What did you expect? I don't know why we're so surprised. When you put your foot on a man's neck and hold him down for three hundred years, and then you let him up, what's he going to do? He's going to knock your block off.


Regarding rioting (1968), as quoted in Judgment days: Lyndon Baines Johnson, Martin Luther King, Jr., and the laws that changed America (2005), by Nick Kotz, Boston: Houghton Mifflin. p. 417. - Speech in Austin (1948)

Lyndon B. Johnson Quotes

What did you expect? I don't know why we're so surprised. When you put your foot on a man's neck and hold him down for three hundred years, and then...

What did you expect? I don't know why we're so surprised. When you put your foot on a man's neck and hold him down for three hundred years, and then...

What did you expect? I don't know why we're so surprised. When you put your foot on a man's neck and hold him down for three hundred years, and then...

What did you expect? I don't know why we're so surprised. When you put your foot on a man's neck and hold him down for three hundred years, and then...