Two sons of the south, President Johnson, and Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. joined to shape a new dynamic in granting freedom and justice with the passage in 1964 of the Civil Rights Act and in 1965 of the Voting Rights Act.
LBJ smelled a political opportunity: nothing more. He was simply cementing a voting block for the Democrats. Anyone that knew LBJ, also knew he was the worst kind of racist: the one that smiles to your face, but stabs you in the back after you give him what he wants.
They distanced themselves from previous backers like Vice President Nixon who unlike then Senator John Kennedy, supported the civil rights struggles of the 50’s. In fact it was Nixon who invited Rev. King in 1957 to the nation’s capitol to a civil rights summit conference.
The writer could have done just a bit more research to find out what really happened.
MLK was arrested on a bogus charge during the 1960 campaign. Despite the long previous friendship between Nixon and MLK, Nixon (now Vice-President) chose to stay out of it, believing it would be "grandstanding". Compare that to Obama's propensity to insert himself into every controversy in the past 6 years.
Of course, liberals believe Nixon's choice was a calculated effort to win white votes in the South, at the expense of black votes. It fits their narrative of the non-existent "Southern Strategy".
In contrast, JFK and RFK helped to get King released. I'll leave it to the reader to decide if they did so for political reasons, or if they genuinely supported King.
Nixon still won 32% of the black vote, but that was down from Eisenhower's 40%. Four years later, LBJ had signed the Civil Rights Act and campaigned for the "Great Society" and won 94% of the black vote, setting a pattern that still continues.
As LBJ shrewdly observed at the passage of his Great Society legislation, “The n*****s will be voting Democratic for the next 200 years.”” So far, he’s right.