Remembering Lyndon Baines Johnson

Floor Speech

REMEMBERING LYNDON BAINES JOHNSON -- (Senate - May 21, 2008)

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mr. MENENDEZ. Mr. President, this year we celebrate the centennial of the birth of a man who dedicated his life to the proposition that all of us are created equal. A legislator, a president of the Senate, a President of the United States: Lyndon Baines Johnson.

It wasn't just that Lyndon Johnson was one of the first Presidents to care deeply about the well-being of people of color. It was that he was uniquely capable of turning that desire to help into results.

It is almost impossible to overstate the impact of the legislation he pushed through Congress, impossible to overstate how much better off we are as a nation thanks to his heroic efforts to guarantee civil rights voting rights and educational opportunity for all.

Whatever else people will note about Johnson's life, whatever disagreements anyone had with him, whatever brush historians will use to paint him, there is no one who can convincingly cast doubt on his very real devotion to the interests of the less fortunate.

In 1928, Johnson took time off from teacher's college to teach at a small school for young Mexican Americans in Cotulla, TX. Right before he signed the Higher Education Act in 1965, Johnson thought back on his time in the classroom.

He said:

I shall never forget the faces of the boys and the girls in that little Welhausen Mexican School, and I remember even yet the pain of realizing and knowing then that college was closed to practically every one of those children because they were too poor. And I think it was then that I made up my mind that this nation could never rest while the door to knowledge remained closed to any American.

I was 11-years old when he spoke those words. Seven years later, when it was time for a Latino kid from a working-class family to go to college, I could do it, because of educational assistance from the federal government, assistance Johnson had championed.

Because of him, I could go on to law school. Because of him, I felt that no door in public service could legitimately be closed to me. It is a powerful truth, and it is very clear: I would not be standing here today if it weren't for Lyndon Johnson.

If he were still standing here today himself, still a U.S. Senator, it is hard to believe there would be an atmosphere of hyperpartisanship. It is hard to believe that he would allow compassion to lose out to suspicion in guiding the business of our Nation.

If only he could be with us today, each time we are on the verge of a crucial vote that will test our conscience, if only all Senators could see Johnson's figure towering over them, feel his hand on their lapel, hear his voice in their ear, pushing the legislative process toward a just conclusion.

So as we remember his life this year, there is no better time to rededicate ourselves to the greatest of the principles for which he lived.

There is no better time to make sure that when we sit in the presiding chair, we swing the gavel for justice; that when we speak, we raise our voices for equality; that when we vote, we vote for compassion for fellow human beings regardless of the color of their skin, the language that they speak, or the country in which they were born.

Even in his absence, let us remember his conscience. Let us allow his memory to shame the shadows of bigotry out of this Chamber. And let us fill our hearts with his spirit, so in our Nation, the spirit of progress will endure.

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