 And yet, now, in this decade, there is a drawing apart of the South from the national life. And every time the rest of the nation makes one more snide joke about cornpone or rednecks, the defenses of the South go up more angrily, the dividing abyss widens, and the curtain becomes thicker and murkier. It is partly the South wanting to pull away, and partly the rest of the nation, misunderstanding, yes, even laughing it away. None of this is right or is good for the future of our country. I get letters from my friends down South who say nobody pays any attention to us anymore. If we come to Washington, we get a cold shoulder or no attention. If there is such a feeling in the South, what do I think I and my little trip into the South can do about it? Nothing much. Just sort of to say that whatever your feelings now, now and for the years to come, the South, to this Democratic candidate for president and to his wife, is a respected and valued and beloved part of the country. Now it is 1964. The disinherited descendants of slavery still denied their rights as citizens after a century of segregation have resolved to claim for themselves the American promise of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. President Johnson has thrown the full power of his presidency to their side, and he has just signed the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the greatest single sword of justice raised for equality since the Emancipation Proclamation. A few weeks later, both Lyndon and Lady Blurred plunge into the campaign for election in his own right. He's more or less given up on the South, but she will not. These were her people. They were her roots, and she's not ready to sever them. So she sets out on a whistle-stop journey of nearly 1,700 miles through the heart of her past. She's on her own, campaigning independently across the Mason-Dixon line, down the buckle of the Bible Belt, all the way to the port of New Orleans. I cannot all these years later do justice to what she faced. The booze, the jeers, the hecklers, the crude signs and crude adjusters, the insults and the threats. This was the land still ruled by John Birch and Jim Crow who used the cross and the club to enforce it. 1964, and bathroom signs still read white ladies and colored women. In Richmond, she was greeted with signs that read, fly away, Lady Bird. In Charleston, Blackbird, go hold. Children planted in front rows as near as I am to you while she spoke, held up signs, Johnson is a nigger lover. In Savannah, her teenage daughter is cursed. The air has become so menacing that we run a separate engine 15 minutes ahead of her in case of a bomb. She later said people were concerned for me, but I was more concerned about the engineer out there in front. Rumors spread of snipers. And in Florida, the threats are so ominous, the FBI orders a yard by yard sweep of a seven-mile bridge that her train would cross. She never flinches. Up to 40 times a day from the platform of that caboose, she will speak, sometimes raising a single white gloved hand to punctuate her words, the lady always. When the insults in South Carolina grew so raucous, she quieted the ugly words by saying, they're coming not from the good people of South Carolina, but from the state of confusion. Time and again, she announced, you might not like what I'm saying, but at least you understand the way I'm saying it. And in Columbia, she answered hecklers with what one writer called a maternal bark. And she said, this is a country of many viewpoints. I respect your right to express your own. Now express, let me express mine. Thank you. The advance man called me back at the White House from a pay phone at the local train depot. He was choking back the tears. As long as I live, he said in a voice breaking with emotion, I will thank God I was here today so that I can tell my children that courage makes a difference.