I Hate Revisionist History! Especially in Cases Like This!

[Annie]

Many links and great comments:

http://www.transterrestrial.com/archives/005265.html#005265

Rewriting History

The folks at ABC News apparently need to go back and read their history books. They seem to fantasize that it was Republicans who blocked the Civil Rights Act. In a piece on the current filibuster debate, they write the following, titled "Historical Perspective":

The filibuster has been used historically by the minority party, which can't win with a vote count. Democrats have opposed the filibuster before — in the 1960s, they accused Republicans of using it to block civil rights legislation.
According to the Senate Historical Office, the record for the longest individual speech is held by the late Sen. Strom Thurmond of South Carolina, who filibustered for 24 hours and 18 minutes against the Civil Rights Act of 1957. To keep the floor, he read some of his wife's recipes and passages from novels out loud.


One of the things that they don't tell you is that at the time (and until 1964) Strom Thurmond was a Democrat (a party that was in the majority at the time). They also don't tell you that opposition to it was largely from southern Democrats like Thurmond, rather than Republicans (President Eisenhower in fact supported it). Note also the action of their mythic Democrat hero, Jack Kennedy:

John F. Kennedy's civil rights record before 1963 was neither a clear endorsement nor rejection of civil rights legislation. As a senator from Massachusetts, he had an opportunity to vote on the 1957 Civil Rights Act, the first passed in the 20th century. Kennedy apparently had enough reservations about the bill to vote to send it to the conservative Senate Judiciary Committee where it probably would have been pigeonholed. Another indication of his lukewarm support for the Act was his vote to allow juries to hear contempt cases. Southerners preferred jury to bench trials since all-white juries rarely convicted white civil rights violators. At the same time, Kennedy supported efforts to end discrimination in education. His record in the 1950s did not mark the future President as a civil rights activist. It indicated that Kennedy, much like the rest of the nation, had complicated and sometimes contradictory views about civil rights.
The ugly fact, of which ABC is either unaware, or worse, deliberately misleading their readers about, is that the Civil Rights Act of 1964 would not have passed without Republican support, due to the continued opposition by southern Democrats. Contra ABC's implication, it was not the minority Republicans who filibustered it, but the majority Democrats, and the cloture vote to end debate was achieved only with the votes of many Republicans. Former Klansman Robert "Sheets" Byrd (shamefully still representing the state of West Virginia, even in his dotage and senility) was the last debater on the floor before that cloture vote (it then required 67 votes, rather than the current 60) was passed. Other stars of the filibuster were Richard Russell (D-GA), Albert Gore, Sr. (the last Vice President's father) (D-TN), and William Fullbright (D-AR) (Bill Clinton's mentor).

But I guess when you're a modern liberal Democrat reporter, all that can just go down the memory hole, as long as it's in service to a greater cause--to preserving the myth of Republican racism and opposition to civil rights, and demonstrating the continuing horror of George Bush's and the Republican's "theocracy."

[Update at noon EDT]

Down the memory hole. I should have gotten a screenshot.

Now it reads:

The filibuster has been used historically by the minority party, which can't win with a vote count.
According to the Senate Historical Office, the record for the longest individual speech is held by the late Sen. Strom Thurmond of South Carolina, who filibustered for 24 hours and 18 minutes against the Civil Rights Act of 1957. To keep the floor, he read some of his wife's recipes and passages from novels out loud.


Still no mention of Thurmond's political affiliation at the time, but at least they're not explicitly blaming Republicans for blocking the CRA.

Posted by Rand Simberg at May 19, 2005 07:43 AM

 

[manu1959]

great information thanks....if you are ever in califonia i must take you to one of my dinner parties it would be so fun to watch you torture my blue friends

 

[Annie]

great information thanks....if you are ever in califonia i must take you to one of my dinner parties it would be so fun to watch you torture my blue friends

If I can get from under, I'll take a shot at CA next summer, I think I can get a certain Constitutional gradute program to finance another trip! It would be fun!

In the summer of 2001, I was in LA for a bit more than 3 weeks. One night we went to a dinner party in an area that reminded me of Venice-but with much newer housing! :happy2: The streets were narrow, but the gondalas big. I think, Calabasas? That sound right? Anywho, I managed to generate a bit of heat.