[VIDEO] Mar. 15, 1965 | LBJ Message to Congress

Mar. 15, 1965 - President Johnson, invoking the Negro civil rights hymn “We Shall Overcome,” urged Congress tonight to pass swiftly a voting rights bill and go on to end racial “bigotry and injustice.”

In what was surely one of the remarkable Presidential addresses to Congress in this generation, Johnson warned that by trying to “hold on to the past,” America would risk losing the future.

The unusual rising ovation that greeted his emotional call for “no compromise” was one of many indications that Johnson’s speech was a landmark in the civil rights movement.

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