Warrior, dove, pragmatist, revolutionary, institutionalist – Lyndon Johnson inhabited a range of personas, each of which expressed his hopes, fears, vision, and philosophy. Johnson’s presidency expressed itself in those contradictions, securing extraordinary gains on behalf of those marginalized at home while unleashing bloodshed on millions living abroad. His lifelong desire for recognition, his powerful wish to be loved, his surpassing need to control and dominate, his deep-seated yearning to lift up the oppressed and ennoble the downtrodden – these attributes coalesced in a roughly five-year presidential tenure that harnessed the power of the state to effect fundamental change. This chapter offers a window onto his persona and its impact on his presidency. His strengths and weaknesses are evident in several dimensions of his management style, including his use of people, his workday habits, his pursuit of information, and his decision-making process. Each shaped his triumphs and his failures, and persisted throughout his life and career, as would the principles he gleaned at an early age – both the idealistic and the less ennobling. Collectively, these aspects reveal much about LBJ and his presidency, and provide a backdrop for deeper exploration of his legacy and significance.

This chapter examines the ways in which Lyndon Johnson attempted to build on and expand the liberal tradition in twentieth-century American politics. As he did so from the perch of the Oval Office, Johnson ran directly into the structural limitations and debilitating political fears of liberalism that were at work right at this high point for Johnson’s career: the racial accord that Northern Democrats had entered into with Southerners in the 1930s, and the fears about appearing weak on national security. In the end, the political vulnerabilities and limitations of this tradition would overwhelm him, leaving him to announce that he would not run for reelection in October 1964 and defining his legacy over the failed war in Vietnam. While it is important to understand how Johnson’s own agency led to his downfall, it is equally relevant to understand how the nature of American liberalism trapped Johnson into these positions. The president was caught in the basic contradictions of the agenda that he inherited and championed. The same tradition that strengthened his resolve to grow the government to tackle new areas of domestic life also pushed him toward the decisions that drowned his legacy for decades to come. This is not just the story of Lyndon Johnson – it’s the story of American liberalism in the twentieth century.

One of LBJ’s signature civil rights achievements, the 1965 Hart–Celler Immigration Act still stands in providing the overarching structure for immigration regulation in the US today. Its enactment ended decades of overtly racist immigration laws, crowning the almost equally long campaigns by immigration reformers seeking a more egalitarian system. In securing passage of the legislation, LBJ provided essential leadership but accepted significant compromises to do so. The immigration overhaul succeeded in abolishing the most discriminatory aspects of the old system for immigration regulation, even as it has implemented new forms of inequalities that have criminalized migrations particularly from the US’s closest neighbors. This law has transformed the US through the most diverse immigration in national history, even as it has produced a large and persistent caste of second-class residents whose unauthorized immigration bars them from citizenship.

Harnessing the power of the presidency, Lyndon Baines Johnson required America to wrestle with its past. Together, the powerful social movements of the 1960s and his Great Society catalyzed a cycle of reckoning and discomfort that changed America until the war in Vietnam, and anger and angst about government, identity, and power brought it to an end. We’ve tried to forget LBJ and, in some cases, what his presidency achieved and helped unearth. But we ignore him at our peril. The Johnson years have much to teach us, as America in the 1960s and today’s America have much in common. America today, as in the 1960s, is tumultuous. Armed with our memories and different conceptions of how we got here, we’re struggling to define our problems and the answers appear unknowable and out of reach. But instead of actively looking away from the past, we can choose to learn from it. Remembering Lyndon Johnson and his presidency – the good and the bad – offers us the opportunity to reposition government as an ally, not an enemy, and to acknowledge and confront the historically toxic relationship that binds power, politics, and American identity so we can move closer to our democratic aspirations.

President Lyndon B. Johnson and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. stand out as remarkable co-architects of the movement for racial progress and just democracy that marked the decade of the 1960s. Individually, each put an indelible stamp of the civil rights and Great Society eras. Together, for a time, they formed perhaps the most formidable political tandem between a president and social justice movement leader in American history. Yet their relationship was also a fraught one,  filled with creative tension, political conflicts, and personal disappointments. This chapter delves into the arc of Lyndon Johnson and Martin Luther King Jr.’s relationship to tease out the extraordinary ways they were able to galvanize America toward some of the most remarkable achievements of the nation’s Second Reconstruction; yet, by the end of the public political careers, they grew increasingly distant, combative, and disappointed in the other. Ultimately, the chapter argues that, despite their political differences, their evolving relationship helped to fundamentally transform postwar American democracy even as it framed the limits of the political liberalism within which such change could occur.

This chapter argues that two Congresses coexist in Washington, DC. The partisan Congress, which receives the bulk of public and media attention, is characterized by polarization, gridlock, and partisan conflict. But there is also the collaborative Congress, in which members work together to find common ground. Chapter 1 draws on examples from media accounts, interviews with congressional staff, and a new dataset of congressional communications to illustrate what the collaborative Congress looks like in practice and introduce the central question of the book: Why do members of Congress collaborate? The discussion of collaboration is situated in the broader literature on Congress to explain why we know so little about it and why it matters. Conflict draws attention, and Congress is rife with highly visible disagreements, leaving little room for awareness of the members who are crafting policy through negotiation, compromise, and bipartisanship. But if the partisan Congress explains why Congress is broken, the collaborative Congress can help us understand why it works, improving Congress's capacity to legislate and address pressing societal problems.

Source: OAU CAB/LEG/67/3/Rev.5.

AFRICAN CHARTER ON HUMAN AND PEOPLES’ RIGHTS

PREAMBLE

The African States members of the Organization of African Unity, parties to the present convention entitled “African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights”,

Recalling Decision 115 (XVI) of the Assembly of Heads of State and Government at its Sixteenth Ordinary Session held in Monrovia, Liberia, from 17 to 20 July 1979 on the preparation of “a preliminary draft on an African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights providing inter alia for the establishment of bodies to promote and protect human and peoples’ rights”;

Considering the Charter of the Organization of African Unity, which stipulates that “freedom, equality, justice and dignity are essential objectives for the achievement of the legitimate aspirations of the African peoples”;

Reaffirming the pledge they solemnly made in Article 2 of the said Charter to eradicate all forms of colonialism from Africa, to coordinate and intensify their cooperation and efforts to achieve a better life for the peoples of Africa and to promote international cooperation having due regard to the Charter of the United Nations and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights;

Taking into consideration the virtues of their historical tradition and the values of African civilization which should inspire and characterize their reflection on the concept of human and peoples’ rights;

Recognizing on the one hand, that fundamental human rights stem from the attributes of human beings, which justifies their international protection and on the other hand that the reality and respect of peoples rights should necessarily guarantee human rights;

Considering that the enjoyment of rights and freedoms also implies the performance of duties on the part of everyone;

Convinced that it is henceforth essential to pay a particular attention to the right to development and that civil and political rights cannot be dissociated from economic, social and cultural rights in their conception as well as universality and that the satisfaction of economic, social and cultural rights is a guarantee for the enjoyment of civil and political rights;

Conscious of their duty to achieve the total liberation of Africa, the peoples of which are still struggling for their dignity and genuine independence, and undertaking to eliminate colonialism, neo-colonialism, apartheid, zionism and to dismantle aggressive foreign military bases and all forms of discrimination, particularly those based on race,