Desegregation Quotes
stop the civil rights movement
Lincoln, just before the Civil War, quoted Jefferson that if slavery were not ended in America the results would be disastrous. But Lincoln at the time probably did not imagine how right Jefferson was, and Jefferson himself probably 1 how terrible the Civil War would be.
Connor turned out to have been of great assistance to the Civil Rights Movements. His red-neck, ignorant, virulent, irrational hatred and his position made him an iconic, living, hyperbole of the American Southern Racist.
The President had frequent stag (men only) dinners of national notables. At this dinner, the Chief Justice was seated close to the attorney who was representing the Southern segregationists in the Brown v Board of Education case that was before the court. Warren had objected to being in such close proximity to one party to a case before the court. Eisenhower, had taken Warren aside to smooth any bad feelings and thinking Warren might be distressed by the attorney’s racist and segregationist views tried to explain the Southern point of view. Although Eisenhower was not a racist or segregationist himself, he had worked closely with Southerners his whole career, and thought he understood them. Warren was so surprised by the President’s insensitive remark, that he noted it and revealed it in his memoirs.
He was right. Even the vaunted Southern Filibuster was broken by the strategy and tactics Johnson and Senator Humbert Humphry, the Floor Leader for the 1964 Civil Rights Bill.
At the time racism and discrimination in the United States was not only rampant but legal. But change in many substrata of America was detectable and many intellectuals--writers, artists, scientists, educators, theologians, entertainers, groups who would later be called “elites” began to make themselves heard on the subject. Falkner was one whose novels had always taken an anti racist view point and now were overtly calling for political and social change.
The following year most of the Southern Democrats joined the Republican Party in Protest over the Civil Rights Act. Reagan began to have national political ambitions and therefore flip flopped and stated that he would never have voted for the Civil Rights Act. This made him acceptable later as a conservative.
At the time segregation was legal, Southern Blacks could not vote, racism was rampant, and a Black President seemed impossible.
