Wallace Requests Meeting with LBJ

Mar. 12, 1965 - Governor George Wallace of Alabama today requested a meeting “at the earliest possible moment” with President Johnson in Washington to discuss the increasingly tense racial situation in Alabama.

Johnson promptly informed the Governor that he would “be available in my office at any time that is convenient to you.”

Earlier, President Johnson had given his “complete commitment” to protection of Negroes in Alabama and to the earliest possible enactment of effective voting rights legislation.

But a member of a delegation of clergymen that saw him quoted Johnson as saying he “was not going to be blackjacked by the clergy or anyone else into taking precipitate actions” that he considered unwise.

Since Johnson’s reply to Wallace did not mention any date or time for the meeting, it was presumed that it would be up to Wallace to suggest them.

Johnson scheduled a press conference for 3:30 p.m. tomorrow. Attorney General Nicholas Katzenbach said the President’s message to Congress on voting rights should be in such shape by then that the President could discuss it. The conference will not be carried live on radio or TV.

Wallace will be the guest on “Face the Nation” on Sunday from 12:30 to 1 p.m. over the CBS television and radio network. He will be questioned about the civil rights controversy in his state by Paul Niven and Nelson Benton, network news correspondents, and Al Quettner of UPI’s Atlanta bureau. The program will originate live in the studios of station WCOV-TV, Montgomery, a CBS affiliate.

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