On March 15, 1965, Lyndon Johnson made one of the most meaningful speeches any American president had made in modern times on the whole question of civil rights and voting rights.  I was with Dr. King as we watched and listened to Lyndon Johnson the night of March 15.  He spoke to the nation.  He spoke to a general session of the Congress. He started that speech off that night by saying, “I speak tonight for the dignity of man and for the destiny of democracy.”  He went on to say, “At times history and fate meet at a single place in man’s unending search for freedom. So it was more than a century ago at Lexington and at Concord. So it was at Appomattox. So it was last week in Selma, Alabama.” He condemned the violence in Selma, and he mentioned the fact that one good man, a man of God, was killed. Reverend James Reed, a white minister from Boston, had participated in a march on March 9. And then the night of March 9 he went out to try to get something to eat with two or three other white ministers, and they were jumped and beaten by members of the Klan, and a day or so later he died at a local hospital in Birmingham. President Johnson recognized that, but before he closed that speech and introduced the Voting Rights Act, he said, “We shall overcome.” He said it more than once, “And we shall overcome.” And he became the first president to use the theme song of the Civil Rights Movement in a major speech, and Dr. King was so moved he started crying, and we all cried a little when we heard Lyndon Johnson say, “And we shall overcome.”