper William ("Fishbait") Miller: "Mistah Speak-ah! The President of the United States!" There was the rush of applause, the flutter of outstretched arms in the aisle as Lyndon Johnson wove his way toward the rostrum, the predictable burst of foolishness from the Speaker, from whom tradition demands an excessive introduction: ". . . great pleasure . . . highest privilege . . . distinguished, personal honor—of presenting to you the President of the United States!"

Such were the ceremonials, old hat by now to many Americans, and yet insistently thrilling. But what followed was a departure from ritual and routine, so startling, so moving, that few who saw it or heard it will ever forget it.

From the Pulpit. Lyndon Johnson himself seemed to sense the moment as he studied the faces that gazed at him. In the visitors' gallery were Lady Bird, Lynda (Luci stayed home to study), and their guest J. Edgar Hoover; on the House floor were scores of former colleagues, the Cabinet, Chief Justice Warren and four Associate Justices of the Supreme Court. Other faces were conspicuous for their absence. The entire congressional delegations of Mississippi and Virginia and a host of fellow Southerners had deliberately stayed away.

Their neglect was understandable. Lyndon Johnson's appearance before the joint session was weighted with momentous meaning for them. This was no ordinary occasion. Not for 19 years —since Harry Truman, in the midst of a railroad strike, asked power to break crippling labor walkouts—had a President appeared before Congress assembled to plead for special legislation. But now, in the wake of public deaths and private resolve, the time had come to assure all American Negroes the right to vote.

Addressing himself thus, Johnson was never more powerful. Other Presidents have lamented the plight of the Negro but have skirted the hard words necessary to describe the depth of the Negro's deprivation. But Johnson believes with Teddy Roosevelt that the Presidency is a "bully pulpit," and with Truman, who once said, "It is only the President who is responsible to all the people." And so, on the night before and straight up to the time he arrived at the Capitol, he dwelt deeply on his subject, dictating, philosophizing, penciling, revising, emphasizing. Now he was ready.

Cathedral Hush. "I speak tonight," he began slowly, "for the dignity of man and the destiny of democracy. At times history and fate meet at a single time in a single place to shape a turning point in man's unending search for freedom. So it was last week in Selma, Alabama."

The chamber became suspended in a cathedral-like hush. Nobody coughed. Nobody whispered. Nobody rustled. The only sound was a product of the silence —the faint click-click of photographers' cameras that was audible clear across the chamber.