"The recent controversy over Hillary Clinton's observation that Dr. Martin Luther King's dream of racial equality was realized only when President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act of 1964 teaches us something about how politicians use and abuse history.

Sen. Clinton noted that "it took a president to get it (the Civil Rights Act) done," prompting House Majority Whip James Clyburn of South Carolina to encourage "candidates to be sensitive about the words they use." Apparently Mr. Clyburn disagreed that it took a president to get the Civil Rights Act done.

It is important, at the outset, to say that Sen. Clinton was absolutely right about President Johnson's role in realizing Dr. King's dream, and no one would have agreed more than Dr. King. The Obama campaign distorted her words to rile up black voters. "Senator Clinton," Sen. Obama said, "made an unfortunate remark, an ill-advised remark, about King and Lyndon Johnson."

But then Sen. Obama had not been born in time to know anything about Johnson's heroic achievements for civil rights. The South in 1964, in case everyone has forgotten, was controlled by white people. Blacks faced major voting hurdles. Restaurants, hotels, public facilities and schools were segregated.

Although he was a Southerner, Johnson set out to enact the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which abolished segregation in public accommodations such as hotels and restaurants, and in public facilities and schools. Indeed in his first speech to Congress on Nov. 27, 1963, just days after John F. Kennedy's assassination, Johnson said: "We have talked long enough in this country about equal rights. We have talked for a hundred years or more. It is time now to write the next chapter - and to write in the books of law." Dr. King stood behind Johnson while he signed the bill.

When he ran for president in 1964, Johnson was vilified in the Deep South. It was the nastiest election I have ever witnessed in South Carolina. Sen. Richard Russell of Georgia warned Johnson that his strong support for the Civil Rights bill "will not only cost you the South, it will cost you the election." I well remember the 1964 election. "The Lady Bird Special" train came to Charleston. The overwhelming majority of white South Carolinians voted against Johnson. Some turned out in Charleston to boo, hiss and curse the first lady. Rep. Clyburn will remember that election, too. I am sure he was working his heart out for Lyndon B. Johnson, as was the entire black community and all of Mr. Clyburn's white liberal friends. Johnson won handily, but he lost South Carolina and four other Southern states (as well as Barry Goldwater's home state of Arizona). After he was elected in 1964, with the help of virtually all black Americans (he got 96 percent of the black vote) in a campaign in which Martin Luther King worked day and night to the point of physical exhaustion, Johnson then pushed through the Voting Rights Act of 1965, which abolished unfair tests for voting and forced Southern states to allow their black citizens to vote. As a result of Johnson's leadership, Jim Clyburn is now in Congress.

Thus it is amazing to see the reaction to Mrs. Clinton's truthful remarks. Does honoring Dr. King mean demeaning the president who did more for Civil Rights than anyone since Lincoln?

John Edwards claimed to be "troubled to see a suggestion that real change came not through the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King but though a Washington politician." Edwards' obvious pandering to black voters was pathetic. Lyndon Johnson, one of the nation's greatest, if flawed, presidents was hardly a "Washington politician" (which Edwards desperately wanted to be but failed).

Dr. King was a master politician who knew that he and the Civil Rights movement needed Lyndon Johnson to accomplish the movement's most important goals - equality of black citizens before the law, especially the right to vote. Consequently, King campaigned tirelessly for Johnson in the 1964 election. Having just won the Nobel Prize, he drew huge crowds in black neighborhoods, preaching the urgency of voting "All the way." (Johnson's slogan was "All the way with LBJ.") Recognizing the significance of Johnson's next term, King said to students at Addison Junior High School in Cleveland: "... doors of opportunity are opening now that were not opened to your mothers and fathers."

Martin Luther King would be appalled at the denigration of Lyndon Johnson's greatest achievements, the Civil Rights Acts of 1964 and 1965, by Democratic candidates. He knew and often said that the Civil Rights movement succeeded with the help of many people of good will of all races, colors, creeds and religions. And we know that among them, President Johnson played the chief role in his time." (Robert Rosen, Op-Ed, Charleston Post and Courier, January 21, 2008)

Robert Rosen is an attorney and author of "A Short History of Charleston."