The president claimed that using federal interventions to ensure black civil rights “violated ‘all our experience as a people’ and constituted a ‘stride towards centralization, and the concentration of all legislative power in the national Government.’ ” Johnson also made claims that interceding for black people actually discriminated against white people. “The distinction of race and color is, by the bill, made to operate in favor of the colored and against the white race.”4 In opposing the use of government power to protect civil rights, Johnson voiced many themes that opponents of the
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