From Publishers Weekly
Starred Review. King's leadership of the Civil Rights movement catalyzed a revolution in public consciousness that Johnson's matchless political skills cemented in the landmark voting and civil rights laws of the 1960s. In this engrossing narrative history, Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist Kotz (A Passion for Equality) follows their tense but fruitful working relationship from Johnson's assumption of the presidency in 1963 to King's assassination five years later. Theirs was a wary partnership, uneasy when they joined forces against Jim Crow in the wake of Kennedy's assassination, strained by King's opposition to the Vietnam War and continually undermined by FBI chief J. Edgar Hoover, who bombarded Johnson with reports of King's links to Communists and of his sexual indiscretions. In Kotz's sympathetic but complex and critical assessment, the Machiavellian politician and the visionary activist become almost brothers under the skin—both genuine idealists and cool-headed, at times even ruthless political strategists, both plagued by inner demons that threatened to undo their agenda. Employing newly available telephone conversations and FBI wiretap logs, among other sources, Kotz's detailed and gripping account takes readers into the bloody trenches of the Civil Rights movement and the bitter congressional floor battles to get legislation past the segregationist bloc. It is a fascinating portrait of two leaders working at a time when the low skullduggery of politics really was infused with the highest moral values. Photos. Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Bookmarks Magazine
Critics agree that the strength of Judgment Days lies in its new approach to an old story. One detractor found the account stale at times, complaining that the section on Vietnam seemed like a rehash. Most readers, however, focused less on the familiarity of Kotz’s source material and more on the remarkable insight he brings to a tense relationship. Judgment Days is not an exposé, but rather a personal and psychological approach to an oft-analyzed political moment. Kotz deserves particular praise for his deep examination of Johnson, who emerges from Judgment Days as a man of serious flaws but monumental courage.Copyright © 2004 Phillips & Nelson Media, Inc.

From Booklist
Johnson and King were southerners from similar roots but worlds apart--one white, one black; one a president, the other a minister. Their lives merged with the events that led to the passage of the transformative civil rights acts of 1964 and 1965. Kotz traces the synergy of nonviolent civil disobedience with keen political acumen that produced the epic of the civil rights movement. Johnson embraced the critical analysis by black citizens concerning the gap between American practices and its principles on equity and freedom. Kotz covers the rising tension of the era that led to what King referred to as the second emancipation. Despite their shared achievement, tensions between King and Johnson grew as King became more active in protesting the war and advocating on behalf of poor Americans. Johnson's decision not to run for president and King's assassination-- both in 1968--again tied these men together at the high and low ends of a fateful period. Vernon Ford
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Book Description
Opposites in almost every way, mortally suspicious of each other at first, Lyndon Baines Johnson and Martin Luther King, Jr., were thrust together in the aftermath of John F. Kennedy's assassination. Both men sensed a historic opportunity and began a delicate dance of accommodation that moved them, and the entire nation, toward the historic Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Drawing on a wealth of newly available sources -- Johnson's taped telephone conversations, voluminous FBI wiretap logs, previously secret communications between the FBI and the president -- Nick Kotz gives us a dramatic narrative, rich in dialogue, that presents this momentous period with thrilling immediacy. Judgment Days offers needed perspective on a presidency too often linked solely to the tragedy of Vietnam. We watch Johnson applying the arm-twisting tactics that made him a legend in the Senate, and we follow King as he keeps the pressure on in the South through protest and passive resistance. King's pragmatism and strategic leadership and Johnson's deeply held commitment to a just society shaped the character of their alliance. Kotz traces the inexorable convergence of their paths to an intense joint effort that made civil rights a legislative reality at last, despite FBI director J. Edgar Hoover's vicious whispering campaign to destroy King. Judgment Days also reveals how this spirit of teamwork disintegrated. The two leaders parted bitterly over King's opposition to the Vietnam War. In this first full account of the working relationship between Johnson and King, Kotz offers a detailed, surprising account that significantly enriches our understanding of both men and their time.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
Chapter 1The CataclysmThe day began in triumph for John Fitzgerald Kennedy.Riding through the sunny streets of downtown Dallas inan open convertible, his young wife, Jacqueline, beside him, the presidentof the United States beamed at the cheering crowds. Two cars back in themotorcade, Lyndon Baines Johnson, who knew he had been Kennedy"schoice for vice president principally to keep the South in the Democraticfold, felt vindicated by the warm reception in his home state. Both menhad been apprehensive about open hostility from angry southerners inthe wake of Kennedy"s call for a new civil rights law.Instead, thousands of ebullient Texans applauded and waved at theirhandsome young president and at their own Lyndon Johnson. In thefront car, Nellie Connally, wife of Texas governor John Connally, turnedback toward John Kennedy. "You can"t say Dallas doesn"t love you," shebeamed.1An instant later,Nellie Connally heard a loud noise, followed rapidly byseveral more explosions. She saw President Kennedy grip his throat withboth hands and heard her husband moan, "Oh, no, no, no," and then, "MyGod, they are going to kill us all!"Kennedy was slumped over, bleeding, aswas Governor Connally, whom she cradled in her arms as the convertiblesped away.2Two cars behind them, Secret Service agent Rufus Youngblood yelled,"Get down!" and shoved Lyndon Johnson to the floorboard. The agentthrew his own two hundred–pound body across Johnson to protect thevice president. Pinned down and unable to see, Johnson heard tiresscreeching as he felt the car accelerate.He heard the radioed voice of agentRoy Kellerman from Kennedy"s car shouting, "Let"s get the heck out ofhere!" Then he heard still another agent"s voice: "The President has beenshot.We don"t know who else they are after."Moments later, Secret Service men rushed Johnson and his wife, LadyBird, into Parkland Memorial Hospital, where they huddled silently togetherin an examining room with the shades drawn. In an adjoiningroom, Secret Service agent Henry Roberts spoke into his radio to headquarters in Washington. "We don"t know what the full scope of this thingis," he said. "It could be a conspiracy to try to kill the president, vice president— try to kill everybody."3Less than an hour after the shots were fired, at 1:22 p.m. Central StandardTime, November 22, 1963, White House aide Kenneth O"Donnellcame into the Johnsons" room. "He"s gone," he told them. At that moment,fifty-five-year-old Lyndon Baines Johnson became the thirty-sixthpresident of the United States.4In his two-story frame home on Auburn Avenue in Atlanta, the ReverendDr. Martin Luther King Jr. struggled awake late that November morning,physically and mentally exhausted from too much travel and too littlesleep. During the previous seven days, King had been constantly on theroad, first for a rally at Danville, Virginia, where the sparse turnout ofsupporters suggested that the civil rights leader would have troublelaunching a planned major campaign there. The young minister wasdeeply worried that the civil rights movement was losing momentum andperplexed about where he should now direct the energies of his SouthernChristian Leadership Conference (SCLC) to pressure Congress into approvingcivil rights legislation. If not Danville, where should King go next? With conflicting advice coming from his aides, King did not knowwhat to do.After Danville, he had flown to New York to meet privately at IdlewildAirport with two key advisers, attorneys Clarence Jones and Stanley DavidLevison, who both urged him to launch a new campaign, lest themantle of civil rights leadership pass to younger, more radical men. Hethen stopped off at a resort in New York"s Catskill Mountains at the nationalconvention of United Synagogues of America to receive its annualleadership award.Next, he flew to Chicago to speak to the annual conventionof the Union of American Hebrew Congregations, representing ReformJews. Such speeches, more than 150 a year, left him constantly tired.They were necessary to build support and raise the funds needed to keepthe SCLC afloat, yet aides constantly reminded King that those activitieswere no substitute for the kinds of direct-action demonstrations thathad catapulted him to prominence. It had been just such an action inBirmingham, Alabama, six months earlier that had prompted PresidentKennedy to introduce a civil rights bill, after two years of urging frommovement leaders. His proposed bill would outlaw segregation in publicaccommodations, forbid discrimination in employment, and withdrawfederal aid from state and local governments that discriminated againstanyone because of race, national origin, or religion. But now the legislationfaced poor prospects in Congress, and King feared that Kennedy"s enthusiasm for the bill had waned as his 1964 reelection campaign drewnearer.A television set flickered in the background as King tried to rest in hisupstairs bedroom. At the first news bulletin, he shouted downstairs to hiswife, "Corrie, I just heard that Kennedy has been shot, maybe killed!"Coretta Scott King, who had been writing notes at her desk, rushed upstairsto her husband"s side. Horrified, the couple stared at scenes of theDallas motorcade and the vigil at Parkland Memorial Hospital."This is just terrible," cried King. Death threats had become a constantin the King home. "I hope he will live. . . . I think if he lives — if he pullsthrough this, it will help him to understand better what we go through."Moments later, the television news anchor announced that the presidentwas dead."This is what"s going to happen to me," an agonized King told his wife."This is such a sick society."5Lyndon Johnson"s first fear was that the Soviet Union might have unleashedan attack against the United States. If the Soviets had shot thepresident, he thought, who would they shoot next? And what was goingon in Washington? And when were the missiles coming? With thesethoughts racing through his mind, Johnson ordered the Secret Service todelay public announcement of Kennedy"s death until he and Lady Birdhad left Parkland Hospital.6As they prepared to leave, Johnson urged his wife to go see "Jackie andNellie." In a narrow hallway outside the main operating room, Mrs. Johnsonfound Jacqueline Kennedy standing alone, her face frozen in horror,her pink suit spattered with her husband"s blood. "God help us all!" LadyBird said, embracing John F. Kennedy"s young widow. Lady Bird nextwent to her old friend Nellie Connally, who was being reassured by doctorsthat her husband would live.7The Johnsons then were rushed out a side door of the hospital and intoseparate unmarked police cars. Eight minutes later they arrived at LoveField. Scrambling up the ramp into Air Force One, Lyndon Johnson facedhis first decisions as president. General GodfreyMcHugh and otherWhiteHouse aides had been urging that the president"s official plane take off forWashington the moment the Johnsons came on board, but Lyndon Johnsoncountermanded the general"s order.8He would not leave Dallas without Jacqueline Kennedy and the body ofher husband — then en route to Love Field — nor without first taking theoath of office as president. With that ceremony, he meant to show theworld that the government of the United States was still functioning in anorderly manner. U.S. district judge Sarah Hughes, an old Johnson friendand supporter, was summoned from her office in Dallas. Hughes boardedthe Boeing 707, and as Lyndon Baines Johnson placed his hand on a Bible,she administered the oath of office. Lady Bird Johnson and JacquelineKennedy stood at his side. After kissing each woman on the cheek, PresidentJohnson commanded Colonel James Swindall, the pilot of Air ForceOne, "Let"s be airborne!"9As the plane sped toward Washington, Johnson telephoned Rose Kennedy,mother of the murdered president. "I wish to God there was somethingI could do," he said. "I wanted to tell you that we were grieving withyou." Choked with emotion, Johnson handed the telephone to Lady Birdto try to console Mrs. Kennedy.10Over the jet"s sophisticated communications system, Johnson then arrangedfor congressional leaders and national security advisers to meet atthe White House upon his arrival in Washington.11 And he instructed sixmembers of the Cabinet aboard an airplane bound for Japan to changecourse and return to the capital. A few minutes earlier, Secretary of StateDean Rusk had informed that planeload of Cabinet members, reporters,and their party that President Kennedy had been shot, but they had notbeen told his condition. The delegation sat in stunned silence. When theairplane began to make a slow U-turn over the Pacific and head back towardthe United States, they knew that their president was dead.12Two hours and ten minutes after leaving Dallas, Johnson stood in darknesson the tarmac at Andrews Air Force Base outside Washington. Hiscraggy face illuminated by klieg lights, the new president spoke to the nation:"This is a sad time for all people.We have suffered a loss that cannotbe weighed. For me it is a deep personal tragedy. I know the world sharesthe sorrow that Mrs. Kennedy and her family bear. I will do my best. Thatis all I can do. I ask for your help and God"s."13Touching down on the South Lawn of the White House after a tenminutehelicopter ride from Andrews, Johnson strode deliberately towardthe entrance of the Oval Office. Then, abruptly changing his mind, hewalked through the White House basement to his vice presidential suitein the Executive Office Building. There he asked the assembled congressionalleaders for their support.14 He approached each member of Kennedy"sCabinet and staff and asked them all to stay on. "I need you morethan the President needed you," Johnson told them.15 He called KeithFunston, chairman of the New York Stock Exchange, to thank him forshutting down the market as soon as news broke of the assassination.16 Hephoned Richard Maguire, treasurer of the Democratic National Committeeand chief fundraiser for the expected 1964 Kennedy presidential campaign,and asked him to continue his work.17 He contacted former presidentsHarry Truman and Dwight Eisenhower to request their advice.* Hearranged to meet Eisenhower inWashington the following morning.18FBI director J. Edgar Hoover called the new president with disquietinginformation about Lee Harvey Oswald, who had just been arrested andcharged with Kennedy"s murder, a story that hinted at Cold War conspiracy.A former U.S.Marine, Oswald had lived for several years in the SovietUnion, where he had married a Russian woman and tried to become a Sovietcitizen. Oswald had worked for a group supporting Cuban Communistleader Fidel Castro and recently had visited the Soviet consulate inMexico City.19The news could hardly have been more ominous. The Cold War betweenthe United States and the Soviet Union was raging across the world— from the divided city of Berlin to Vietnam. Only thirteen months hadpassed since the United States and the Soviet Union had come within aneyelash of nuclear war over the presence of Soviet missiles on the island ofCuba, ninety-two miles from the American shore. After a nerve-wrackingthirteen-day standoff, the crisis had ended when the Soviets agreed to removethe missiles.Despite his own fears about Soviet involvement in the assassination,Johnson knew that the nation needed his reassurance. Concerned thatDallas district attorney Henry Wade might rush to a public judgment involvingOswald in a Communist plot, the new president asked his longtimeadviser Horace Busby to assign Texas attorney general WaggonerCarr to take command of the assassination investigation.20For most of his life, Lyndon Johnson had dreamed of becoming president.Now, under nightmarish circumstances, his wish had been fulfilled,and he faced a nation stunned by sorrow, fear, and troubling questions:* Johnson also tried to reach the oldest living ex-president, eighty-nine-year-old Herbert Hoover, but was unable to do so and instead left a message with Hoover"s son.Who had killed Jack Kennedy and why? And who was this hulking Texanwith the deep southwestern twang who had suddenly taken Kennedy"splace as president of the United States?Congressman Hale Boggs of Louisiana, the deputy majority leader of theHouse of Representatives, raced toward the Capitol from his office acrossthe street in the Cannon House Office Building as soon as he heard thenews, nearly crashing into Representative William Colmer, a MississippiDemocrat and diehard segregationist. "Your people killed that man!"Boggs shouted at a startled Colmer. "Your Ross Barnetts!"21The grief-stricken Boggs was not the only person to leap to the conclusionthat Kennedy"s murder was related in some way to racial strife in theSouth. In late September 1962, Governor Ross Barnett of Mississippi hadfueled a deadly riot by defying President Kennedy"s order making JamesMeredith the first African American admitted to the University of Mississippi.22 Barnett"s Mississippi had produced more civil rights–related violencethan any other state. Civil rights activists had been beaten and murdered,black churches had been burned, and Ku Klux Klansmen hadwaged a campaign of terror with virtual immunity from state and locallaw enforcement.Senator Richard Russell, a Georgia Democrat and leader of the southernsegregationist forces in the Senate, stood in his usual spot in the Senate Marble Room reading the news wires as they came out of a ticker tapemachine. Russell"s eyes welled with tears as he read of the "dastardly crime. . . which had stricken a brilliant, dedicated statesman at the very heightof his powers." Russell took solace in knowing that his friend and protégéLyndon Johnson would be taking over the reins — a man he had long believedhad "all the talents and abilities to be a strong president."23Senator Hubert Humphrey, a Minnesota Democrat and deputy majorityleader of the Senate, heard the news as he was attending a luncheon atthe Chilean embassy in Washington. Overcome by emotion, Humphreywept openly, then steadied himself to announce the sad news to the assembled guests. As he left the embassy, Humphrey worried about thehealth of his friend Lyndon Johnson — about his earlier heart attack andhow he might have been shaken emotionally by the trauma of the day. Butthat evening Humphrey felt reassured by Johnson"s measured calm whenhe saw Johnson in his office. Putting his arm around Humphrey, Johnsontold him that he desperately needed the help of his friend fromMinnesota— who had been the Democrats" point man on civil rights since 1948.Most Americans, regardless of their political beliefs, reacted to theassassination with a profound sense of shock and grief. The attractiveyoung president and his glamorous wife had charmed the nation, and indeedpeople throughout the world, with their vitality, graciousness, andstyle. But race had become a dominant, divisive issue in American publiclife. In disturbing ways, feelings about race influenced immediate reactionsto Kennedy"s murder. Some hard-core racists, bitter about the president"sproposals to outlaw segregation and forbid discrimination againstNegroes, actually cheered the news of his death. In a dormitory at MississippiState College, cowbells rang in celebration.24 A young man from Alabamaproclaimed on an Atlanta radio call-in show that night that "Kennedygot exactly what he deserved — that any white man who did what hedid for niggers should be shot!"25A large majority of America"s 22 million African Americans admiredJohn F. Kennedy and considered him a sympathetic friend.Many assumedat first that his assassin had been motivated by racial hatred. That assumption proved unfounded, but it reflected the highly charged politicaland social climate of the times. After four years of increasingly potent civilrights protests, the White House and Congress finally had begun to respondto black citizens" demands for legislation forbidding segregationand discrimination in public accommodations, voting, employment, andschools. As the civil rights forces led by Martin Luther King and otherblack leaders increased pressure for change, southern vigilantes from theKu Klux Klan and White Citizens Councils retaliated with increased violence.Only two months earlier, four young black girls, wearing theirwhite Sunday dresses, had died in a fiery blast when Klan members dynamited their Birmingham, Alabama, church as parishioners gathered formorning worship.In a Cleveland, Ohio, hotel ballroom, Leslie Dunbar, director of theSouthern Regional Council, a moderate voice for improved race relations,was preparing to address a luncheon meeting of civil rights leaders.Whenhe heard about the president"s assassination, he tore his prepared speechinto pieces and dropped it into a wastebasket just before his scheduledpresentation. Dunbar had intended to excoriate President Kennedy andhis brother, Attorney General Robert Kennedy, for moving too slowly oncivil rights. Instead, the meeting abruptly broke up as the attendees racedto the telephones and television set in the hotel lobby.Dunbar"s complaints about the Kennedy administration were widelyshared among the civil rights leaders present at that meeting of the NationalAssociation of Inter-group Relations Officials (NAIRO). They werecritical of Kennedy for his hesitation in advocating new civil rights lawsand for the government"s failure to protect peaceful black demonstratorswho were being brutalized in the South. Even though Kennedy was widelyadmired by the black masses, many civil rights leaders had come to seehim as a white politician who had initially shown great promise but whoseemed to respond only to constant prodding and political pressure.26The assessment was harsh but not far off the mark. Two days earlier, onNovember 20, Robert Kennedy had celebrated his thirty-eighth birthdayat an office party in which he stood on his desk and satirically describedhow his work on civil rights as attorney general had made President Kennedymuch more popular in the South. He joked that "the administrationwould have floundered without him — he"d captured the South, laborwould be committed to Democrats forever," and that he had madethe Democrats the "law-and-order party." As Assistant Attorney GeneralRamsey Clark left the celebration, he reflected that with the attorney generalabout to resign to run his brother"s reelection campaign, the civilrights bill was dead until after the 1964 election.27Leslie Dunbar"s speech was not the only one discarded that Friday afternoon.Senate Majority Leader Mike Mansfield, a Montana Democrat,had prepared a speech defending Congress from criticism that it wasmoving too slowly on civil rights legislation. In an earlier civil rights fight,he planned to tell his colleagues, haste had only helped the bill"s segregationist opponents. At news of the assassination, Mansfield hurried to the Senate dais to comfort Senator Edward Kennedy, the slain president"syoungest brother, who was presiding. At a loss for words, Mansfield adjourned the Senate.The Reverend Walter Fauntroy, Washington director of King"s SouthernChristian Leadership Conference, heard news of the assassination on hiscar radio as he was leaving a restaurant in downtown Washington, D.C.He too thought at first that the violence directed against black civil rightsdemonstrators "has now reached the White House. They hate Kennedythe way they hate us!" As for Lyndon Johnson, Fauntroy dismissed thenew president as "a "wheeler-dealer" from the South."28Twenty-three-year-old Julian Bond, an officer of the Student NonviolentCoordinating Committee (SNCC), the most militant national civilrights organization, was having lunch with a columnist from the AtlantaJournal when he heard the news. Bond wondered first "whether Kennedy"sassassin was a left-winger, and would people like us be blamed?"Bond then called a friend in Texas to ask, "Who is this guy Lyndon John-son?" His friend warned him that Johnson was "a tool of the oil interestswith a mixed civil rights record" and that "we should be wary and suspicious."29In Atlanta, eight-year-old Yolanda King arrived home from school intears. Rushing into her father"s arms, she cried, "Oh, Daddy, now we willnever get our freedom."Martin Luther King responded softly, "Now don"tyou worry, baby. It"s going to be all right."30King spent the afternoon at home on the telephone gathering informationand advice from his aides and preparing a statement about the assassination.He found that the SCLC"s leaders were spread out around theSouth. In St. Helena Island, South Carolina, the Reverend Andrew Young,Dorothy Cotton, and Septima Clark were conducting an SCLC workshoptraining new local leaders for upcoming demonstrations. Upon hearingthe news, Young led the group in prayers for the country; then, for the restof the day, the activists sang movement spirituals.31In Danville, Virginia, the Reverend C. T. Vivian, an official of King"sSouthern Christian Leadership Conference, was briefing a group of newcivil rights workers who would fan out across the southwestern Virginiatown to informits citizens whyMartin Luther King Jr. had chosen it as thenext target in his campaign for racial equality. After a messenger whisperednews of the assassination, Vivian told the recruits to go home. Theywould demonstrate another day. Vivian himself was stoic, dry-eyed aboutthe president"s murder. The movement was used to murder. Kennedy"sdeath was one more event to be tallied in Vivian"s deep belief that "everythingdone to destroy us, develops us."32By late afternoon,Martin Luther King had reached Clarence Jones andStanley Levison, his two closest advisers outside the SCLC staff. Togetherthey agreed on a statement which stressed that an atmosphere of violenceand hatred in the country had contributed to President Kennedy"s assassination."I am shocked and grief stricken at the tragic assassination ofPresident Kennedy," King"s statement read. "He was a great and dedicatedPresident. His death is a great loss to America and the world. The finesttribute that the American people can pay to the late President Kennedy isto implement the progressive policies that he sought to initiate in foreignand domestic relations."33Tension is expected anytime power is transferred from one group to another,but the normal tension accompanying a presidential transition wascompounded by the upheaval of November 22, 1963. Grief and resent-ment led to emotional outbursts from people close to both Jack Kennedyand Lyndon Johnson. It began in the rear of Air Force One on the sadflight back to Washington as JFK"s closest aides huddled with JacquelineKennedy around the coffin of the late president. The Kennedy menseethed, feeling that Johnson was grasping power too quickly. Theythought that he should have used Air Force Two, the vice presidentialplane, to return to Washington.34 Lawrence O"Brien, Kennedy"s chief ofcongressional relations, was disturbed that Johnson had begun imploringhim to stay on in his job at a time when O"Brien wanted only to mournbeside his friend"s coffin.35As soon as Air Force One came to a stop at Andrews, Robert Kennedycharged onto the plane, shouting, "Where is Jackie? I want to be withJackie."As he pushed through the plane, he brushed past Lyndon Johnsonwithout saying a word to the new president. Johnson ignored the snub,but Congressman Jack Brooks of Texas, also on the plane, declared thatJohnson should fire Kennedy immediately "because he never will beloyal."36Standing on the tarmac watching Jack Kennedy"s coffin being loweredfrom the airplane, John F. Bailey, the burly chairman of the DemocraticNational Committee, muttered, "Now that son-of-a-bitch Lyndon Johnsonis going to be President."37As Johnson and Kennedy staff members worked side by side that nightin the Executive Office Building, grief occasionally exploded into anger.When Johnson aide Cliff Carter asked a Kennedy secretary to bring himsome sheets of White House notepaper for President Johnson, she burstinto tears. "He can"t even let the body get cold before he starts using hisstationery," she complained.38Johnson used the stationery that night to write notes to President Kennedy"schildren, Caroline and John Jr. "It will be many years before youunderstand fully what a great man your father was," he wrote to the latepresident"s little son. "His loss is a deep personal tragedy for all of us, but Iwanted you particularly to know that I share your grief. You can always beproud of him."39That the assassination had occurred in Johnson"s native state heightenedthe tensions surrounding his sudden ascension to the presidency.Even before Kennedy and Johnson had embarked on their fateful trip,Dallas was notorious for its nasty political climate. Less than a month earlier,a mob of right-wing zealots in Dallas had jeered and spat at Adlai E.Stevenson, Kennedy"s ambassador to the United Nations and himself aformer Democratic presidential candidate. In the 1960 presidential campaign,even Johnson, then Senate majority leader, and Lady Bird had beenheckled and shoved as they campaigned in Dallas for the Kennedy–Johnsonticket.On the helicopter ride from Andrews Air Force Base to the WhiteHouse, animosity toward Texas poured out. Kennedy aide Theodore Sorensenexploded at George Reedy, the Johnson aide seated beside him."George, I hate that goddamned state of Texas of yours," Sorensenshouted above the roar of helicopter engines. "I wish it never had existed!"40 Other Kennedy aides would acknowledge later that in theirfirst blinding emotions of shock, grief, and anger, the thought had evencrossed their minds that Lyndon Johnson was somehow involved in theassassination.The special burden of being a Texan on November 22 occurred to LadyBird Johnson almost immediately. Overwhelmed by her own feelings asshe tried to comfort Jacqueline Kennedy on board Air Force One, LadyBird almost pleaded for understanding. "Oh, Mrs. Kennedy," she said,"you know we never even wanted to be vice president, and now, dear God,it"s come to this." She was horrified that the assassination had taken placein Texas.41 "There is that sense of shame over the violence and hatred thathas gripped our land," she later wrote in her diary. "Shame for America!Shame for Texas!"42When the helicopter landed at theWhite House, Lady Bird stepped intoa limousine to drive to the Johnson home in northwest Washington,where friends and advisers were gathering. Riding through the darkenedstreets, she and her longtime friend Elizabeth Carpenter talked about thedifficult days ahead. After closing the window separating them from thedriver, Carpenter said, "It"s a terrible thing to say, but the salvation ofTexas is that the governor of Texas was hit.""Don"t think I haven"t thought of that," Lady Bird replied. "I only wishit could have been me."Searching for a positive thought, the new first lady said quietly,"Lyndon is a good man to have in a crisis." Carpenter nodded. Bothwomen also knew that, without a crisis or major undertaking to challengehis enormous talents, Lyndon Johnson could behave abysmally. He couldbe arrogant, crude, overbearing, spoiled, petulant, and brooding, withmood swings into deep depression and pessimism. They had seen thatLyndon Johnson far too often during the nearly three years he had servedloyally but unhappily as vice president.43As he had set out with President Kennedy on the trip to Dallas, LyndonJohnson felt burdened with the frustrations of his largely ceremonial of-fice. Having been the most powerful majority leader in the history of theU.S. Senate, Johnson had to endure the ignominy of powerlessness in thevice presidency — his role reduced to cutting ribbons and making goodwilltours around the world. He was ignored at important administrationmeetings — or not even invited. He worried about recurrent rumors thatKennedy would dump him from the ticket in the 1964 campaign.The vice president"s misery was compounded by the disrespect shownhim by some of the younger New Frontiersmen, especially the president"sbrother, Attorney General Robert Kennedy, who in meetings either ignoredJohnson or treated him with contempt. Carried away by the hubrisof their first taste of political power — and blinded by their inexperience— the young Kennedy men saw none of Johnson"s complexities and effectiveness as a leader, but saw him as the caricature of a crude, irrelevantfrontier westerner, a throwback to a bygone era. At a White House receptiontwo young Kennedy appointees had rudely ignored Johnson"s effortto join their conversation. "Fuck Lyndon Johnson," one muttered — animprecation heard clearly by the vice president, a man of great pride andsurprisingly thin skin to such slights.44The man who had just become president of the United States stood justover six feet, four inches tall. Eyes fixed in a piercing squint, a long nose,and even longer ears, his was a mien that made an easy target for politicalcartoonists. With both an ego and insecurities as outsized as his extraordinary talent, an intense desire to be loved by everyone, and a burningneed to be in control of the action, Johnson had brooded constantlyabout his future in the Kennedy administration. In the months before theassassination, his aides had been shocked to see the vice president grosslyoverweight, depressed, and drinking too much whisky — dangerous indulgences for a man who eight years earlier had barely survived a massiveheart attack. Bathing himself in maudlin self-pity, Johnson had pouredout his unhappiness to his closest associates. He talked of retiring frompolitics — giving up his ambition to become president — and turningagain to teaching.45 At times he claimed he would quit — go into businessand make a lot of money. Now, after the gunfire in Dallas, his situationhad changed dramatically.Jack Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson had gone to Texas to raise campaignfunds. Kennedy feared that feuding Democratic factions in the state,locked in a mean-spirited internecine battle, could cost him Texas —and the upcoming presidential election. After almost three years in of-fice, Kennedy was gaining popularity and self-confidence. He had justachieved a major agreement with the Soviet Union to halt nuclear testingin the atmosphere. He was admired for his youthful energy, his pledge "toget the country moving again," and his idealistic call for Americans to volunteer for public service — to "ask what you can do for your country."46Thousands had responded, joining the Peace Corps and other new government initiatives. Elected president at age forty-three, Kennedy represented a new generation of leaders, tested in battle in World War II andoptimistic that their day to govern the country had come.But Kennedy faced legislative gridlock with a Congress that had failedto succumb to his considerable charm, refusing to approve the major proposals of his New Frontier: tax relief to stimulate a lethargic economy,medical care for the elderly, and education aid for the young. Now, in November 1963, even the routine appropriations bills were stalled, threateninga shutdown of government services. Kennedy had been neither aleader nor an insider in Congress. He had few deep relationships with hisformer colleagues to rely on, and he lacked the temperament to pushthem hard on behalf of his programs.Beyond question, the most critical issue facing the country was civilrights. Black civil rights activists, along with their white allies, weremarching in the South, confronting officials who denied them the right tovote, to eat in restaurants, to attend integrated schools, and to win jobs reserved for "whites only." Clashes between civil rights demonstrators andsouthern law enforcement officers, and violence directed at blacks bysheriffs and police chiefs as well as by the Ku Klux Klan and White CitizensCouncils, had created a crisis atmosphere.For most of his three years in office, Kennedy had disappointed blackleaders who had expected him to champion their cause. After he hadpromised in the 1960 campaign to end housing discrimination "with thestroke of a pen," it had taken Kennedy more than two years to sign a limitedexecutive order forbidding government-backed financial institutionsfrom discriminating against blacks in housing loans.* Kennedy had defeatedVice President Richard Nixon in 1960 by the narrowest of margins.Facing a coalition of southern Democrats and conservative Republicanswho could block his programs in Congress, he hesitated to introducestrong civil rights legislation that might anger the powerful southernerswho chaired the major committees in the Senate and could block hisother legislative initiatives. To Kennedy"s dismay, the southern congressionalbarons had stalled his domestic programs even though he hadn"tpushed civil rights until circumstances had forced him to act.In June 1963, Kennedy finally had proposed comprehensive legislation* A number of civil rights supporters across the country, frustrated with Kennedy"s slow progress in delivering his pledged executive order, began sending pens to the White House, hoping to help along the promised "stroke of a pen." to help the nation"s Negroes, who faced blatant discrimination in every realm of American society from the workplace to the voting booth. Hishand had been forced by the Reverend Martin Luther King Jr.When televisionnews showed King"s demonstrators in Birmingham, including children,being attacked by police dogs and bowled over by high-pressure firehoses, the nation reacted with outrage. As demonstrations spread to dozensof cities, the southern civil rights crisis threatened to become a nationalcrisis of law and order. Prodded by these events, Kennedy finally deliveredhis first passionate speech calling for civil rights legislation. "Weare confronted primarily with a moral issue," Kennedy said in a televisedaddress from the Oval Office. "The heart of the question is whether allAmericans are to be afforded equal rights and equal opportunities." Onehundred years after Abraham Lincoln had emancipated the slaves, Kennedysaid, "their grandsons are not fully free. They are not yet freed fromthe bonds of injustice. They are not yet freed from social and economicoppression. And this Nation, for all its hopes and boasts, will not be fullyfree until all of its citizens are free."47But as summer had passed into autumn, public opinion polls, whichKennedy followed avidly, showed that half the nation thought he waspushing too fast on civil rights.48 Observing that the president was mentioningcivil rights less often in speeches — including those given duringthe first two days of his trip to Texas — King suspected that Kennedywould not be unhappy if the issue were held over in Congress until afterthe election.49 Now Kennedy was gone, and black leaders faced a newquestion: How would Lyndon Johnson, a southerner with a mixed recordon civil rights, respond to their pressing needs?Lyndon Baines Johnson reached The Elms, his three-story, twelve-roombrick-and-stucco Norman chateau in Spring Valley, an upper-class enclavein northwest Washington, just after 9 p.m. on November 22. As herfather entered the foyer, daughter Luci, age seventeen, thought "he lookedlike he had been run over by a truck, and yet very strong."50Johnson settled in the den. Close friends, including former aide HoraceBusby and his wife, Mary Beth, had gathered at the house and now surroundedthe new president as they watched the television news replayscenes of the nightmare in Dallas. A film clip showed the young Kennedyfamily in happier times, with the president and his wife watching theirdaughter, Caroline, riding Macaroni, a pony given to her several monthsearlier by Vice President Johnson.51 "It"s all too fresh. I can"t watch it,"Johnson said.52Above the television set hung a portrait of the late Sam Rayburn,Speaker of the House of Representatives, a Texas Democrat and mentor toJohnson from the time he had come to Congress in 1937. The presidentraised a glass of soda to Rayburn"s picture. "Oh, Mr. Sam, I wish you werehere now," he said. "How I need you."53Shortly after 11 p.m. Johnson went upstairs, put on a pair of gray pajamas,and climbed into bed.54 Dr.Willis Hurst, Johnson"s cardiologist sincehis heart attack in 1956, urged him to take a sleeping pill and rest. Instead,Johnson summoned Bill Moyers, Jack Valenti, and Cliff Carter, three aideswho had ridden back from Dallas with him aboard Air Force One.* Forthe next four hours, sitting in his bed, propped up on pillows, Johnsontalked virtually nonstop. As Moyers listened while Johnson switched fromone subject to another, he thought that the president "seemed to have severalchambers of his mind operating simultaneously."55Eighteen hours earlier, Johnson had begun the day having breakfastwith Jack Kennedy in Fort Worth.Now, withMoyers sitting on one side ofhis bed and Valenti and Carter in chairs on the other, the new presidentbegan ticking off assignments to be carried out the next morning: calls tomembers of the Kennedy family, arrangements for the funeral, and meetingswith members of Congress, with former president Eisenhower, withnational security advisers, and with the Cabinet.56As Johnson weighed and made decisions about the coming days, CliffCarter, his chief political aide, was struck by how carefully he was walkinga "chalk line." On the one hand, Johnson wanted the country to have"confidence that he could do the job." On the other, he wanted to avoidgiving the impression that he was rushing to take power. Johnson had todemonstrate leadership while showing sensitivity to the bereaved Kennedysand their devoted followers, whose help he would need immediately.57In a telephone conversation earlier that night with Arthur Goldberg, anassociate justice of the U.S. Supreme Court, Johnson revealed just howaware he was of having to balance many sensitivities and concerns as hetook his first steps as president. "I want you to be thinking about what Iought to do," he told Goldberg, "to try to bring all these elements togetherand unite the country to maintain and preserve our system in the world,because — if it starts falling to pieces — why, we could deteriorate prettyquickly."Johnson asked Goldberg whether he should speak to a joint session of* On hearing that President Kennedy had been shot,Moyers, a twenty-nine-year-old former Johnson Senate aide from Texas and at the time deputy director of the Peace Corps, chartered a plane from Austin to Dallas to be at President Johnson"s side when Air Force One took off forWashington. He immediately joined Johnson"s presidential staff, as did Valenti.Congress soon after Kennedy"s funeral. Goldberg thought that he should,and Johnson asked him to help prepare the speech. Johnson wanted to address the nation "with dignity and reserve and without being down onmyknees but, at the same time, letting them know of my respect and con-fidence."58As Johnson talked through the early-morning hours, Jack Valenti observedthat he already seemed to know what he wanted to accomplishwith his presidency. Valenti listened with surprise as Johnson spelled outambitions that added up to a sweeping agenda for social change in theUnited States.59"Well, I"m going to tell you," Johnson said, "I"m going to pass the civilrights bill and not change one word of it. I"m not going to cavil, and I"mnot going to compromise. I"m going to fix it so everyone can vote, so everyonecan get all the education they can get. I"m going to pass Harry Truman"shealth care bill."60Valenti, a Houston advertising man by profession, had helped Johnsonorganize political events in Texas, but he had never heard him talk so expansively about how he would run the country. It seemed to Valenti thatLyndon Johnson, president of the United States for little more than twelvehours, already had resolved "to radically change the social environment ofthe nation" so that the "poor, the aged, the blacks, those denied an education. . .would have a new opportunity . . . absolutely essential to an equitableAmerica."61No president since Franklin Delano Roosevelt in the 1930s had attemptedsuch a broad assault on social and economic inequality. NowLyndon Johnson, in his first hours as president, apparently aspired tomatch FDR, his hero and mentor when Johnson first came toWashingtonthirty years earlier. In the past Johnson had demonstrated gargantuanambition, a populist philosophy about government helping those withthe least, and a shrewd ability to wield political power. Thrust into thepresidency, Johnson faced formidable immediate challenges: to reassure ashocked nation and to move a paralyzed and deadlocked federal governmentto action at a time of crisis.Copyright © 2005 by Nick Kotz. Reprinted by permission of Houghton Mifflin Company

FROM THE PUBLISHER

Opposites in almost every way, mortally suspicious of each other at first, Lyndon Baines Johnson and Martin Luther King Jr. were thrust together in the aftermath of John F. Kennedy's assassination. Both men sensed a historic opportunity and began a delicate dance of accommodation that moved them, and the entire nation, toward the historic Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Drawing on a wealth of newly available sources - Johnson's taped telephone conversations, voluminous FBI wiretap logs, previously secret communications between the FBI and the president - Nick Kotz gives us a narrative, rich in dialogue, that presents this momentous period with immediacy. Judgment Days offers needed perspective on a presidency too often linked solely to the tragedy of Vietnam.

FROM THE CRITICS

David J. Garrow - The Washington Post

… Judgment Days provides a fresh and vivid account of the two men's interactions. Some of the new details come from FBI memoranda to the White House that the Johnson Presidential Library has finally opened to researchers; others come from that library's ongoing release of the hundreds of telephone conversations that Johnson surreptitiously recorded during his presidency.

Samuel G. Freedman - The New York Times

Though constructed as a ''two-hander,'' to use a term of art from the theater, ''Judgment Day'' achieves its greatest impact in its revisionist portrait of Lyndon Johnson. He emerges in Kotz's account as a man of moral courage and political acumen, at his zenith the equal of Roosevelt during the Depression and Churchill during World War II. In public speeches and private conversations, Kotz's Johnson speaks with unfeigned passion and disregard for partisan consequences; he pursues civil rights laws that he knows perfectly well will deliver the South to the Republican Party. Even as he indulged in racist epithets, even as he disapproved of King's style of direct action, even as he fielded J. Edgar Hoover's surveillance reports and bigoted speculation about King's political and sexual activities, Johnson persisted in speaking intolerable truth to his fellow white Southerners, at the same time preaching that the truth would set them free.

Publishers Weekly

King's leadership of the Civil Rights movement catalyzed a revolution in public consciousness that Johnson's matchless political skills cemented in the landmark voting and civil rights laws of the 1960s. In this engrossing narrative history, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Kotz (A Passion for Equality) follows their tense but fruitful working relationship from Johnson's assumption of the presidency in 1963 to King's assassination five years later. Theirs was a wary partnership, uneasy when they joined forces against Jim Crow in the wake of Kennedy's assassination, strained by King's opposition to the Vietnam War and continually undermined by FBI chief J. Edgar Hoover, who bombarded Johnson with reports of King's links to Communists and of his sexual indiscretions. In Kotz's sympathetic but complex and critical assessment, the Machiavellian politician and the visionary activist become almost brothers under the skin-both genuine idealists and cool-headed, at times even ruthless political strategists, both plagued by inner demons that threatened to undo their agenda. Employing newly available telephone conversations and FBI wiretap logs, among other sources, Kotz's detailed and gripping account takes readers into the bloody trenches of the Civil Rights movement and the bitter congressional floor battles to get legislation past the segregationist bloc. It is a fascinating portrait of two leaders working at a time when the low skullduggery of politics really was infused with the highest moral values. Photos. Agent, Timothy Seldes. (Jan. 12) Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.

Library Journal

"You nave no normal life. You are not an ordinary man," staff members told Martin Luther King while he anguished over the life-threatening perils that civil rights workers encountered throughout the South. Kotz, the author of five books (e.g., Passion for Equality) and the recipient of a 1968 Pulitzer Prize for national reporting, presents a compelling narrative of how President Johnson and King temporarily overcame their mutual suspicion to battle successfully for the Civil Rights Acts of 1964 and 1968 and the 1965 Voting Rights Act. Fascinating portrayals of Johnson the humanitarian and King the savvy political operator-role reversals for both men-are derived from the 150 interviews Kotz conducted. Much attention is given to J. Edgar Hoover's race-baiting obsession to destroy King, which Johnson encouraged when it suited his purposes. Ultimately, the Johnson/King coalition fragmented over Vietnam, which drained funding from domestic programs aimed at African Americans. A worthy successor to Robert Mann's The Walls of Jericho: Lyndon Johnson, Hubert Humphrey, Richard Russell and the Struggle for Civil Rights, this book is an informed political investigation of these two civil rights warriors and the cause for which they fought and, in King's case, died. Highly recommended for public and academic libraries. [See also the Q&A with Kotz, p. 72.]-Karl Helicher, Upper Merion Twp. Lib., King of Prussia, PA Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.

Kirkus Reviews