WI: No Civil Rights In 1960's?

I always wanted to ask the reverse, almost- what if the civil rights movement happened much earlier? Could it?


if Lincoln hadn't been shot, he would have had the stature to perhaps preclude the need for one hundred years of struggle for civil rights for those freed from slavery.

let's say Lincoln gets three terms altogether... I'm not knowledgeable of how the supreme court got put together in the late 19th century, but, maybe, Lincoln's strong leadership and the effect of that on subsequent administrations could end up rendering "Plessy v Ferguson" as the 19th century equivalent of "Brown v Board of Ed."
 
At the risk of being branded a racist...

I always wanted to ask the reverse, almost- what if the civil rights movement happened much earlier? Could it?

I rather doubt that it could have happened much earlier than it did. It was, after all, a near-run thing as it happened, and only inspired political leadership (LBJ had a lot of flaws, but I hope that he has been getting Wednesday afternoons off in Hell for this, if nothing else...), and a few good breaks made it possible. The country had just recently moved into a political space where this could happen (I am ashamed that it took us that long, but it did), and I suspect that trying to push it back a decade (for instance) probably would have been unsuccessful.
 

King Thomas

Banned
To have a Civil Rights stymied, have an early 9/11...with blacks as the hijackers. Martin Luther King gets jailed as a national security risk on Hoovers orders.
 
Perhaps quite the opposite. If the McCarthy committee and HUAAC continue with their red paranoia, they can derail the entire movement.

The POD would be that McCarthy does not get discredited. After that, Hoover's accusations of communist influence behind the civil rights movement gets a bigger hearing and serious consideration.

That would discredit the movement.

To some degree maybe, but there'd still be the foreign policy considerations I mentioned before.

If McCarthy does better, Civil Rights might do less well - but still better than with no Cold War at all.
 
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I always wanted to ask the reverse, almost- what if the civil rights movement happened much earlier? Could it?


Extremely unlikely. There is no real reason for it.

Radical Reconstruction wasn't done for the fun of it, or from goodness of heart. It was done to keep ex-Rebels from controlling the Southern State governments, out of a mistaken, but not unreasonable, fear that such control might endanger the restored Union.

Within a few years, however, it became clear that this concern was unjustified. Aside from a few oddballs who cleared off to Mexico or Brazil, most ex-Cons accepted Appomattox as final and were ready to make the best of things as part of the Union. That being so, Reconstruction wasn't really needed from a national perspective. It still had (or appeared to have) some partisan advantyage for the Republicans, but by the mid-1870s even that was looking doubtful. As Grant noted, Northern voters were getting tired of the endless troubles in the South, and wanted an end to them - and by far the quickest and easiest way to get one was to abandon Reconstruction. This duly happened in 1877.

That was pretty much it until the Cold War. Then, it became necessary to woo ex-colonies in Africa and Asia, who were understandably apt to snicker at American talk of freedom and democracy when they looked at what was going on down South. About the same time, the mechanisation of Southern agriculture broke up the rural economy on which Jm Crow had rested. The South didn't need all those cotton-pickers any more. It had machines. Add to that the increasingly powerful Black vote in the North, a product of the migration to Northern cities around WW1, and things were ready to roll.

Seems to me that if you want earlier Civil Rights, you have to make at least one, and preferably all, of those changes happen sooner. I don't say that's totally ASB, but it's certainly a high hurdle. I don't really see an individual President (sorry, not even Lincoln) as making too much difference. The problem went deeper than that.
 
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pnyckqx

Banned
To some degree maybe, but theire'd still be the foreign policy considerations I mentioned before.

If McCarthy does better, Civil Rights might do less well - but still better than with no Cold War at all.
And the irony would be that McCarthy supported civil rights. At least he certainly wasn't a racist.
 

Wolfpaw

Banned
Perhaps quite the opposite. If the McCarthy committee and HUAAC continue with their red paranoia, they can derail the entire movement.

The POD would be that McCarthy does not get discredited. After that, Hoover's accusations of communist influence behind the civil rights movement gets a bigger hearing and serious consideration.

That would discredit the movement.
While it's easy to have McCarthy avoid being so thoroughly destroyed by the Army-McCarthy hearings (literally those were all Cohn's fault), the Red Scare doesn't necessarily mean the civil rights movement is gutted. The Republicans still saw themselves as the party of Lincoln and as has been mentioned did vote for equal rights, even a lot of the ultraconservatives.

So if some of the leadership of or groups supporting the civil rights movement may be brought under suspicion of being subversive, the Red Scare propagators would probably push for a more "American" civil rights movement under the leadership of "loyal" minorities.

That being said, Hoover's still likely to fuck around. He did it IOTL, but there's no reason to think that he'd be able to turn the ultraconservatives completely against civil rights.
 

Wolfpaw

Banned
And the irony would be that McCarthy supported civil rights. At least he certainly wasn't a racist.
Right on both counts. McCarthy was not only very much in favor of racial equality (he always voted for legislation supporting it and now and then tried to add pro-CR amendments to bills), but he was very sensitive and easily hurt by accusations of bigotry. Being called an anti-Semite greatly saddened him and he felt terrible about how he may have come across during the Annie Lee Moss hearings.
 
Right on both counts. McCarthy was not only very much in favor of racial equality (he always voted for legislation supporting it and now and then tried to add pro-CR amendments to bills), but he was very sensitive and easily hurt by accusations of bigotry. Being called an anti-Semite greatly saddened him and he felt terrible about how he may have come across during the Annie Lee Moss hearings.

Oh, I don't know, kinda sounds like revisionism to me :( .................
 

pnyckqx

Banned
While it's easy to have McCarthy avoid being so thoroughly destroyed by the Army-McCarthy hearings (literally those were all Cohn's fault), the Red Scare doesn't necessarily mean the civil rights movement is gutted. The Republicans still saw themselves as the party of Lincoln and as has been mentioned did vote for equal rights, even a lot of the ultraconservatives.
In order to be perceived as the winner in the confrontation against the Army Lawyer, Welch, McCarthy first off needs to NOT be nearly blind drunk at the time of the confrontation. Second, even though he was stinking drunk, if you watch the entire exchange between Welch and McCarthy, you can see that Welch was no match for even a drunk McCarthy. His only recourse was to play to the camera. --Welch challenged first Cohn then McCarthy to name one communist. When McCarthy came up with a name (that didn't come from McCarthy's committee), Welch cried like a little bitch for the camera.

Yes, Cohn was the root cause of all the grief. He also could have immediately stepped up and challenged Welch with words to the effect of: "Well Mr. Welch, you've been challenging both myself and the Senator to come up with a name. We have done so. Now are you going to investigate, or are you going to continue to play to the television camera and try to deceive the American public.? At long last sir, have YOU no decency?" We both know that Cohn was a good enough lawyer and was certainly ruthless enough to pull that off.

A less -anebrieted McCarthy could have hit that one out of the park all by himself, though from what we both know of the man, it would have been out of character for him. He wasn't the ogre that the press portrayed him as being.

So if some of the leadership of or groups supporting the civil rights movement may be brought under suspicion of being subversive, the Red Scare propagators would probably push for a more "American" civil rights movement under the leadership of "loyal" minorities.
Here is where i have some disagreement with your position. IF McCarthy is not discredited, then the public is still going to be looking for commies under every rock. With the (supposed) communist funding of the civil rights movement, whether real or imagined, it would be much harder for Republicans seeking re-election to support the movement. Doing so gives the anti civil rights Democrats the political opportunity to have the Republican opposition hoist on their own petard in respect to being tough on communism. At this point in history, the Republicans have not yet become "the stupid party".

That being said, Hoover's still likely to fuck around. He did it IOTL, but there's no reason to think that he'd be able to turn the ultraconservatives completely against civil rights.
If McCarthy is not descredited, then Hoover's fucking around gets heard by a wider audience. All of a sudden, people like Jesse Helms (who was not around during this time, i know that) don't seem like the loons that they are.

*None of these comments necessarily reflect my own personal political views
 
No Anti-Lynch Mob Provisions.

One of the strengths of the Cival Rights Act of 1964 is it makes lynching a federal offence. Local athority can't just ignore it. Feds can investigate. If theres no such law lynching keep gettin swept unter the rug. Things that are hate crimes today become more common. As riots mentioned above become more common white backlash increases too.
 
I think the easiest PoD for delaying Civil RIghts is to remove the Gandhi/MLK style non-violent protesters.

When peaceful protesters are shown being beaten (especially by cops) on TV, it really, REALLY gives them legitimacy, and destroys the legitimacy of the southern establishment.

If the black protest was violent, as one might normally have expected, then the southern establishment has a reasonable chance of being able to spin the news as 'law and order', 'fighting criminals/communists/terrorists', and you won't get the groundswell of support that led to the OTL Civil Rights Acts.
 
To have a Civil Rights stymied, have an early 9/11...with blacks as the hijackers. Martin Luther King gets jailed as a national security risk on Hoovers orders.

Jesus, now that's a nasty idea.

It can't be the Twin Towers themselves, North Tower wasn't done until Dec. 1970 (unless they hit a half-finished building, and they started in 1966, which is too late for some of this stuff). Maybe the Empire State Building instead. Pentagon, White House, and Capital still valid targets.

Of course, we still need a group to actually pull it off. I'm not sure who that'd be. Any ideas?
 
What if legislation like the Civil Rights act of 1964,
It is said that -- While the Supremes don't need to read Election Polls - They do read the Newspaper.
I am not sure how much the Civil Rites Act of 1964, influenced the Supremes, But in 1964 [Miscegenation Case] they declared Race as a Insidious Distinction.
This immediately invalidated all laws nationwide, which mentioned Race [Immediate de-Segregation] .
Most of the focus of all the Civil Rites Acts since then has been to institutionalize Integration. In the same way Segregation was Institutionalized pre 1960's.

Unfortunately they are not working.
 
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