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March 26th, 1965
President Lyndon B. Johnson announcing the capture of Ku Klux Klan members suspected of murdering civil rights worker in Alabamacredit: Yoichi Okamoto
On this day in 1965, President Johnson called for a full investigation of the Ku Klux Klan. He announced the arrest of four Klansmen for the murder of Mrs. Viola Gregg Liuzzo of Detroit, Michigan, a White civil rights worker who had been shot to death near Selma, Alabama, on March 25th. In a televised report to the nation, Johnson stigmatized the KKK as “a hooded society of bigots” and warned members to “get out of the Ku Klux Klan and return to a decent society before it is too late.”
March 26th, 1965
On this day in 1965, President Johnson had a telephone conversation with FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover. Hoover updated LBJ on the progress of the investigation of the murder of Viola Liuzzo and the possible arrest of suspects; they spoke of a call from Anthony Liuzzo to LBJ and FBI informants in the KKK; and Hoover discussed the FBI investigation into the murder of three civil rights workers in Mississippi in 1964.
March 26th, 1968
On this day in 1968, President Johnson said solutions to racial problems should begin in the South. He spoke to the Christian Citizenship Seminar of Southern Baptist Leaders in the Rose Garden of the White House, saying that there is no Southern problem and no Northern problem, but only an American problem.
"But because so much of that American problem began in the region which you and I call home, I would like to see the solutions begin there, too."