Monday, June 29, 2009

June 29, 1964: GOP passes Civil Rights Bill

Michael reminds us that Democrats Al Gore Sr. of Tennessee, and Robert Byrd of West Virginia, stood against the Civil Rights Bill. However, Republicans pushed for its passage:
In the Senate, Minority Leader Everett Dirksen had little trouble rounding up the votes of most Republicans, and former presidential candidate Richard Nixon also lobbied hard for the bill. Senate Majority Leader Michael Mansfield and Senator Hubert Humphrey led the Democrat drive for passage, while the chief opponents were Democrat Senators Sam Ervin, of later Watergate fame, Albert Gore Sr., and Robert Byrd. Senator Byrd, a former Klansman whom Democrats still call “the conscience of the Senate”, filibustered against the civil rights bill for fourteen straight hours before the final vote.
Read more over at The Write Side of My Brain.

1 comment:

J. Tyler Ballance said...

Yes, it's true. Title VII (the 1964 Civil Rights Act) also known as the greatest extra-Constitutional sell-out of the White working class by the mostly White, political elites from both parties, could NOT have happened without the GOP betraying the White men and women of our working class.

The '64 Act is a blatant violation of our Fourteenth Amendment, but few among the leadership of either of the two major political parties has allowed the Constitution to stand in the way of their social engineering goals or simple political expediency.

Citizens should unite and demand the repeal of the misnamed "Civil Rights Act" as well as the other extra-Constitutional power grabs that began with the Johnson Administration's phony, "Great Society" programs.