[okie01]

Am I nuts or didn’t Johnson sign that with a gun to his head?

No. It was clearly LBJ's bill. A carryover, in fact, from JFK -- who had not pushed the project nearly as hard as did LBJ.

Johnson thought he was "buying the n----- vote for a generation".

But it took the support of the minority party in the Congress -- the GOP -- to get it passed. At the time, the majority Democrat party did not support the bill, because of the presence of so many southern Democrats (J. William Fulbright, Albert Gore, Sr, etc).

The Civil Rights Bill passed -- with a majority of the GOP voting for it and a majority of the Democrats voting against it.

[boop]

"A carryover, in fact, from JFK -- who had not pushed the project nearly as hard as did LBJ."

JFK was pretty weak on civil rights. He was afraid of southern democrats truning on him if he pushed too far.