C'est fou le bond entre cette demande et l'élection de Barack Obama... Je n'étais pas né lorsque Johnson a fait cette demande... La première photo est celle de Johnson signant le Voting rights act (à noter: la présence de King). La seconde... Un symbole!
Johnson inscrivait cette demande dans le cadre plus vaste de sa "Great society". Le Civil rights act de 1964 et le Voting rights act seront deux gains importants. Malgré ces progrès en politique intérieure, Johnson sera contraint de se retirer en 1968 en raison, principalement, de sa gestion très contestée de l'implication américaine au Vietnam.
Un extrait du discours de Johnson le 15 mars:
Wednesday I will send to Congress a law designed to eliminate illegal barriers to the right to vote… .
To those who seek to avoid action by their National Government in their home communities—who want to and who seek to maintain purely local control over elections—the answer is simple. Open your polling places to all your people. Allow men and women to register and vote whatever the color of their skin. Extend the rights of citizenship to every citizen of this land. There is no constitutional issue here. The command of the Constitution is plain. There is no moral issue. It is wrong—deadly wrong—to deny any of your fellow Americans the right to vote in this country. There is no issue of States rights or National rights. There is only the struggle for human rights.
I have not the slightest doubt what will be your answer… .
But even if we pass this bill, the battle will not be over. What happened in Selma is part of a far larger movement which reaches into every section and State of America. It is the effort of American Negroes to secure for themselves the full blessings of American life.
Their cause must be our cause too, because it is not just Negroes but really it is all of us, who must overcome the crippling legacy of bigotry and injustice. And we shall overcome… .
This great, rich, restless country can offer opportunity and education and hope to all—all black and white, all North and South, sharecropper and city dweller. These are the enemies— poverty, ignorance, disease—they are our enemies, not our fellow man, not our neighbor. And these enemies too—poverty, disease, and ignorance—we shall overcome.
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