A little known fact of history involves the heavy opposition to the civil rights movement by several prominent Democrats. Similar historical neglect is given to the important role Republicans played in supporting the civil rights movement. A calculation of 26 major civil rights votes from 1933 through the 1960’s civil rights era shows that Republicans favored civil rights in approximately 96% of the votes, whereas the Democrats opposed them in 80% of the votes! These facts are often intentionally overlooked by the left wing Democrats for obvious reasons. In some cases, the Democrats have told flat out lies about their shameful record during the civil rights movement.
Democrat Senators organized the record Senate filibuster of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Included among the organizers were several prominent and well known liberal Democrat standard bearers including:
– Robert Byrd, current senator from West Virginia
– J. William Fulbright, Arkansas senator and political mentor of Bill Clinton
– Albert Gore Sr., Tennessee senator, father and political mentor of Al Gore. Gore Jr. has been known to lie about his father’s opposition to the Civil Rights Act.
– Sam Ervin, North Carolina senator of Watergate hearings fame
– Richard Russell, famed Georgia senator and later President Pro Tempore
The complete list of the 21 Democrats who opposed the Civil Rights Act of 1964 includes Senators:
– Hill and Sparkman of Alabama
– Fulbright and McClellan of Arkansas
– Holland and Smathers of Florida
– Russell and Talmadge of Georgia
– Ellender and Long of Louisiana
– Eastland and Stennis of Mississippi
– Ervin and Jordan of North Carolina
– Johnston and Thurmond of South Carolina
– Gore Sr. and Walters of Tennessee
– H. Byrd and Robertson of Virginia
– R. Byrd of West Virginia
Democrat opposition to the Civil Rights Act was substantial enough to literally split the party in two. A whopping 40% of the House Democrats VOTED AGAINST the Civil Rights Act, while 80% of Republicans SUPPORTED it. Republican support in the Senate was even higher. Similar trends occurred with the Voting Rights Act of 1965, which was supported by 82% of House Republicans and 94% of Senate Republicans. The same Democrat standard bearers took their normal racists stances, this time with Senator Fulbright leading the opposition effort.
It took the hard work of Republican Senate Minority Leader Everett Dirksen and Republican Whip Thomas Kuchel to pass the Civil Rights Act (Dirksen was presented a civil rights accomplishment award for the year by the head of the NAACP in recognition of his efforts). Upon breaking the Democrat filibuster of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, Republican Dirksen took to the Senate floor and exclaimed “The time has come for equality of opportunity in sharing in government, in education, and in employment. It will not be stayed or denied. It is here!” (Full text of speech). Sadly, Democrats and revisionist historians have all but forgotten (and intentionally so) that it was Republican Dirksen, not the divided Democrats, who made the Civil Rights Act a reality. Dirksen also broke the Democrat filibuster of the 1957 Civil Rights Act that was signed by Republican President Eisenhower.
Outside of Congress, the three most notorious opponents of school integration were all Democrats:
– Orval Faubus, Democrat Governor of Arkansas and one of Bill Clinton’s political heroes
– George Wallace, Democrat Governor of Alabama
– Lester Maddox, Democrat Governor of Georgia
The most famous of the school desegregation standoffs involved Governor Faubus. Democrat Faubus used police and state forces to block the integration of a high school in Little Rock, Arkansas. The standoff was settled and the school was integrated only after the intervention of Republican President Dwight D. Eisenhower.
Even the Democrat Party organization resisted integration and refused to allow minority participation for decades. Exclusion of minorities was the general rule of the Democrat Party of many states for decades, especially in Texas. This racist policy reached its peak under the New Deal in the southern and western states, often known as the New Deal Coalition region of FDR. The Supreme Court in Nixon v. Herndon declared the practice of “white primaries” unconstitutional in 1927 after states had passed laws barring Blacks from participating in Democrat primaries. But the Democrat Parties did not yield to the Court’s order. After Nixon v. Herndon, Democrats simply made rules within the party’s individual executive committees to bar minorities from participating, which were struck down in Nixon v. Condon in 1932. The Democrats, in typical racist fashion, responded by using state parties to pass rules barring blacks from participation. This decision was upheld in Grovey v. Townsend, which was not overturned until 1944 by Smith v. Allwright. The Texas Democrats responded with their usual ploys and turned to what was known as the “Jaybird system” which used private Democrat clubs to hold white-only votes on a slate of candidates, which were then transferred to the Democrat party itself and put on their primary ballot as the only choices. Terry v. Adams overturned the Jaybird system, prompting the Democrats to institute blocks of unit rule voting procedures as well as the infamous literacy tests and other Jim Crow regulations to specifically block minorities from participating in their primaries. In the end, it took 4 direct Supreme Court orders to end the Democrat’s “white primary” system, and after that it took countless additional orders, several acts of Congress, and a constitutional amendment to tear down the Jim Crow codes that preserved the Democrat’s white primary for decades beyond the final Supreme Court order ruling it officially unconstitutional.
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