"Face it, the Democratic Party has a history of racism, slavery, and even secession"
The wheel keeps turning. The R's began embracing racism in '64, while the D's began rejecting it. D's like Byrd and Wallace sought repentance and redemption, and D's like Thurmond and Helms became R's.
When conservative Arizona Senator Barry M. Goldwater ran for president in 1964, Martin Luther King, Jr., expressed his opposition, explaining: “I feel that the prospect of Senator Goldwater being president of the United States so threatens the health, morality, and survival of our nation that I can not in good conscience fail to take a stand against what he represents” (King, 16 July 1964). Goldwater lost the election to President Lyndon Johnson in a landslide, winning majorities only in his native Arizona and five states of the Deep South....
... He voted against the Civil Rights Act of 1964. King said of Goldwater’s voting record, “While not himself a racist, Mr. Goldwater articulates a philosophy which gives aid and comfort to the racists” (King, 16 July 1964). King feared that Goldwater’s position that “civil rights must be left, by and large to the states” meant “leaving it to the Wallaces and the Barnetts” (King, “The Republican Presidential Nomination”). Electing Goldwater, King said, would plunge the country into a “dark night of social disruption” (King, 21 September 1964).
kinginstitute.stanford.edu |
