What you might not know about the 1964 Civil Rights Act

Living history, it doesn't get any better than that. Thanks CPT.

Isn't if funny how the roles have switched?

Capt. Jack, far be it from me to quibble with someone with a CV as impressive as yours, but some of what you say doesn't seem to align with the record.

You say: "John Kennedy blocked Civil Rights legislation." Yet the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was originally recommended to Congress by Pres. Kennedy.

You say: "LBJ simply wanted to use it to enslave the black community to the Democratic Party." In my all-too-brief and shallow review of the legislation, I've not picked up any hint of that. How was this Law expected to accomplish this?

You say: "Democrats, in general, fought against it." Quite to the contrary, Democrats, in general supported it, as did Republicans. As a bloc, Southern Legislators of both Parties opposed it. In fact, from the eleven 'Confederate States', only one Senator, a Democrat, voted in favor of it, all Republicans voted against it, and only 8 Representatives (all Democrat) voted Aye, the rest (including all Republicans) voted Nay.

You say: "LBJ was able to 'cajole' "just enough" Democrats to join the "vast majority" of Republicans to get it passed, and in that same paragraph you say, "Dems controlled both Chambers of Congress..." Those two statements seem to be antithetical. How can the Dems control both Chambers while, at the same time, Republicans are a "vast majority"?

In the end, the final votes were:

House - Yea:290/Nay:130 By Party - Yea:152D 138R/Nay:96D 34R By Party, with Dixiecrats stripped out, Northern Democrats: 145–9 (94–6%), Northern Republicans: 138–24 (85–15%).

Senate - Yea:73/Nay:27 By Party - Yea:46D 27R/Nay:21D 6R By Party, with Dixiecrats stripped out, Northern Democrats: 45–1 (98–2%), Northern Republicans: 27–5 (84–16%).


In the final tally, opposition for Pres. Kennedy's Civil Rights Act of 1964 didn't come from Democrats or Republicans. It came from the Southern States.

Support for it was overwhelming throughout the rest of the Country. Disregarding the Dixiecrats, 94% and 98% of Democrats voted Yes for it, and 85% and 84% of Republicans voted Yes.

Actually Abraham Lincoln did not free the slaves, all he did was to order that slaves that fled to the North woudl not be returned to thier southern masters as the slaves were regarded as war booty, and by robbing the southern rebels of thier assets (the slaves) they could thus cripple the South economically. Lincoln did not actually free slaves, and rather he merely assigned them to labor pools for the Northern Armies and Navy, and promised that if they faithfully served the Northen forces during the War they that woudl be made Freedmen at the completion of the war... but he never kept ther promise, and the compensation and manumation was never formally granted by him.

On the other hand... the U.S. Army did free the slaves that the President transfered to the military (after the War), but the Army merely turned them loose with their uniforms and arms so that they might return South to find thier fmailies, and the U.S. Army divided up confiscated lands int he SOuth and acted as landowners to lease lands back to the slaves to work the land until rich Northerers coudl come in and purcahse the tracts of seized lands from the military (quite literally form the U.S. Government, by way of the U.S. Army), but the prior operators of the land were no longer permitted to own the land, especially if the prior owners coudl at some point be proven to have fought for the Rebellion (as Lincoln negates the property rights of anybody serving in the Confederate Army, or serving in the Confederate Government). The new land onweres (from the North, who bought up Southern plantations for pennies per acre) made a small fortune and many of them purchased huge swaths of land for pennies per acre, and then a few years later sold it for dolars per acre.

Lincoln freed no slaves, and it is a common misunderstanding of what he did with the Emancipation Proclamation.

Also, the Civil War had nothing to do with Slavery, it all had to do with the Southern Econmy being too biased toward the growign of Cotton and Sugar, with virtually to means in the South to process either, which caused to ecomony of the South to be profoundly fragile and brittle, and the War got kicked off, not merely due to militry attacks, but rather the military attacks happened as a rebellion against the U.S. Government refusign to recognize the COnfedertion of southern state trying to break away form their unconstitutional attempt to break from the U.S. itself and form a new federal government in order to be able to export cotton (and sugar) to foreign countries with greater profitability. Both the North and the South regarded the slaves of the South to be nothing more than chattel or assets (and they did not care about what the color or gender of the slaves where).

Actually, there was a bit of a "Slave Issue" between the Federal Government and the government of the Southern states that does not get much modern day discussion and it was the tendency to prefer Native Americans as slaves in some areas, while the treaties of the United States (with the Indian tribes) forbade the taking of Native Americans as slaves. There was also the rather huge Constitutional issue over the banning of the importation of slaves, while regarding as a person (in the United States) who was not 31/32nds white to be counted as negro (which included all Native Americans), as the South could not legally take slaves out of the Native American tribes unless they violated Federal Law (and the Treaty signed into law to protect the Indians from slavery).

Modern citizens of the United States often are not taught that there was not merely African Negros held in slavery in the South, but also Native Americans, Frenchmen, Italians, Spanairds, kindapped whites, and so on. Plus, many of the illegal slaves were kept moving and were not actually knowledgable of where they actually where, what state they were in, and were nto given access to the state or Federal courts in the South. In some cities in the SOuth (pre-Confederacy) it was illegal of hold a Negro slave in the city (as a servant) as they were restricted to plantaton on the outskirts of the city, so the white slavery industrry was alive and well in those cities. In soem COUNTIES it was illegel to allow a black male slave within a certain number of yards of the residence, and the male slave could the put to death if found within this forbidden zone.

The initial "gun control" laws (by what would later evolve into the Deomocratic Party), were instituted by the Militia, Quarantine and Patrol Laws of South Carolina which required that all Negros possess a permit to be off of the land of thier owners, and then written pemmisison to carry any form of knife, arms, or firearms, either on the land of thier owners, or to possess such things off the land of the owner, but a permit for arms off of the owners property borders also required the Sherifffs signiture and (usually) the signature of the Captain of the local slave patrols/Militia.

People tend not to pay historical notice to the ugly fact that the Democrats (what woudl later be regarded as the Democratic Party) has always been pro-slavery, and anti-civil rights.

A person of color who votes for a Democrat is likely also a person of color who hold Margaret Higgins Sanger in high esteem, who has never actually read the entire body of writing of Margaret Higgins Sanger, and does nto realize that this is a same Margaret Higgins Sanger who ranted on in her writings and books about wiping out the black race, and who pushed for the involuntary sterlizations of blacks on prisons and in institutions, and who pushing for involuntary abortions in the poor sections of the South and North (on non-Whites), and who cut-her-teeth as it were pushing sterilization as a requirement for chitty assistance to families... read the early versions of her books to get an idea of what she was really all about, and then follow her wrtings as her career moved foward as polite society was appauled by her early clams about the value of the Native American, Native American, or Jewish populations. She was one of the early proponents of Eugenics, until it became politically embarassing to her advocates, after whcih time she focused her Eugenics doctrine against the Negroes living in poverty, and when this cause probelms, she focused her Eugenics doctrine merley upon the poor, as a condition of them gaining charitable assistance in terms of food and housing.

Yeah, but the Republican Party of today...is NOTHING like the Republicans of yesteryear. After the Nixon Southern strategy, those Dixiecrats became Republicans and kind of took over the party.

SSgt James Atkinson - The Emancipation proclamation by President Lincoln did in fact free all slaves north and south.