1964 Civil Rights Act

[El Prezidente Kaboom]

The passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 is widely considered by today's generation to be a monumental moral triumph for our democracy. As a matter of law, the federal government declared Jim Crow to be a serial felon, and this had the subsequent political effect of setting off radical partisan realignment throughout the South, which bolted in droves from the Democratic Party to support Arizona Senator Barry Goldwater's trailblazing republican presidential campaign over LBJ's reelection. Given the nature of today's uproarious partisan political debates, it seems almost impossible to believe that majorities of the representatives of both of our major parties actually once came together to do the right thing. The country was on fire with civic disruption, protests, and horrifying violence, perpetrated by the KKK and other segregationist supporters, who resisted every cautious and hesitant turn Kennedy had taken to advance Civil Rights before he was wrongfully taken from this Earth. The minority Southern wing of the Democratic Party, and the swing-voting Northern Republicans, who philosophically disagreed with using the government to solve what they considered to be a moral dilemma from a public policy standpoint, managed a strong veto point over passage of the bill even after the president had been shot. The final leg of the journey had to overcome a Southern Democrat filibuster that went on for nearly 3 months straight, while Northern and West Coast Liberal Democrats, urged on by LBJ, gathered the votes across the aisle necessary to invoke cloture to end the filibuster. Most Republican representatives and senators ended up supporting the bill, but Goldwater, who did not support the filibuster, based his final 'nay vote on his opposition to Title II and Title VII of the legislation. Title II outlawed discrimination of customers in private business establishments that are purportedly engaged in interstate commerce: such as, restaurants, hotels, motels, and movie theaters, and basically, any commercial venue that is open to the general public. Title VII outlaws discrimination and harassment of employees. It appears Senator Goldwater supported ending discrimination by the government, but was concerned about ending private discrimination in the marketplace with the government; and was generally against measures by the federal government to corral Jim Crow by commandeering the steering wheel of the local and state governments of the South, who viciously opposed federal usurpation of their authority. Recently in the run-up to Kentucky's GOP primary election, echoes of Goldwater's argument concerning Title II were heard amongst the many things touched on by the Tea Party backed candidate, Dr. Rand Paul. And a firestorm of debate was set off on election night, due to his victory appearance on “The Rachel Maddow Show,” where he stumbled in explaining his rather nuanced concerns with Title II, when asked specifically about the right of the federal government to compel desegregation of "restaurants and lunch-counters." While for the majority of Americans, when it comes to discrimination and desegregation, the matter is settled, but nearly 50 years after the fact, dissent and confusion still remains; and with States' Rights increasingly becoming the political flavor of the day, again, Americans owe it to ourselves to re-explore our past less we squander what has been gained by the courage, sacrifice, and ingenuity of generations of progressive reformers who struggled to realize Lincoln's “New Birth of Freedom.”

Mahalo,
EPK