blue dots background image

Uncategorized

Yet Again, the Power of Bearing Witness

Our colleague Andy McMahon recently found and shared this clip of President Lyndon Johnson 50 years ago this month speaking of hunger in the classroom during his famous March 15, 1965 speech to a joint session of Congress on the Voting Rights Act. @ http://www.c-span.org/video/?c4531247/lbj-saw-hunger-classroom That speech came just a week after the infamous violence in Selma, Alabama. In it Johnson adopted the anthem of the civil rights movement and proclaimed “we shall overcome”.  Passage of the Voting Rights bill followed five months later.

            Near the end of his remarks, Johnson said: “My first job after college was as a teacher in Cotulla, Texas, in a small Mexican-American school…. My students were poor and they often came to class without breakfast, hungry. They knew even in their youth the pain of prejudice. They never seemed to know why people disliked them. But they knew it was so, because I saw it in their eyes….Somehow you never forget what poverty and hatred can do when you see its scars on the hopeful face of a young child.”

            “I saw it in their eyes.”  When else have you heard a U.S. president speak this way? It’s an all too rare example of how the act of bearing witness shapes a leader’s character, fuels their ambition, and ultimately impacts policy that changes the world. Whatever one thinks of President Johnson, few disagree that his force of personality made him effective as a legislator and later as a President getting legislation enacted into law.  Part of that personality was forged by being in a position to see firsthand how others lived, and to let himself feel something about it.

            “I saw it in their eyes.” This crucial element of leadership too often goes missing in our politics today. In its place we have “I saw it in the public opinion polls” or “I saw it on cable news”.  But it’s not coincidental that LBJ declared war on poverty, or that he was the last president to elevate the issue so high on the national agenda. He was a consummate politician but what he’d seen and felt clearly did not, could not, dissipate even decades later.  Just the opposite. It remained vivid enough to share with 70 million Americans who watched that prime time broadcast and the U.S. government assembled in its entirety under the Capitol dome.

            “I saw it in their eyes.”  To bear witness in this way, to enable others to do so, is not just a task for politicians and elected officials. It also remains the most solemn and powerful of our many responsibilities at Share Our Strength and Community Wealth Partners.  (Share Our Strength’s most recent report on Hunger in Our Schools can be found @ http://www.hungerinourschools.org/ )

Related News

Baby Brain Development
22 April 2024
Release

RELEASE: Share Our Strength Provides Key Funding to State-Based Advocates to Support Food Security Policy Initiatives for Children and Families

Medicaid Food Security Network Addresses Food and Nutrition Insecurity with an Emphasis On Closing the Enrollment Gap in SNAP and...

Jeremiah Program: Baltimore Center
09 April 2024
Story

Helping Kids by Helping Single Moms

Can you imagine how far kids could go if their moms weren’t worried about affording groceries or paying the rent?...

young children shareourstrength.org
14 March 2024
Release

RELEASE: Share Our Strength Unveils Groundbreaking Investment of $6.7 Million to Advance Economic Mobility for Single Mothers and Their Children

Initiative to Address Root Causes of Food Insecurity and Financial Instability Through Partnerships with 28 Organizations [Media: For photos and...