The next president we are going to talk about served from 1963 -1969. From my perspective… that is a black perspective… I can think of no other era in Black History as consequential save for the end of slavery, that has impacted black folks and America as did the 1960s. We transitioned in the ’60s. The children of the generation that helmed the battle for civil rights were the most educated and economically independent generation that had thus far been produced by our people since the end of the Civil War. Now what made this era so different from the ones that followed it and came before it were two things. The first thing is that most of our population was down south, so most of our schools and places of higher education were down south. That gave us more bang for the buck, a high concentration of black folks, and a high concentration of black teachers. That brings us to number two. Our children were being taught by highly educated black teachers. Teachers who shared a common bond with them. After the schools were desegregated.. well you know what happened, especially up north. So I don’t want to dwell on this point too much because folks get to feeling some kinda way when I say things like after we desegregated the level of quality education deteriorated in the black community… especially up North. Maybe at a later date, we will get back into this topic. For now, I will just say, “Tanks a hole lot my freends for oll the tings you did to edjacate us back ten…”
Anywho, we have much to cover with our first president in this series. An unlikely Southerner from down south was at the helm during one of the most turbulent eras in American history and we as a people paid dearly for his and our successes. Now our criteria:
10 – You can sit next to the table and watch while we play a couple of hands of bid whisk.
9 – You are able to use the word “Bro” in front of us.”
8 – You can bring something to the barbecue and we’ll put it on the table with the other food.
7 – We will wave at you if we see you on the street.
6 – We won’t side-eye or sass if you bring a watermelon to our family dinner.
5 – You can leave with a little bit of your dignity after saying “My Nigga.”
4 – If we hear you calling for help, we will call the police after we have charged our phone.
3 – We will count to three before we let the dogs out if you come to our house.
2 – We won’t pee on your statue during daylight hours.
1 – Faque Off!!
Lyndon B Johnson – 2
Elected 1963 -1969
We won’t pee on your statue during daylight hours.
Now before we begin, we need to talk about the elephant in the room. Did Lyndon Johnson say or did he not say…
“These negroes are getting pretty uppity these days and that’s a problem for us since they have got something now they never had before… the political pull to back up their uppityness. Now we got to do something about this, we got to give them a little something, just enough to quiet them down, but not enough to make a difference. – LBJ
For my money… yeah he said it. Johnson was known to be vulgar and to use the “n-word”… frequently… as in almost every other sentence when talking about black people. For instance, although he championed the landmark 1964 Civil Right Bill, he referred to it as the “nigg@r bill,” when talking to Senate colleagues on the phone or in person. Johnson was also the first president to appoint a black supreme court justice, Thurgood Marshall. Now Johnson made a big thing out of appointing Marshall to the court and reportedly told a colleague, “Son, when I appoint a nigger to the court, I want everyone to know he’s a nigger.” Now my personal favorite attack on blacks is a statement he made to a couple of governors allegedly in front of a man named Robert Mcmillian. Mcmillian worked in the White House as a steward. Well, that’s what they called them in the 60s. Today they are known as ushers. Now don’t confuse ushers with butlers, ushers ran the joint, and the butlers and everyone else in the household department worked for them. I’m going into a lot of detail about his job position because I want you to know this is a credible source. Anyway in his position he said that he witness LBJ talking to these governors about the 1964 Civil Right Act and told them if the bill passed, “I’ll have them nigg@rs voting Democratic for the next two hundred years.”
Party Like it’s 2264
Platt: “Daddy!! Daddy!! Today is my birthday!! I’m seven years old!!”
Daddy: “Well son we have something to celebrate then! Let’s see… that means you were born in 2264 and it’s 2271 now… well get dressed and Ima take you to Nig’re’s and get you something really special!!”
Later at Nig’re’s
Salesrobot: And who is this fine young man!!
Daddy: This is my son Platt… and today is his birthday!
Salesrobot: Is that Platt as in the famous Sla’ve who went down south and became a famous violin player!!
Daddy: Why yes!! I see you know your history!!
Salesrobot: Thank you!! The KKK Corporation has programmed me with extensive knowledge of the post-C.R.E and the B.G.B era…
Platt: Daddy what does C.R.E mean?
Daddy: Well we all know about the “By Gawd Boy…” era. C.R.E stands for Civil Right Era, Platt. If I remember correctly… it was from 1964 thru…
Salesrobot: By gawd boy!! Thru the present… now what can I help you with?
Daddy: Well we want something that’s special… you know… something that says it’s my son’s birthday!!
Salesrobot: Well I have just the thing! These matching ankle bracelets are all the talk!! They say the Sla’ve had a pair on when he arrived! They also come with matching hand bracelets for a little bit more…
Daddy: Noooo… I don’t think he’s old enough for that… Besides I bought a pair for my oldest boy Chicken Bob and we haven’t seen him since he took that all-expensed paid Confederates States Tour last week…
Salesrobot: Well I didn’t want to show you this… I was keeping it for one of my important customers… but since it is Platt’s birthday… Here’s a copy of the 1964 Civil Right Bill!!!… Isn’t it beautiful! It’s printed on paper that was sold exclusively at one of the finer retailers of the era… WalMart!!… and each copy is numbered and autographed by that great American… DOC #510865… Donald Trump! Now I can let you have this in exchange for your vote and your son’s vote for the next 22 years…
Daddy: That’s pretty steep… We just got out of that deal my great, great, great grandfather made two centuries ago!!
Platt: Daddy please!!
Daddy: Okay… I’ll give you 15 years Democratic… and 7 years Independent…
Salesrobot: Oh I’m sorry… I’m afraid we are going to need at least 20 years Democratic.. but since it’s Platt’s birthday… I can waive the Independent…
Platt: Daddy?
Daddy: You got a deal!
Anywho… so yeah LBJ said passing that bill would mean generations of black folks voting Democratic. In addition, there is also the story of his black chauffeur who resented LBJ calling him out of his name. He called him one of three names… boy, nigg@r, or chief. When the chauffeur called him out on it, LBJ reportedly told him, “As long as you are black, and you’re gonna be black till the day you die, no one’s gonna call you by your goddamn name. So no matter what you are called, nigger, you just let it roll off your back like water, and you’ll make it. Just pretend you’re a goddamn piece of furniture.” Now I don’t know about you… but I would have been giving serious thought to quitting or doing twenty years… I mean LBJ said it to his eyeball! Anywho, it’s no doubt that LBJ used racist language about black people and in front of black people, but in his defense, there is a small minority that likened him to the same situation Lincoln faced. He wouldn’t have gotten the bill passed if he was fingered as a “n-word lover.” As one reporter put it, ” He had to convince his pro-Dixiecrat colleagues that it was in their best interests to support civil rights legislation.” He was simply talking and acting like them in order to fulfill his goal. For me, it’s if the shoe fits. LBJ was born in 1908 in Stonewall, Texas, a little bit over thirty years after the civil war, in a city named after a Confederate general. Texas is the birthplace of Juneteenth, which celebrates informing the enslaved people they were no longer slaves fully three months after the Emancipation Proclamation… and the last state to surrender. You do the math. As an aside, you might be interested in a story I wrote about them being the last state to surrender… The Confederates were commanded by a man named “Stan Watie.” You can check it out here. You won’t believe that mess!! Anywho, I going to end LBJ’s story, with something I said at the beginning… He was an unlikely Southerner from down south who was at the helm during one of the most turbulent eras in American history and we as a people paid dearly for his and our successes.
Radio WRMF
Enslavia: How much farther Aunt Yap?
Aunt Yap: Not much… turn on the radio… you got way too much energy.. we will be there soon…
Whitestack: Welcome back… My name is Mike Cedar Whitestack and we have some breaking news… Mr. Cedar Longrope and a crowd of angry gawd fearing men are marching down Main Street with a man who has a KFC chicken bucket on his head. They say the man desecrated his great grandpa Cedar Longrope’s gravesite after he jumped out of a bathroom window at Whitey’s. We have our reporter on the scene… Hussein Tellet… Hussein what do you see..?
Hussein: Well Mike I can see it all from here… because the man with the chicken bucket on his head doesn’t have any clothes on… Ima try to see if I can get closer to talk with Mr. Longrope… excuse me… pardon me sir… excuse me… no sir, I don’t have any bean pies… Mr. Longrope!! Mr. Longrope.. can I have a word sir!! Can I have a word…?
Longrope: Boy you got quite a tan… where you from… Florida?
Hussein: Mr. Longrope, I’m with WRMF and I just want to ask you a couple of questions… What is…?
Longrope: You look kinda familiar… Yes, I think I’ve seen you before… You were with that boy Osama!! Boys!! We got one!! This here one was with Osama!! STRING HIM UP!!
Whitestack: Hello? Hello? Hussein? ( In the background… ” I’ll get you some bean pies… just let… click…”) Well, folks we will have to get back to Hussein.. looks like he’s gonna be tied up for a while… Let’s take a break and we will be back after these messages…
Jingle Plays…
My Nigra has a first name, its T.O.B.B.Y
My Nigra has a second name, its D.A.R.K.Y
Oh he jumped up on my grandpa’s grave
And if you ask me why, I’ll say…
Cause Tobby Darky Fuqued up okay?
So we gonna hang that N.I.G.R.A
Whitestack: WHO DID THAT!!? IMA FIND OUT WHO DID THAT!! I’m sorry folks!! That was supposed to be a commercial about bologna! Don’t worry we gonna get to the bottom of this!!! This station will not stand for…
Enslavia: Why did you turn that off Aunt Yap!!? He was apologizing…
Aunt Yap: Oh yeah? That’s Longrope’s 3rd cousin… apologize my ass… That’s the second time that commercial played in the last hour… and right after that report too… we have to hurry Yip!! Speed up!!!
Richard M. Nixon – 4
Elected 1969 – 1974
If we hear you calling for help, we will call the police after we have charged our phone.
It’s hard to believe Nixon will have been dead for 30 years in 2024. There are historic moments in life when you always remember where you were and what you were doing. It was before my time, but I imagine that the attack on Pearl Harbor was one of those times, and more recently the attack on the World Trade Centers in 2001. Well, another one was on August 8, 1974. I might not remember what I was doing that whole day, but I can tell you what I was doing around 9 pm that night. I was walking up 16th Street in NW Washington DC on my way to the Carter Barron Amphitheatre. Back then they had free concerts or reduced-price concerts. I mean if there was a charge, it was only never higher than five bucks or so. The concerts were free so that the young black people would stay out of the downtown area during peak tourist season. Most of the tourists were white and were not used to seeing gangs of young handsome black teen boys on every corner playing music on their boom boxes, hollering at their young impressionable daughters, and generally just being cooler than some of them had ever seen in their entire life. I mean America was still in the hippy stage of the sixties with that free love and peace stuff and they didn’t want us downtown taking advantage of it. So they came up with this scheme called “Summer in the Parks,” to keep us from down there. Now they knew we weren’t falling for no crazy shat… I mean like thinking we were going to go the parks to see somebody like Mellow Bobby and the Three Orangutans… they were hiring the real deal for those concerts!! That night I was going to see Grahm Central Station!! It was nothing to go to these shows and see people like Gil Scot Heron, Patti LaBelle, or Rufus! For those that don’t remember Rufus, their lead singer was “Chaka Khan!” Anywho, as I said I was on my way to see Graham Central Station. I paid about $3.00 to get in and I started looking for my brother who had arrived earlier with some other friends of ours. I had a hard time finding my brother and our friends because it was dark, so I stopped looking and found a seat. The set went on for about 15 minutes before the band took a break. When Larry Graham came back out he had this boom box and put it up to the mike and played it. It was the recording of President Nixon resigning!! The place went crazy!! Then the band came back on the stage and turned that shat out!! It was quite an evening and one that I will never forget. I went home after the concert feeling like a million bucks… and you know something, I never did find my brother or our friends that night.
Richard M. Nixon did absolutely nothing for civil rights while he was president. He like his predecessors had to deal with the Strom Thurmond’s and Jesse Helm’s types of the time to get any domestic or economic agenda through Congress. I was getting ready to throw Barry Goldwater under the tree in a hood too, but he was okay until he made that one mistake, which branded him in our leader’s eyes at the time, a racist and a traitor. Goldwater had run against LBJ and lost in 1964. Anywho, Goldwater voted nay on the Civil Rights Act of 1964. The 1964 bill was the first major civil rights bill to come on the Senate floor that had a chance to pass since Reconstruction almost a century ago. It was a big thing!! Now there was a civil rights bill that passed in 1957, but the bill didn’t do anything much but established a few governmental commissions on you guessed it, civil rights. They were ineffective because they didn’t have any enforcement power. The 1964 Civil Rights Bill provided that enforcement piece. He didn’t disagree with the complete bill, just the part containing the employment section called Title VII and VI. He thought that it would be unconstitutional for the government to put racial quotas on hiring. Now the bill didn’t actually mention racial quotas, but Goldwater assumed the wording would ultimately lead to quotas. Hubert Humphrey begged him to reconsider, but Goldwater stood firm. So although Goldwater who is Jewish led the charge for Truman when he desegregated the federal government and integrated the Congressional dining room because he had black interns… and even though he voted for the failed 1950 and 1952 civil rights bills and voted for the 1957 civil rights bill that passed, our leaders castrated him for not supporting the 1964 Civil Rights Act. Jackie Robinson called Goldwater “a hopeless captive of the lunatic, calculating right-wing extremists…” And I don’t believe for one second that they put a gun to Jackie’s head and made him take it back… Racist: “On momma if you don’t…” okay no they didn’t… Anywho, Roy Wilkins, an NAACP executive, said that a Goldwater victory in the presidential race “would lead to a police state,” and the one that cut him off at the knees came from Dr. Martin Luther King when he said, “If Goldwater were elected the nation would erupt into “violence and riots, the like of which we have never seen before.” Of course, all of that happened in the election preceding the Nixon administration, but Nixon was in it all the way up to his crooked eyeballs. He was Eisenhower’s vice president for 5 years!! Eisenhower signed the 1957 Civil Rights Act into law and put Nixon in charge of the commissions it created. He knew exactly how pitiful the plight of African Americans was in the United States, but did little after being elected to rectify it. He did address the school integration problem, which was mandated by law that the schools be integrated, but he assigned the task of correcting the problem to Spiro T. Agnew, his vice president. Agnew was a bigot and the only thing worst than a bigot as bigotry goes, is a loudmouth bigot. He was a loudmouth bigot. It was the reason Nixon picked him. Agnew had a formidable job ahead of him. Although Brown had made segregation in public schools illegal, fully 80% of the country’s schools were still segregated. Well, thanks to Agnew the schools were finally starting to be desegregated and I for one want to “Tank hem from the botum of mi hart…” Agnew resigned amid charges of corruption the year before Nixon resigned about his involvement in the Watergate scandal. By the way, it was a black security guard that caught the Watergate burglars. His name was Frank Willis. His actions brought down a President of the United States and the rope they hanged him with is supposedly in the Smithsonian somewhere… Okay.. no it’s not, but the life that man faced after the Watergate scandal was a disgrace. They showed what happens when a black man sticks his nose someplace it’s not supposed to be, even if it’s his job.
Nixon died on April 22, 1994. His funeral was attended by all the living presidents at that time as well as international dignitaries. The only African American of note who attended his funeral was Willie Brown, California State Assembly Speaker.
Any Last Words…
Longrope: Well nigra, do you have any last words before you go to that big watermelon patch in the sky?
Arthur: Yes suh… You folks being gawd fearing and all, I would like to request a last meal…
Longrope’s Cousin: Cedar.. nigra’s don’t get a last meal… they just get to apologize for being disrespectful and having to make us come out here and spend our gawd-fearing time hanging them!
Longrope: You are dog gone right cuzin Cuss! Boy, we demand an apology afore we hangs you!! And hurry up cause we got to hang this terrorist too!!
Hussein: I’M NOT A TERRORIST!! I’M A REPORTER!! I WAS JUST…
Longrope: Boys I can prove he is a terrorist!! I found this here bomb on him!! Looky close at the word on the top… “Bang and Olufsen!!” Olufsen is French for DYNAMITE!!
Hussein: THAT’S THE NAME OF THE COMPA…
Longrope: GAG HIM!!… Now boy are you ready to apologize before we hang you or not?
Authur: and suppose I don’t apologize!!?
Longrope: Well boy we gonna pull your azz up an inch at a time from the tallest tree we can find while my cuzin Cuss Diddy sangs Dixie… the last thing you will ever hear is a white man singing a song about you nigras working in a cotton field and loving it!! Then we gonna take your body over to the salon and prop it up with some white womens and take pictures and send them to yo relatives inviting them to come on down and “hang” out with us…
Arthur: One knee or two…
Longrope: Two…
Arthur: Well suh… Mr. Longrope… I do apologize for jumping out that bathroom window on yo grand daddy’s grave and I sure wish I could take it back… I hope’s you can forgive me…
Longrope: Nigra you a good one… I would keep you but we lost… Okay, boys hang him!!
Arthur: One moment suh… I ain’t finished… I also want to apologize to Massa Cuss Diddy for interrupting him and the missus…
Longrope: Wait?? What!!? Cuss ain’t married…
Cuss: THAT NIGRA LYING!! I WASN’T NEVER IN NO BATHROOM!!
Arthur: Sure you were Massa Diddy… I heard Missus Longrope and you in the stall talking about Massa Cedar… saying his name should have been Willow…
Longrope: Well boys it looks like we gonna be hanging a white man too… Get on yo knees!!!
Cuss: CUZIN CEDAR YOU GONNA BELIEVE THAT NIGRA OVER ME!!? LET’S GO GET THE MISSUS AND SHE CAN STRAIGHTEN THIS WHOLE THING OUT!!
Longrope: Luke, go to my house and bring the Missus here… Nigra if you be lying… after I finish with you… they gonna be putting “Here Lies “Most” Of Arthurina…” on your tombstone…
Gerald R. Ford -7
In Office 1974 -1977
We will wave at you if we see you on the street.
Gerald R. Ford assumed office after Nixon resigned. He served out the remaining term of Richard Nixon. During the Nixon administration, Ford asked if he could attend Alberta King’s funeral and Nixon told him no. Alberta King of course was Martin Luther King’s mother. She was assassinated by a grubby psychotic little man named Marcus Chenault, who wanted to kill Martin Luther King Sr. The elder King was not in the church that day so he settled for his wife. We have published our story about her twice, but if you missed it, here is a link. So yeah, Ford had some compassion for Black Americans, but would it turn into action once he held the reins of power? The short answer is… hell no. Yes, Leslie took a lot of pictures and even promoted a black American to a cabinet post, but in the end, it was all smoke and mirrors. The Republicans were losing the black vote and they were finding ways to keep us engaged… like Johnson said, not too much… but just enough. Now some of you might think I made a typo earlier when I called the president, Leslie. Nope, I didn’t. Gerald R. Ford’s name on his birth certificate was Leslie Lynch King Jr. So the story goes, his mother and biological father separated not long after he was born. She move away and married a successful businessman named Gerald Ruldoff Ford. After the marriage, the young future president was referred to as Gerald Jr. He changed his name in 1935 to Gerald R. Ford Jr… Now I ain’t trying to put the mouth on anyone, but they say his mother left his biological father because he was an “alleged” woman beater. Alleged means “something that is stated but not confirmed…” That’s for all the lawyer friends reading this. Folks get to feeling some kinda way when you talk about their Daddy popping Moma in the eye every night over a can of Colt 45. Anywho, Ford was a welcome relief from Nixon who was a bigot and borderline racist. Nixon like LBJ was known to throw around racist barbs about Blacks and Jews.
Nixon: A Chinese couple had a black baby and when the wife asked the husband what should they name him…? He said… Sum Tin Wong!!
Aides: ( Silence and crickets…)
Nixon: Im the President of the Mutha@##!ng United States!!
Aides: Ha Ha Ha!!! ROTFL!!! THAT IS FUNNNNNY BOSS!! HA HA HA!!
Anywho, where Nixon treated black folks like the plague, Ford was more engaging, inviting a steady stream of black leaders to the White House. Yes, he did engage and invited folks to the BBQ, but only one or two sat at the table with the grown folks. For instance, he appointed William Coleman as the first black Transportation Secretary and the second black cabinet member in American history. The first black cabinet member was Robert C. Weaver who was Secretary of HUD. He was appointed by LBJ.
Now while Coleman was Transportation Secretary, he made a couple of moves… He authorized the testing and deployment of the first supersonic jet, the Concord… and those airbags which have saved countless lives over the years… well guess who you can thank for that? If you think it was Coleman, you would be wrong… he opposed the shat and stood in the way of making them mandatory for two years.
Anywho, the busing issue was still hot as hell from the Nixon administration, that is whites were still fighting to keep the schools from becoming integrated. Especially in Boston, where shat was being set on fire by the whites up there. Ford tried to walk a thin line. He wasn’t going to oppose busing, but he wasn’t going to support it either. So let’s talk about what this busing thing was at its core. The Supreme Court ordered the desegregation of the US public school system. It left it up to the school districts how that was going to be accomplished. The quickest and most efficient way was busing. That meant busing black kids to white schools and busing white kids to black schools. Down south that primarily meant busing black kids to white schools and we know how that stuff went down. Up north it was a different story. I mentioned Boston for a couple of reasons… one, it was about 98 percent white… and two, that meant primarily busing white kids to black schools… Some of the most ugliest racism you can imagine came out of Boston during this time. They weren’t going for it!! So Ford had to deal with that mess. Finally, there was the Nixon Southern Strategy. That’s Klan talk for “faque the nigg@rs.” Ford didn’t want to go down that route. Remember when I told you what LBJ said about having blacks vote for Democratic for the next 200 years? Well maybe it wasn’t going to be 200 years, but the next 50 years was a done deal. So Nixon’s Southern Strategy was to ignore African Americans and focus on appealing to Southern white racism. The plan was to take advantage of their resentment of African Americans because of the gains in civil rights and voting rights, especially down south. To accomplish this he put a heavy emphasis on law and order… ( heard that before right..?) and states’ rights. It worked and it helped Nixon win the 1968 campaign. After they kicked his bum ass out of office and Ford took over, he refused to go along with the plan. Although Ford reached out to blacks, we were feeling some kinda way because he refused to get off the fence on the busing issue. He needed our vote to win. He went so far as to have Nelson Rockefeller as his running mate. For all intents and purposes, Nelson was a black man with white skin. If he would have been on the stage playing the congos with the Last Poets, I wouldn’t have even noticed… Anywho, so yeah, Ford chose Rockefeller as his running mate, but other than that said very little about civil rights or busing. It really didn’t matter that much as far as black people were concerned. Black folks “HATED” RICHARD MILHOUSE NIXON!! We were through with Nixon and everybody associated with him and that included Ford. He faced off against Jame Earl Carter, aka, Jimmy Carter. White folks were split when it came to Carter. Carter was from the South, but he wasn’t a redneck and didn’t have a racist bone in him. Some of the white folks from Dixie voted for him because he was a Southerner and some voted against him because he wasn’t a racist. In the end that worked out for Carter. Ninety percent of the black vote went to Carter and it was enough to narrowly defeat Gerald Ford. Ford died on December 26, 2006, at the age of 93. He was the longest-living president up until that time.
Shenanigans…
Luke: Missus, yo husband wants you to come with me and explain yoself in front of gawd fearing white men…
Missus: What’s this all about Luke?
Luke: A nigra’s expiration date has passed and we getting ready to punch his card. But just as we were about to do it, he told Cedar that he saw somebody with his Missus at Whitey’s… I thought for sure I’d be standing in line with that nigra at the big Popeyes chicken in the sky… but he thinks it was Cuss…
Missus: Hold on.. let me make a call…
Aunt Yip: I wonder who is this!!? Yes.. hello…?
Well, that is all for now. We thank you for taking this journey with Hill1News as we explore the U.S. presidents in our series “By The Numbers.” We’ve come a long way. Gerald Ford was the 38th person to hold the office and… 39th technically. Grover Cleveland did two non-consecutive terms, so although Biden is our 46th president, there were actually 45 presidential administrations. Cleveland was the 22nd and 24th president. Anywhooooo…. join us next week for ” By The Numbers – The Malaise.”
Thanks for reading ©Hill1News
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