JSmith
Banned
Wouldn't the market and the desire to do the right thing have caused the South and the rest to desegregate voluntarily without being forced to do it by the government ?
Shite I almost got that out with a straight face
WI: No 1964 Civil Rights Act
- Thread starter Ulysses
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Shite I almost got that out with a straight face
He was cautious at first but by late 1963 clearly committed to a strong civil rights bill, even though he knew it would cost him much of the South.
As for the Act later being repealed--forget it. Neither Watts nor Newark nor any of the other riots produced any substantial movement for repeal of the Act, no matter how much of a white backlash they induced. In 1966, which of course was after Watts, the House actually passed a measure to broaden the Act by banning segregation by the real estate industry, and it was only killed by a filibuster in the Senate. (It has to be remembered that the white backlash in the North was strongest in the area of housing discrimination--an area ther 1964 Act had pretty much left alone.)
It depends on what you mean by "the market". Most business served colored and white people as well, but they required them to eat their meals separately or to wait in different rooms. I'm afraid that it would have take a very long list of mass boycotts to white-owned establishment, if that's the case, before a voluntary desegregation could begin.Wouldn't the market and the desire to do the right thing have caused the South and the rest to desegregate voluntarily without being forced to do it by the government ?
Shite I almost got that out with a straight face
As for the desire to do the right thing: nope.
Old businesses had separate service areas for "white" and "colored." Newer business in suburbs built in the late fifties only had "white" and "white" accommodations. That was a major problem. The latest and greatest were off limits based on race. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. called segregation "islands of poverty in an ocean of vast prosperity." And as I said before, television made it painfully obvious on a daily basis.
That's because blacks weren't even supposed to live in the newer suburbs and were mostly segregated into run-down areas along with other minorities (latinos, asians and even some non-WASP whites). In some cities there were better kept neighbourhoods for richer blacks, but those areas were still separated from the white neighbourhoods. MLK's quote basically sums up this aspect, too.
I know, it sounded pretty stupid to myself as well, but I tought I should just throw that in. I agree that no post-act riot could led to the repeal of the act itself, but what about pre-act riots?
1) The Democrats had so many seats to defend in 1964 that a smaller landslide could see them lose seats. Even if they gain two like OTL, I doubt JFK got that close to passing it.
2) Possible, but the backlash would be awful even compared to OTL.
Highly unlikely as a PoD as Rosa Parks was not the only woman who had done so and was an active member of the NAACP. Given what was already happening coupled with growing grassroots movements North and South and TV media a civil disobedience campaign was inevitable after Emmett Till.
tenthring
Banned
And now I live in Baltimore, a city with a vast oceans of poverty and small islands of prosperity.
(1) The only Democratic Senate candidates who won by really narrow margins in 1964 in OTL were Howard W. Cannon of Nevada, Stephen M. Young of Ohio, and Fred R. Harris of Oklahoma. Even if all three lost, the Senate would still be 65-35 Democratic, and moreover Young's GOP opponent Robert Taft, Jr. was a strong supporter of the civil rights bill. http://www.nytimes.com/1964/04/05/taft-too-liberal-ohio-foe-asserts.html
The point is not that the Senate in this alt-1965 would be more Democratic than in 1964, but with the election safely over, and JFK having proven that being pro-civil-rights was not political suicide and indeed did not prevent a landslide victory, JFK could probably get the few additional votes he would need for cloture.
(FWIW, the final Gallup poll before JFK's death showed him leading Goldwater by sixteen points, almost as well as LBJ would do in OTL. This was after his support for civil rights had already cost him the support of a majority of southerners. https://groups.google.com/d/msg/soc.history.what-if/YH16cCyQ3kM/ho3UZyccBlEJ My own guess is that this margin could actually increase--any further decline in JFK's popularity due to civil rights could be more than offset by worries about Goldwater's alleged extremism, willingness to use nuclear weapons, etc.)
(2) I really doubt it. The backlash depended on what was done, not on who (the courts or Congress) did it.
Reviewing the sources, I guess that any kind of POD after the 1950s is unlikely or unrealistic to some degree. By that time the events that sparked the civil rights movement were already underway, so I assume that the POD must be located somewhere before the fifties. Maybe Truman refusing to sign Executive Order 9981, even if I can't find a good reason for that.
I had a professor years ago who lived in the USSR, and aside from trying to buy the blue jeans offer her, they would always ask politically incorrect questions such as, "Why do Americans lynch black people" as if it was a common activity among all whites.
It's a matter of values:
American: "Why do you Russians have to wait two hours in line to buy a pair of shoes?"
Russian: "Why do you Americans have to burn a half gallon of gas just to go buy a loaf of bread?"
Yes, films of burning crosses and KKK activity were well represented in the Soviet media.
But in the sixties, American leaders had new issues to resolve, in an era of open reporting. All at once, a maturing Baby Boom generation was questioning how the Nuremburg trials were reconciled with American values against ex post facto laws and how the revered right of voting could be denied to anyone of legal age. "The establishment" was now under fire.
For a discussion of the influence of the Cold War on *Brown v. Board of Education* see my post at https://groups.google.com/d/msg/soc.history.what-if/VTGxq7k8lgU/ZnBk8iBxGc8J
(Unfortunately, the article I refer to--Mary L. Dudziak, "*Brown* as a Cold War Case", Journal of American History, vol. 91, no. 1 (June 2004)--no longer seems to be available online for non-subscribers, but I think the excerpts I quoted are evidence enough...)
(Unfortunately, the article I refer to--Mary L. Dudziak, "*Brown* as a Cold War Case", Journal of American History, vol. 91, no. 1 (June 2004)--no longer seems to be available online for non-subscribers, but I think the excerpts I quoted are evidence enough...)
GeographyDude
Gone Fishin'
Here are excerpts from President Johnson's TV and radio remarks on signing the bill on July 2, 1964:
So, maybe the Community Relations Service directed by Governor Collins doesn't work out so well.
Or, maybe the argument that a place like a movie theater is a private place gains more traction. Although really, it is both a private business and a public place.
And looking back on it, in a way it is a little surprising that an equal treatment in public bill came before a voting rights bill.
So, maybe the Community Relations Service directed by Governor Collins doesn't work out so well.
Or, maybe the argument that a place like a movie theater is a private place gains more traction. Although really, it is both a private business and a public place.
And looking back on it, in a way it is a little surprising that an equal treatment in public bill came before a voting rights bill.
Looking back, it may be surprising, but at the time, it was still legal (in some places) to deny access to public businesses based on race. The law addressed an issue not yet covered in U.S. law.
Voting rights, though, were guaranteed by the 15th and 19th Amendments to the Constitution. It was a law to address the violation of laws.
For a post-act scenario, this is the only plausibile POD up to now. Resistence in the South or elsewhere in the U.S. is harder than expect, CRS mess up things by trying to force integration or in some other way, racial tension increases, leading to several clashes and civil disturbances. Such events could have shifted the white public opinion sympathy towards the pro-segregationist cause, resulting in a repeal of the Civil Rights act.
It's kind of odd, for sure, but as Mark E. wrote, voting rights to racial minorities had been already granted by the Constitution itself, tough they were not enforced as they should have been. On the other hand, business having separate entrances for white and black people were still common across the country.
Another point is that it took Martin Luther King to organize a march from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama (March, 1965) to call national attention to injustice in voting. He mentioned it in his Dream Speech in 1963, but the typical Northerner didn't connect with the issue because voter suppression was not an issue for most of the population.