The anniversary of the 1964 Civil Rights Act is upon us

E. Ablorh-Odjidja, Ghanadot

February 19, 2014

The 50th anniversary of the 1964 Civil Rights is upon us.  The usual distortions in the media, about this unique Act have historically tilted to a particular ideological narrative that favors Democrats.

But if US Senate record on the Act has anything to say, Republicans should win the argument on facts.

 Senate record shows that:

 "Georgia Democrat Richard Russell offered the final arguments in opposition. Minority Leader Everett Dirksen, who had enlisted the Republican votes that made cloture a realistic option, spoke for the proponents with his customary eloquence. Noting that the day marked the 100th anniversary of Abraham Lincoln's nomination to a second term."

Illinois Republican Dirksen, according to this record, declared in his closing argument that, "in the words of Victor Hugo, "Stronger than all the armies is an idea whose time has come."

And that "The time has come for equality of opportunity in sharing in government, in education, and in employment."

That said, the 1964 Act was finally passed to add to the many Acts that Republicans had sponsored in the past to support Civil Rights for Blacks. 

Before the 1964 Act, there was the Civil Rights Bill of 1957.  That also was brought into being through the efforts of President Eisenhower, Vice President Nixon (both Republicans) and Martin Luther King. 

The 57 Bill had roots in Ghana, where Nixon and Martin Luther King had met during the country's Independence celebration.  Unfortunately, this part of history is hardly remembered in Civil Rights discussions in America.

Opposition to both Civil Rights Act was mostly by Democrats.  But the liberal media hide this part about racism in America and continue to point to Republicans as racists, with often bizarre, distortional and ahistorical narratives.

In a recent NPR broadcast feature, Southern Democrats who opposed the 1964 Act were described simply as CONSERVATIVES.  But in todays political terms, the word fits mostly Republicans.

Using the term to describe Southern Democrats was simply a ruse to transfer the shame and spare Democrats the dishonor of being tagged with the truth - as the racist party and the most vocal opposition to both the 57 and 64 Civil Rights bills.

 A piece in the Guardian, UK, August 28, 2013, written by Harry Enten is another example of the bold tortuous, liberal attempts to hang the burden of racist shame on Republicans.

"Were Republicans really the party of civil rights in the 1960s?" Enten asks. But Enten knows the truth before he offers the question, and he says so himself.

"When we look at the party vote in both houses of Congress, it fits the historical pattern. Republicans are more in favor of the bill."

Yet, his key arguments are against this truth when he offers that Southern Democrats, like Strom Thurmond. "left the Democratic party soon after the Civil Right Act passed" to join the Republicans because that party "was more hospitable to his message."

 And that, "The Republican candidate for president in 1964, Barry Goldwater, was one of the few non-Confederate state senators to vote against the bill who... swept the deep southern states, a first for a Republican ever."

What Enten conveniently leaves out of his assertions is that in the Congress at the time, Democrats controlled both houses.  And that the racist South was deeply Democrat. 

Unlike Strom Thurmond, all the Southern Democrats who voted against the bills and wrote racist Jim Crow laws never left the Democrat party.  No significant defection from the high-profile segregationist Democrats who held important offices in Congress and in state governorships of that era has ever been recorded.

Senator Robert Byrd, a Democrat and a ranking member of the KKK, never left the party until his death in 2010.   With the exception of Thurmond, all of them stayed long after Goldwater's defeat because the party was "more hospitable" to their message. 

To list a few; Hale Boggs, Robert Byrd, James Eastland, Orval Faubus, William Fulbright, Al Gore, Sr., B. Everett Jordan, Russell Long, Herman Tallmadge, George C. Wallace and many others remained Democrats.

Democrats Al Gore, Sr. (Vice President Gore's father) Sen. Fulbright (mentor to Bill Clinton) Senator Robert Byrd (a Ku Klux Klan activist and leader) opposed both Civil Right Acts, 1957 and 1964 and after, never left the Democrat party.

The paradigm shifts that Enten promotes, about Thurmond's defection, is also not supported by fallouts in Black political consciousness of the era, because that constituency was already voting Democrat before 1964.

 In the 1960 presidential elections, 70% of the Black vote went to Kennedy (Democrat) and 30% to Nixon (Republican); this seems a strange result since it was Nixon who was one of the principals who championed the 1957 Bill and not Kennedy.

Prior to the 1960 election, there was a Southern effort to amend the 1957 Civil Rights Bill in 1959 for a right of violators to be tried before all-white Southern juries. 

The then Senator John F. Kennedy voted with the segregationists for the bill.  But a lone vote by Vice President Richard Nixon, a Republican, broke the tie and killed the amendment.

Clearly, Nixon's 1959 tiebreaker supported Black aspirations.  The Kennedy vote did not.  But he lost the Black vote to Kennedy in 1960, long before Thurmond defected.

Surprising how Eten could miss these facts of Civil Rights history. 

In 1964, Richard Russell, Democrat and Senate Majority Leader, planted his flag on segregation grounds when he famously, said:

"We will resist to the bitter end any measure or any movement which would have a tendency to bring about social equality and intermingling and amalgamation of the races in our (Southern) states.”

 A very declarative racist statement from Democrat leadership, but Enten questions, "Were Republicans really the party of civil rights in the 1960s?  And for answer, he points to the defection of Strum Thurmond to the Republican party. He can't help but promote the idea that Democrats are the real champions of the Civil Rights Act. 

 "It seems to me that minorities have a pretty good idea of what they are doing when joining the Democratic party. They recognize that the Democratic party of today looks and sounds a lot more like the Democratic party of the North that with near unity passed the Civil Rights Bill of 1964 than the southern Democrats of the era who blocked it, and today would, like Strom Thurmond, likely be Republicans" Enten says.

Enten is avoiding the obvious truth.  That had Republicans been the majority in both houses, like the Democrats were, both the 1957 and 1964 Bills would have been passed faster, without the acrimony and the filibuster the Democrats amply provided.

More obvious still was when 17 Democrats and a lone Republican, Strom Thurmond, filibustered the Bill.  Of the 17 Democrats, none left the party.

And still more when one ignores the fact that the Southern Manifesto of 1956, one of the most racist documents of all time, had 99 endorsements of which 97 were Democrats.

Thurmond's signature was on the Manifesto.  But so were Richard Russell, Senator William Fulbright of Arkansas and others who never left the Democrat party.

The Manifesto specifically forbade racial integration, meaning Black and White, in public places: exactly the intent Richard Russell spoke for in his Senate landmark speech of 1964.

This speech should be a hard piece of information to ignore, but Enten, of the Guardian does.

That dodge and the attempts to forge the issues are everywhere in Anten's piece. 

For instance, there is that other shift in the grouping description of Blacks as MINORITIES, when there ought to be a deference.

Knowing the target of all the abuses of the past, which the Civil Rights Acts in history seek to correct and to use this collective term of MINORITES, as Enten does in his approach to identify victims of race discrimination, should make his attempt at obfuscation more obvious.

The MINORITY described today is a catchall phrase for all who now feel aggrieved for reasons other than slavery, but who also feed into Democrats aspirations for power. 

Sadly, the more the term MINORITY is in use, the greater the minimization of the historical suffering from slavery and the Jim Crow days.

Consequently, the  Black plight is misunderstood or reduced.  And reparations due to the race, under the Civil Rights protection Acts, are also greatly diluted.

So, a white woman is a minority now. However, there is no evidence of her ever being a slave or as a class being lynched under Jim Crow rules. 

The message from the Republican Minority Leader, Senator Dirksen, which quoted the words of Victor Hugo, that "Stronger than all the armies is an idea whose time has come" should have crumbled Enten"s ahistorical narrative.

All the Democrats who are now against segregation do so because the ideals of the Civil Rights Acts, which Republicans stood for since slavery, are hard to resist. 

Enten"s liberal perspective has defied the historical truth; an approach that is not true journalism but a virulent form of advocacy that is happy to see Blacks under liberal Democrat control forever.

To a large extent, his liberal Democrat ploy has been successful.

E. Ablorh-Odjidja, Publisher www.ghanadot.com, Washington, DC, February 18, 2014.

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