All the Way

by Robert Schenkkan

  RALPH ABERNATHY Martin . . .

  MLK We’ve been standing still while we waited for Kennedy to honor his promises. (to James) Hold off on the layoffs as long as possible but cancel our charge cards immediately. (to Stanley) Any chance of another advance from my NY publisher?

  STANLEY LEVISON I’ll ask.

  RALPH ABERNATHY We should cut SNCC loose.

  MLK We made a promise to Bob Moses.

  RALPH ABERNATHY Not that you’ll ever get thanked for it.

  MLK At least the Students are getting things done. Can you scare me up some more speaking engagements?

  RALPH ABERNATHY Coretta’s not gonna like that.

  MLK You think I do? Got to where I can recognize the airport I’m in just by the smell. (a decision) LBJ wants our support? OK. But this President is gonna have to deliver a real civil rights bill and we’re gonna hold his feet to the fire until he does.

  LIGHTS DOWN on scene, UP on FBI office. Edgar Hoover stands in the center, his ever-present #2, DEKE DELOACH, beside him.

  J. EDGAR HOOVER Play that middle part again.

  Sounds of a tape recorder being rewound.

  MLK (on tape) Well, that’s the question, isn’t it? What does Lyndon Johnson really want?

  STANLEY LEVISON (on tape) Whatever it is, eleven months from now he has to run for re-election and he will damn sure need the Negro vote to win.

  Hoover shoots Deloach a look of triumph.

  J. EDGAR HOOVER “Stanley Levison.”

  DEKE DELOACH Yes, sir, Stanley Levison.

  J. EDGAR HOOVER Why is the so-called “Reverend” Martin Luther King taking advice from Stanley Levison, a well-known Communist agitator?

  DEKE DELOACH A very good question, sir.

  J. EDGAR HOOVER You’re damn right it is.

  Hoover considers.

  (thoughtfully) Let’s see who else King is meeting outside his office. I want all his travel covered from now on.

  DEKE DELOACH Legally-speaking, President Kennedy’s wiretap authorization is no longer valid; we would have to go back to the Attorney General.

  J. EDGAR HOOVER (deep satisfaction) We don’t need Bobby Kennedy’s permission anymore. Who is that sanctimonious little prick going to complain to now? Lyndon hates his guts. Get it started.

  Hoover starts off.

  DEKE DELOACH Yes, sir. Sir, our informant in Birmingham has relayed a report of a possible plot on King’s life. What would you like us to do?

  J. EDGAR HOOVER Inform local authorities.

  DEKE DELOACH They may be involved to some extent.

  J. EDGAR HOOVER Inform. Local. Authorities.

  LIGHTS UP on King house, Atlanta, MLK, suitcase in hand, and his wife, CORETTA. Strong current of tension between them.

  CORETTA KING You barely unpacked from the last trip.

  MLK I know.

  CORETTA KING The kids are starting to wonder who that stranger is.

  MLK Everything is up in the air right now, Coretta.

  CORETTA KING I know what this Bill means.

  MLK LBJ might be the Second Coming or just another Southern politician with alligator shoes and a salesman’s smile. We got to keep the pressure on. We got to get that Bill through the House.

  CORETTA KING Well if you drop dead, I don’t see how that helps things. (looks off-stage) Bunny, don’t make me come in there! (back to MLK) You’re going to wind up in the hospital again.

  MLK Staff has to be paid and money has to be raised. Who else is going to do that?

  CORETTA KING Not Ralph, that’s for sure.

  MLK (ignoring the gibe) Did you pack my blue dress shirt?

  CORETTA KING Of course I packed your blue dress shirt. Let me come with you.

  MLK And who looks after the kids?

  CORETTA KING Oh, now, you’re concerned about the kids.

  MLK That’s not fair, baby.

  CORETTA KING I hate you being alone out there.

  Abernathy enters abruptly.

  ABERNATHY Car’s here.

  CORETTA KING I can help.

  MLK kisses Coretta.

  MLK I gotta go.

  LIGHTS DOWN on MLK/Coretta. LIGHTS UP on the Southern caucus and their leader, Senator Russell. A Private Club bar.

  SENATOR STROM THURMOND I will leave the goddamn Democratic Party before I will turn it over to a buncha Congolese savages!

  SENATOR RUSSELL Now, hold on a second, Strom.

  SENATOR JIM EASTLAND This Bill is just the thin edge of the wedge! You saw what they did in Birmingham. Integrated buses were just the beginning. Now you got to shop with ’em and eat with ’em and work with’em. We have been oppressed and degraded by black, slimy, unbearably stinkin’ niggers!

  SENATOR RUSSELL That’s enough of that kind of talk! That’s exactly what they want to hear you say so they can dismiss us all as a bunch of redneck goons. We have to be very careful about how we handle this. In public, the issue is not about race, it is about the gravest possible assault on the United States Constitution which we are struggling to defend. Keep the issue framed that way in the Press and we win.

  REP. JUDGE SMITH The President’s actively gatherin’ signatures for a Discharge Petition to get the Bill outta my Committee in the House!

  SENATOR RUSSELL What do you expect him to do, Judge? He has to at least look lively on civil rights. When the time comes, he’ll do the right thing.

  SENATOR STROM THURMOND He’ll gut the bill?

  SENATOR RUSSELL He hasn’t forgotten who his friends are.

  REP. JUDGE SMITH But if he gets the bill outta my Committee . . .

  SENATOR RUSSELL . . . He still has to get it through the House and then he has to get it out of Jim’s Committee, before it even comes to the Senate floor.

  The men look at one another; it makes sense.

  None of this should get in the way of Party unity. In this election we have a real chance to put a lock on both the House and the Senate and elect a Southern Democrat President. It’s high time the South rejoined the rest of the country. We do our part and Lyndon will know who to thank come November Fourth. Don’t worry about the President; I know how to handle him.

  LIGHTS DOWN on Southern caucus. LIGHTS UP on GOVERNOR GEORGE WALLACE, his wife, LURLEEN, and a large, enthusiastic crowd in Wisconsin. Simultaneously, Russell and LBJ watch Wallace on TV in the Oval Office.

  GOVERNOR GEORGE WALLACE Lurleen and I are just tickled pink to be here in the Badger State for your Democratic Presidential primary. This situation we got up there in Washington with President Johnson reminds me of the little boy watchin’ the blacksmith as he hammered a red-hot horseshoe. After he was done, the blacksmith splashed the horseshoe in a tub of water and threw it steamin’ onto a sawdust pile. The little fellow picked up the horseshoe and then dropped it quick as a wink. “What’s the matter, son, is that too hot to handle?” “No sir,” the little boy said, “it just don’t take me long to look at a horseshoe!” Well, it’s not gonna take the people of this country long to look at this so-called “civil rights” bill and discard it just as quickly as the little boy tossed away that red-hot horseshoe.

  Just yesterday, a fine-lookin’ man grabbed my hand and said, “Governor, I’ve never been south of Milwaukee, but I am a Southerner!” Bein’ a Southerner is no longer geographic, see. It’s a philosophy, destined to be embraced by millions of Americans. It is the philosophy of the ordinary man, trying to do right by his family and his God, which says to the Federal Government, leave me the hell alone! If you want a real Democrat in the White House and not this messenger boy for Big Oil that we got by accident, then vote Governor George Wallace to be your Democratic nominee for President of your United States!

  LBJ gestures and Walter “turns off” the TV.

  SE
NATOR RUSSELL He sure gets people stirred up.

  LBJ You and me have seen a dozen race-baiters come and go and they’re all the same.

  SENATOR RUSSELL He took thirty-four percent of the vote in Wisconsin.

  LBJ A fluke.

  SENATOR RUSSELL He’s runnin’ a solid campaign in Indiana. A lot of our friends, yours and mine, like what he has to say.

  LBJ You talkin’ about Strom Thurmond? I hear the good Senator from South Carolina’s been making noises about switchin’ parties and goin’ Republican.

  SENATOR RUSSELL That’s just Strom bein’ Strom.

  LBJ When we get to Atlantic City, I will be the Democratic nominee.

  SENATOR RUSSELL But how damaged will you be?

  LBJ I’ll be plenty strong enough for Goldwater in November.

  SENATOR RUSSELL What if Bobby smells blood in the water and decides to run at the last minute? You remember how those Kennedys did you three years ago.

  LBJ That little shit doesn’t have his brother’s balls.

  SENATOR RUSSELL He still has his daddy’s money. You might win the nomination but if the Party splits? (picks up civil rights bill) All Wallace has got to beat you with is this damn civil rights bill and I don’t for the life of me understand why you are givin’ him this issue.

  LBJ At this point I’m more worried about the Liberals than I am about the Dixiecrats. We have to give them somethin’ this time, Dick, you know that.

  SENATOR RUSSELL You have to look like you’re giving them something. All I’m sayin’ is, don’t work quite so hard to get this Bill out of the House. If the Leadership over there can’t do their job, that’s no reflection on you, is it?

  Russell offers the bill to LBJ. A moment. LBJ reluctantly takes the bill.

  LBJ I’ll do what I can.

  Before Russell can respond, Lady Bird enters.

  LADY BIRD JOHNSON Lyndon, you’re gonna talk poor Uncle Dick to death, and here Zephyr’s made him his favorite dinner and it’s getting cold!

  SENATOR RUSSELL Saved by the belle! Bird, you look beautiful. As always.

  LADY BIRD JOHNSON And you’re a terrible liar. As always.

  SENATOR RUSSELL The politician’s curse . . .

  Russell/Bird/Jenkins leave. SPOT on LBJ.

  LBJ (to the audience) “Any jackass can kick a barn down, but it takes a carpenter to build one.” Sam Rayburn, bless his memory, said that to me the first time he invited me up to his office for one of his, “Board of Education” meetings. Bourbon, poker, and politics. I coulda kissed his bald head. God knows, I’d been kissing his ass since the day I moved to Washington, tryin’ to get him to take notice of me, a dirt-poor Freshman Representative from bumfuck Texas, and when the call finally came, I felt like the Lord’s Anointed. Sam Rayburn. Speaker of the House. Coulda had anything in the world and you know what Mr. Sam wanted, his greatest regret? “A tow-headed boy to take fishing.” I heard that, and I did my damndest to be that boy. “Suck up.” Uh-huh. “Brown noser.” Sure. “Kiss ass.” Yeah. I’ve heard it all. Fuck. You. Everybody wants power; everybody. And if they say they don’t, they’re lyin’. But everybody thinks it ought to be given out free of charge, like Mardi Gras beads, ’specially to them, because, of course, they’re gonna do Good with it. Nothin’ comes free. Nothin’. Not even “Good.” Especially not “Good.” When the carpenter picks up his saw, if wood could talk . . .

  LBJ rips pages out of the bill.

  . . . it would scream.

  LIGHTS UP on Oval Office. Senator Hubert Humphrey enters in fury.

  TB reads: 10 MONTHS TO THE ELECTION.

  SENATOR HUBERT HUMPHREY You cannot cut the Voting Rights section out of the civil rights bill!

  LBJ You can’t pass a civil rights bill with Voting Rights intact. Not this year. Not now.

  SENATOR HUBERT HUMPHREY It’ll never even get out of the House like this.

  LBJ The House is not the problem; the Senate is.

  SENATOR HUBERT HUMPHREY The House is a problem, Mr. President. Hell, we can’t even get it out of Judge Smith’s Rules Committee.

  LBJ (amused) You gotta give Judge Smith credit. I ’member how he stalled the ’57 Bill by claiming he had to go home to Virginia to take a look at a barn of his that had burned down. Sam Rayburn said he knew Judge Smith would do most anything to block a civil rights bill but he never thought he’d resort to arson!

  SENATOR HUBERT HUMPHREY Have you made a deal with Smith? Is that why you cut Voting Rights?

  LBJ I haven’t made any kind of deal with the Judge.

  SENATOR HUBERT HUMPHREY You told Dr. King that you wanted that Bill passed, “without one word changed.”

  LBJ When you go to sell a horse, you don’t start by talking about it bein’ blind in one eye and got the heaves.

  SENATOR HUBERT HUMPHREY People are going to say that it’s 1957 all over again and you’re just gutting this bill!

  LBJ Bullshit! It’s still a damn good bill, Humphrey, and you know it. A great Bill! Real progress on Public Housing, Public Access, and School Desegregation. Don’t you tell me that ain’t nothin’.

  SENATOR HUBERT HUMPHREY The Liberal wing of the Party will think you betrayed them.

  LBJ Those are your people. It’s your job to bring ’em around.

  SENATOR HUBERT HUMPHREY My job?!

  LBJ Don’t be so modest, Hubert, you’re the Great White Hope of Liberals everywhere.

  SENATOR HUBERT HUMPHREY If I am anything like what you say, it’s because people know I stand by my principles. I can’t sell what I don’t believe in! I won’t.

  LBJ This ain’t about Principles, it’s about Votes. That’s the problem with you Liberals—you don’t know how to fight. You wanta get something done in the real world, Hubert, you’re gonna have to get your hands wet. You say you’re the leader of the Liberal wing of the Democratic Party? Then show me some goddamn leadership!

  Beat

  These three good ole boys were talkin’ about the “ugliest sound in the world.” The first one said, “I once slipped in the lumber yard and fell onto the belt that fed the buzz saw. As it was dragging me closer I could hear that saw whining and I mean to tell you, that was the ugliest sound in the world.” The second boy says, “Ah, hell, that ain’t nothing. I once was so drunk I fell onto the railroad track and got my leg all twisted up under one of them ties just as a big ole freight train was bearing down. I lay there as that train came towards me—chugachug, chugachug, chugachug—and that is the ugliest sound in the world.” The third boy says, “You fellas don’t know shit. I was once screwin’ this purty gal when all of a sudden her husband come home? I jumped buck naked out the window but he grabbed my balls with one hand and pulled out his big ole jack knife with the other, and set to opening the blade with his mouth. And the click, click, click of his teeth on that blade, that was the ugliest sound in the world!”

  You know what the ugliest sound in the world is, Hubert? The tick, tick, tick of a clock. All the men in my family die young—I nearly died of that heart attack ten years ago.

  SENATOR HUBERT HUMPHREY A terrible time.

  LBJ I ain’t got much time left. And you and me, we only got until the convention in August, while people are still grieving Kennedy’s death, to get this Bill passed. If we don’t act now, this opportunity to do something about civil rights will disappear forever. Are you in, or are you out?

  A moment.

  SENATOR HUBERT HUMPHREY Can you get the bill out of the House Rules Committee?

  LBJ Leave Judge Smith to me.

  SENATOR HUBERT HUMPHREY Without anymore compromises?

  LBJ Yes.

  SENATOR HUBERT HUMPHREY And voting rights?

  LBJ Next year. You have my word.

  SENATOR HUBERT HUMPHREY This is going to be a very difficult sell, Mr. Pr
esident.

  LBJ That’s why I want you to be the Floor Manager of this bill.

  SENATOR HUBERT HUMPHREY (surprised and flattered) Floor Manager? I assumed the Senate Majority Leader . . .

  LBJ . . . Mike’s a good man but I need someone more personable. People like you, Hubert. Hell, even Dick Russell likes you. You know I’m under a lot of pressure to announce my running mate for the election. Some people tell me I ought to pick Bobby Kennedy but I’m not so sure of his loyalty. There was a time, not so long ago, when him and the rest of his Harvard Blue Bloods looked down their noses at me like I was some kind of country bumpkin.

  SENATOR HUBERT HUMPHREY I’m sure that’s not the . . .

  LBJ . . . They treated me like dog shit! All of ’em. Jackie called me a “cowboy oaf.” Now, you show me that you have the guts to push this thing through, all the way, and you make yourself a very real candidate to be my Vice President. Of the United States. Of America. A step away from the White House. And as we’ve seen, anything can happen from there.

  SENATOR HUBERT HUMPHREY I’ll do everything I can, Mr. President.

  LBJ Well, go on then, get started! What’re you doin’ standin’ here!

  LIGHTS DOWN on LBJ. Humphrey remains in a SPOT taking off his coat and tie as his wife, MURIEL, joins him.

  SENATOR HUBERT HUMPHREY The question is, did I hear him say what I thought I heard him say? Or did I hear him say what he knows I want to hear him say?

  MURIEL HUMPHREY What did he say?

  SENATOR HUBERT HUMPHREY He offered me the VP slot.

  Muriel throws her arms around him.

  MURIEL HUMPHREY Oh, my God, that’s wonderful!

  SENATOR HUBERT HUMPHREY I know, I know! Well, conditionally.

  MURIEL HUMPHREY What does that mean?

  SENATOR HUBERT HUMPHREY It means I’m the front runner but he’s going to extract his pound of flesh first—which is alright, I guess, depending on where he’s cutting it from. (more seriously) I don’t think I can ever get elected President on my own, Muriel. I don’t have Bobby’s money or LBJ’s oil and gas friends. The only way I’ll ever get to the White House is through the Vice-Presidency.