The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Volume 106, July 2002 - April, 2003 Page: 14

Southwestern Historical Quarterly

but shortly thereafter token integration began in the public schools. It
took another ten years, however, before Marshall completely integrated
its school system.
As part of "Marshall Texas/Marshall Texas," Moyers talked with Inez
Jenkins, who had been dean of students at Bishop College in 1961.
Some of her students were leaders in the demonstrations, and Moyers
asked her why she thought the demonstrations had come to Marshall.
"Well, blacks had had one hundred years of education," she replied. "If
education counts for something." The education provided by men like
Tolson and the faculty and students he influenced bore fruit. In New
York, James Farmer said he took note of the sit-ins in his hometown and
was proud of the efforts of his successors at Wiley and Bishop Colleges."
Moyers, who came home often to visit his parents, was also aware of the
sit-ins and the eventual outcome. Both men could and did look at their
shared hometown for evidence that change could not be held back, and
each in his own way was part of the change.
Johnson began work on the civil rights bill shortly after the assassina-
tion of President John F. Kennedy. The first word the nation had that
Johnson would not continue appeasing Southern Democrats on racial
issues, something he felt he had been forced to do as Senate majority
leader, came in his address to a joint session of Congress on Wednesday,
the day before Thanksgiving 1963. In the gallery that evening was
Zephyr Wright, sitting with the president's family. She was among those
who heard and applauded as her president denounced the "hate and
evil and violence" of racism."
Farmer soon received a presidential invitation to the White House. "I
got a phone call from the president -at home-only three days after
Kennedy's assassination," he said. "I had never been called by the presi-
dent. I was highly flattered. This was my first experience with what peo-
ple call the 'Johnson Treatment.' He let me know that he was going to
need my help in the months and hopefully the years that lay ahead; and
'The next time you're in Washington, drop by and see me."' Farmer's
first face-to-face meeting with President Johnson was December 3, 1963-
He said he confronted the president with his less-than-sterling record on
sentences were overturned. The pubhc schools were integrated without incident, as were the
remaining restaurants and other public accommodations-some not until the mid 197os, when
the last holdout, the locally owned Dairy Queen restaurants, were sold by owner Rex Pickens.
Until they were sold, even their drive-up windows were segregated.
"3"Marshall Texas/Marshall Texas."
4 Taylor Branch, Pillar of Fire: America zn the King Years z963 to r965 (New York: Simon and
Schuster, 1998), 178. It should be noted that Johnson himself had not subscribed to the segre-
gationist position of much of the South's leadership. He did not, for instance, sign the
"Southern Manifesto" of 1956.

July