The fierce and aligned — if not coordinated — campaign to smear the motion picture “Selma” by suggesting it inaccurately portrays the role of President Lyndon B. Johnson in the fight for African-Americans’ civil rights is par for the course. Critics of the movie that focuses on the campaign for voting rights waged in Selma, Ala., suggest that President Johnson was a champion for civil rights and is principally responsible for securing voting rights for African- Americans.

At best, that point of view is a misunderstanding, and, at worst, it is a deliberate attempt to create a false narrative to diminish the principal and central role of black people in advocating for their own freedom.

It is ironic and sad that the first full-length, theater-released movie chronicling the leadership of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. is being trashed in an attempt to exalt a white president. The criticism of “Selma” betrays the truth and common sense. President Johnson was a Southerner, a Texas politician firmly entrenched as a Dixiecrat. His selection as John F. Kennedy’s vice presidential running mate was a political calculation to secure Southern votes and resulted in an uneasy alliance between the Texan and the young Bostonian. The tragic assassination of JFK thrust President Johnson into the Oval Office and placed upon the Texan the late president’s agenda. President Johnson was no civil rights champion. He was a pragmatic politician who was smart enough to read the moment and self-absorbed enough to recognize history would judge his legacy based upon a historical movement for African-Americans’ rights.

Common sense makes plain that in the turbulent 1960s, no occupant of the White House, the seat of world power and white domination, saw their role as a liberator of the descendants of enslaved Africans. The rights of black people were not central to the maintenance of power for this president, though it became a necessary consideration for the preservation of order.

What also challenges the Johnson-as-savior narrative is the truth. As president, he walked gingerly in taking on Southern governors who were using their powers to oppress African- Americans and deny them their constitutional rights. He reluctantly used his power to protect black people, who were being subjected to violence. President Johnson “negotiated” civil rights, and used his considerable skill as a legislator to win in the margins. And even while proving successful in moving civil rights legislation, President Johnson co-existed with FBI director J. Edgar Hoover, who was lead- ing a campaign to suppress and eliminate black leadership.

President Johnson should be credited for a few things. He courageously appointed two African-Americans to positions of authority in the federal hierarchy, historical appointments that were impactful in their significance. Former NAACP legal counsel Thurgood Marshall was named to the U.S. Supreme Court and the brilliant economist Robert Weaver was the first black person to serve on a presidential cabinet when President Johnson made him secretary of the newly created Department of Housing and Urban Development.

While I admire LBJ’s tenacity, the campaign to canonize him as a civil rights saint is far-fetched. The simple question is, “If King, Roy Wilkins, Clarence Mitchell Jr., SNCC and others had not existed, would President Johnson have proactively advanced a civil rights agenda?” The truthful answer is no. He felt the pull of a powerful social movement and understood that change — even if not desired or convenient — was upon the nation and inevitable during his presidency. It was the leadership of African-Americans that created the space for President Johnson to exercise presidential authority in the face of Southern opposition.

Walter L. Fields