Presidential communication in crisis: Civil rights and civil conflict

doi:10.1075/aic.7.17ch17

In:Political Argumentation in the United States: Historical and contemporary studies
David Zarefsky
[Argumentation in Context 7] 2014
► pp. 337–346

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Civil rights and civil conflict

Presidential communication in crisis

Published online: 24 September 2014

https://doi.org/10.1075/aic.7.17ch17

The advent of race riots each summer between 1964 and 1967 confronted President Johnson with a serious rhetorical problem: how to make clear his condemnation of the riots while also sympathizing with some of their causes and recognizing the need for significantly more and faster progress for American blacks. In his public discourse, Johnson tried to carefully balance four themes: declaration that the riots were unconscionable, insistence that the country must remain committed to civil rights, emphasis on local responsibilities, and the stress on the need for studying the riots to understand their causes and prevention. Pragmatically, this approach was not successful. Every one of his carefully balanced positions could be outflanked by opponents taking a harder-line position. Yet it is not clear that Johnson had any available alternatives that could have resolved his problem.

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