ABSTRACT
This chapter investigates the critical, uneasy alliance formed between Lyndon Johnson and the civil rights movement. More generally, it investigates the interplay between the presidency and social movements. Very little scholarship systematically addresses the relationship between the presidency and social movements, and that which does tends to emphasize the inherent conflict between a centralizing institution designed to conserve the constitutional order and grassroots associations dedicated to structural change.1 For example, Elizabeth Sanders (2007) recently argued that contrary to progressive assumptions about the presidency as a force for reform and democratic expression, under most circumstances the institution either reacts slowly or resists the demands of insurgent groups. Similarly, Daniel Tichenor (2007) has shown that presidents resist the reform aspirations of social movements until their political interest dictates otherwise; even then, presidents seek to stand apart from or capture, rather than embrace, militant activists and their causes.
