Taking a Stroll in Space

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"I'm coming back in ... and it's the saddest moment of my life."

Edward H. White
June 3, 1965

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Fifty years ago, an American walked in space for the first time.

The man who took the first walk in space was not an American but a Russian. It was during the heated days of the U.S.–U.S.S.R. space race, and every first in the race to the moon was treated like something truly special, even if it wasn't.

Well, maybe it was special at the time, but not so much later on.

On this day in 1965, Edward White became the first American to walk in space. He wasn't one of the original "Mercury 7" astronauts. He was part of the second group chosen — along with Neil Armstrong, who would become the first man to walk on the moon, and Jim Lovell, who flew to the moon twice but never landed there.

White was the pilot of Gemini 4, the second manned space flight in NASA's Project Gemini. James McDivitt was the command pilot. White spent about 20 minutes outside the space ship, then reluctantly returned.

It was — without question — the highlight of the mission. Most people don't know that another first was planned on that mission, but it didn't work out nearly as well. McDivitt was slated to attempt a space rendezvous — an orbital maneuver that became almost routine in later missions but failed on this occasion. McDivitt made up for it a few years later as commander of Apollo 9, which was the first manned flight test of the lunar module.

(And he was Apollo spacecraft program manager from 1969 to 1972, the period in which all of NASA's missions to the moon — so far — were launched.)

The lunar module was the vehicle that carried astronauts to the surface of the moon. It was necessary for the command module to perform a space rendezvous with the lunar module before that part of the mission could commence.

So it is safe to say that McDivitt secured a better spot for himself in NASA's history later in his career than he did 50 years ago.

White, too, is remembered for something other than his space walk on Gemini 4 — something that was probably more important to the success of the program in the long run but hardly as personally triumphant. On Jan. 27, 1967, while conducting spacecraft practice, White and two other astronauts perished when a fire broke out in the pure oxygen environment of the cabin.

The astronauts' deaths revealed spacecraft flaws that NASA resolved before resuming the Apollo program, which went on to put 12 men on the moon and return them safely to earth.

History Is a Harsh Mistress

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"Their cause must be our cause, too. Because it's not just Negroes, but really it's all of us who must overcome the crippling legacy of bigotry and injustice.

"And we shall overcome."

Lyndon B. Johnson
March 15, 1965

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History is, indeed, a harsh mistress. She beckons to those who will follow her when she deems that a great moment is at hand — but she never mentions that the window of opportunity is slamming shut nor does she identify what it is that must be addressed. She just gives vague nods in a general direction and lets you figure out the rest.

In the context of history, you have only minutes — seconds, really — to act, too. Then that window slams shut, and a new one will open sometime in the future, but history gives no warning until the moment is upon us again.

Nor can you apply what you learned from the last time to the new one — like old generals who are constantly trying to fight the last war and neglecting the things that will enable them to win the current one. "History doesn't repeat itself," Mark Twain cautioned, "but it does rhyme."

Fifty years ago, Lyndon B. Johnson gave what was probably the most inspiring speech of his presidency — his address to Congress advocating passage of the Voting Rights Act. It broke no new legal ground, really. It was designed to enforce what had been the law of the land for nearly a century in the form of the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments to the Constitution. They were part of the Reconstruction Amendments that guaranteed rights of citizenship, particularly the right to vote, to minorities, but, as everyone knew, they had not been enforced in most parts of the South.

The voting rights legislation came at a time when LBJ was, arguably, at the height of his political power, prestige and influence. In the year following John F. Kennedy's assassination, Johnson's approval rating had been at its highest — in the 70s — and no president can sustain those numbers indefinitely, but Johnson was doing pretty well after nearly 18 months in the White House. Just a few months earlier, he had been elected to a full four–year term as president in a landslide of historic proportions, and, as he delivered his speech 50 years ago tonight, his approval rating, according to Gallup, was 68%.

Johnson wanted to do something about the situation, but he wanted to proceed slowly, possibly because he wanted to conserve his political capital — which, in hindsight, might have been a good thing to do. America soon soured on the war in Vietnam, and he needed that capital to keep his approval ratings above 50% — a point he dropped below almost permanently by the middle of 1966.

What Johnson told his allies was that he didn't think Congress would be eager to take on another civil rights measure so soon after passing the Civil Rights Act of 1964. But Johnson embraced the idea and enthusiastically pressed for the bill's passage in Congress.

As it turned out, his support for the Voting Rights Act appears to have had little influence on his approval ratings. He remained above 60% for the rest of 1965 — even managed to hit 70% in May. But, of course, that was still in the future; he was hesitant to move quickly in the early spring of 1965.

Perhaps the populist, liberal wing of the Democrat Party of 1965 knew what both parties seem to have forgotten in the 21st century — that history is a harsh mistress and one must act quickly to satisfy her. I have read that the liberals of the day were eager to capitalize on their sweeping victories in the 1964 elections, and history certainly indicates there was good reason for that. Following the 1964 elections, the Democrats had the greatest congressional majorities — in both chambers — that any party has had since the Republic's early years.

The lesson of history is that, when such extremes are reached, there is usually a correction that occurs, and huge majorities begin to dwindle. It is only possible in hindsight, of course, to determine when critical mass was reached. At the time, though, the temptation to believe that popularity has not peaked must be hard to resist.

In a democracy, political success is fleeting — and, in fact, Johnson's approval ratings did plummet in the second half of his term. The unpopularity of the war had a lot to do with it; likewise, the civil rights movement almost certainly had something to do with it. As his approval ratings fell, so did Democrat majorities in the House and Senate.

There is a steep price to be paid for failing to act quickly enough — or failing to recognize history's call when it comes. It was the populist, liberal wing that pressured Johnson to send a voting rights bill to Capitol Hill. The events on the Edmund Pettus Bridge accelerated the process.

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In my lifelong love affair with history, I have come to appreciate its timing, its ironies. So it is with this moment in history.

Johnson delivered what many believe is the most powerful speech in presidential history only a week and a half after the centennial of Abraham Lincoln's masterful "With malice toward none" second inaugural address. History wasn't repeating itself, but it was rhyming.

Johnson's speech, of course, came a week after "Bloody Sunday" in Selma, Alabama — an event that has been re–created recently in the movie "Selma."

Anyone who thinks little progress has been made in racial relations in this country since Johnson gave his speech hasn't been paying attention. I was quite young when LBJ made that speech, and I wasn't aware of the historic events that were happening around me, but I had been to the single–screen movie theater in my hometown, and I had seen blacks being ushered into a corner of the balcony through a back door, and I knew that blacks were treated differently than whites. The public schools in my hometown didn't integrate until I enrolled in first grade. Mine was the first class in my hometown's history to go all the way from first grade through the twelfth integrated.

Since I wasn't old enough to read in 1965, I can't tell you if public drinking fountains and restrooms were still segregated in my hometown when LBJ made his speech, but if they weren't, they must have been at some time. I grew up in the South. Not the deep South where the worst things were happening, but it was still the South. In my home state, Orval Faubus led an ill–fated attempt to halt the desegregation of Little Rock Central years before George Wallace stood in the schoolhouse door and Bull Connor let loose the police dogs and fire hoses on civil rights activists in Alabama.

In those days, civil rights activists could be heard singing "We Shall Overcome." The phrase had become synonymous with "the movement," as I heard most blacks in my hometown call it, sanctified by the blood that had been spilled by so many. The casualties in Selma were only the latest, but they were the straw that broke the camel's back. Selma was too high profile for Johnson to ignore.

On this occasion, historian William Manchester observed, the president "concluded his speech with a phrase that had become hallowed by the blood and tears of a new generation of black Americans marching for justice. He said that their cause 'must be our cause, too. Because it's not just Negroes, but really it's all of us who must overcome the crippling legacy of bigotry and injustice. And we shall overcome.'

"That was fine liberal eloquence," Manchester wrote, "but at times during the year it appeared to be a doubtful prediction. The eleventh anniversary of the Supreme Court's ruling in Brown v. Board of Education passed on May 17, and racism seemed stronger than ever."

My memory is foggy — I was, after all, a small child at the time — but I remember hearing the black ladies with whom my mother worked on our local Human Relations Council speaking of how great it was that the president had used that phrase.

It was more than symbolic to them.

The LBJ Era Departs

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For many years, I worked in a building that was located along LBJ Freeway here in Dallas.

I worked for an auto loan company, and I often had to call people — customers, dealers — and sometimes those calls required me to give them our mailing address. More than one gave me a questioning response when I told them the street address.

"LBJ stands for Lyndon Baines Johnson," I would tell them. If that produced no knowing response, I elaborated. "He became president after the assassination of John F. Kennedy." That was usually sufficient. The people with whom I spoke were not always old enough to remember Johnson, but they recognized Kennedy's name.

Those conversations always struck me as odd because, when I was a child, everyone knew what LBJ stood for.

I was still quite young when he left the White House. I knew his first name was Lyndon and his last name was Johnson. I had heard him called Lyndon B. Johnson. I'm not sure if I knew exactly what his middle name was, but I had heard plenty of people refer to the president as LBJ.

There always seemed to be footage on the evening news of angry college students marching in protests against the war and chanting things like "Hey, hey, LBJ, how many kids have you killed today?"

I mean, unless you were deaf, dumb and blind (or, perhaps, just plain Forrest Gump stupid), just about everyone who was alive in those days knew what LBJ stood for!

My father was a college professor, and I knew some of his students. And they not only knew what LBJ stood for, most of them seemed to think LBJ was going to be around forever.

That wasn't true, of course. As I say, he left the presidency in 1969 after choosing not to run for another term; then, in one of those ironic twists of history, he died of a heart attack two days after that term would have ended.

Thus, he proved all those predictions of his immortality to be indisputably wrong in rather short order.

And, one by one, most of the figures from Johnson's administration have left the earthly scene as well. His secretary of defense, Robert McNamara, died last summer, and then today, two more people from the LBJ days — Secretary of the Interior Stewart Udall and Liz Carpenter, a close aide to both President and Mrs. Johnson for many years — have died.

Udall was 90. Carpenter was 89.

It strikes me as ironic that not one but two people from the Johnson presidency should die within a week of the 45th anniversary of what is arguably the most significant speech that Johnson ever gave.

On March 15, 1965, Johnson addressed a joint session of Congress to press for the passage of the Voting Rights Act about a week after the infamous "Bloody Sunday" confrontation in Selma, Ala., during the first Selma–to–Montgomery voting rights march.

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He adopted a line from the protest song that had become synonymous with the civil rights movement as he took a stand against discrimination in the most public way that a president can. On that evening, Johnson said, "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."

My mother was active in the Human Relations Council in my hometown in Arkansas when I was growing up, and I know from speaking with many of the black members in those days that they were deeply moved and inspired to hear the president of the United States use a phrase that was so closely linked to "the struggle," as they called it. That was one of the last things that most of them had ever expected to see in their lifetimes.

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Language has power. It isn't always how much you know but how you express it that makes the impression. And, in Johnson's case, what he knew (which was the moral and ethical thing to do) and the best way to express it came together at a crossroads in American history.

There is no denying that there was plenty of deception and trickery from the Johnson administration when it came to its policy on Vietnam. But, on March 15, 1965, he spoke to — and, perhaps, with the assistance of — what Lincoln called "the better angels of our nature."

It may have been the shining moment of Johnson's life and presidency.