The Unknown History of Civil Rights

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So the Republican Minority Leader Everett Dirksen set out to get the votes necessary to defeat the filibuster. On June 9, 1964, the night before the historic cloture vote, the 68 year old Republican stayed up late into the night typing a speech on twelve sheets of Senate stationery that every American should know but that few do. The next day, Senator Everett Dirksen delivered his oration on the floor of the U.S. Senate just minutes before the final vote. The final tally: 71 to 29, with 27 of the 33 Republicans voting to defeat the Democrat-led filibuster.

Democratic Majority Leader Mike Mansfield said, “This is his [Dirksen] finest hour. The Senate, the whole country is in debt to the Senator from Illinois.” And two days after Dirksen’s speech, Roy Wilkins of the NAACP wrote Dirksen a contrite letter apologizing for their early attacks. “The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People sends its thanks to you for your vote for cloture and for your final speech before the vote,” Wilkins wrote. “Your leadership of the Republican Party in the Senate at this turning point will become a significant part of the history of this century.”

Odd, Hillary failed to mention that part.

Indeed, the closer one looks across the arc of black history, the more ironic it seems that voters would associate civil rights with the Democratic Party. Founded as the anti-slavery party, the Republican Party was responsible for winning passage of the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments, the Ku Klux Klan Act of 1871, the Reconstruction Acts, and the 1866, 1875, 1957 and 1960 Civil Rights Acts. In fact, had Democrats not overturned the 1875 Civil Rights Act, the strikingly similar 1964 Civil Rights Act might never have been necessary.

Myriad reasons are often cited for the rift between African American voters and the Republican Party. Some blame Richard Nixon’s so-called “Southern strategy.” Others cite the GOP’s presidential nomination of Barry Goldwater who opposed the Civil Rights Act of 1964 on philosophical grounds of federal overreach. And still others point to a radicalized professoriate as the source of some Americans’ historical amnesia.

Whatever the case, this Black History Month, voters would do well to reexamine the historical record. What they learn just might surprise them.