In a historic commencement address at Howard University on June 4, 1965, President Lyndon Johnson laid out the intellectual and moral basis for affirmative action. Affirmative action offered a way to take into account far-reaching differences in personal circumstances and to begin to right a historic wrong. After a brief honeymoon of public support, affirmative action was met with a powerful backlash, and the policy has been under attack ever since. The intensity and duration of the attack is sad confirmation that many Americans remain unwilling to reckon with the barbarity of our racial history. In response to Reconstruction, Southern white people developed an entirely new and mythical history of slavery, the Civil War and ultimately Reconstruction.

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Persons: Lyndon Johnson Organizations: Howard University, Civil, Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Black, School of Medicine, of California Locations: Southern