If the Republican Party of today was like the Republican Party of 1960 and by that I mean the Republican Party of Nelson Rockefeller, Lowell Weicker, Edward Brooke, etc., many African Americans, myself included, would probably be a Republican. Let me remind everyone that it was Republican President Dwight D. Eisenhower and Vice President Richard Nixon who argued that a determination of voter disfranchisement in the Civil Rights Act of 1957 be a determination that was made by the Federal Government which was later the case in the Voting Rights Act of 1965.
It was Democratic Senate Majority Leader Lyndon Johnson of Texas, supported by then US Senator John F. Kennedy who successfully argued that a determination of voter disfranchisement be left to local juries which of course meant that in those segregated times African Americans would never win a claim of being prevented from voting because of race. As racist as they were, it was Eisenhower & Nixon who argued that the poll tax & literacy tests should be eliminated and had these two had their way, it can be argued that the subsequent Civil Rights legislation of the 1960's would not have been necessary.
That is why so many African Americans were wary of JFK in 1960 including among many my parents & Jackie Robinson who actually voted for Richard Nixon and made no apologies for doing so at the time. President Eisenhower wanted to secure the African American vote for the Republican Party forever; that's why he did what he did. Lyndon Johnson did not want to lose his Senate seat or any shot at the presidency by supporting Eisenhower on this. He knew he would have to keep the South solid if he ever had any chance of becoming president which would not have happened if he supported the president and vice president's version of the Civil Rights Act of 1957; so too did John Kennedy which is why he supported the Majority Leader on this.
It was only after the violence associated with the sit ins, the Freedom Rides, and the Birmingham demonstrations that JFK finally came to his senses regarding Civil Rights and there is little doubt that had he lived Civil Rights would not have advanced as far as it did as soon as it did because he simply lacked the political wherewithal to push something like that through Congress. Johnson had those skills and the nation, chastened by the tragedy in Dallas, went along with him.
We on the Left do not do ourselves any favors by denying the obvious; by refusing to acknowledge what actually happened because it happens to be politically uncomfortable to do so. It doesn't matter what the other side does to distort the truth to fit their partisan purposes; what matters is our willingness to take ownership of what happened and not emulate our adversaries by trying to whitewash history in a foolish & doomed attempt to make our side look better in hindsight than it actually was. Let them, our adversaries, do that. Let's not do this ourselves. Let them be the hypocrites; not us, for only by owning up to who we were can we truly make ourselves better now and ensure that we are better tomorrow than we are today.
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