Ricochet is the best place on the internet to discuss the issues of the day, either through commenting on posts or writing your own for our active and dynamic community in a fully moderated environment. In addition, the Ricochet Audio Network offers over 50 original podcasts with new episodes released every day.
Selma Won’t Win an Oscar Because of Democrat Distortions
God cannot alter the past, though historians can. – Samuel Butler
The movie Selma is about Dr. Martin Luther King’s march from Selma to Montgomery to help the Voting Rights Act get passed. It’s a good movie, but there is one major historical inaccuracy and one major historical omission.
The antagonist to Dr. King in the movie is President Johnson, who is shown trying everything to stop the march, even underhanded and unseemly things involving the FBI. Transcripts of talks between LBJ and King, however, show that LBJ not only supported King’s agitations, he encouraged them.
The following is a portion of a telephone conversation between President Johnson and Dr. King on January 15, 1965, two months before the Selma marches and weeks before Jimmie Lee Jackson was shot. Johnson was encouraging King to find the worst examples of voter suppression and make as much of a media fuss about it as he could:
President Johnson:
And number two, I think that we don’t want special privilege for anybody. We want equality for all, and we can stand on that principle. But I think that you can contribute a great deal by getting your leaders and you yourself, taking very simple examples of discrimination where a man’s got to memorize [Henry Wadsworth] Longfellow or whether he’s got to quote the first 10 Amendments or he’s got to tell you what amendment 15 and 16 and 17 is, and then ask them if they know and show what happens. And some people don’t have to do that. But when a Negro comes in, he’s got to do it. And we can just repeat and repeat and repeat. I don’t want to follow [Adolph] Hitler, but he had a–he had a[n] idea–
King:
Yeah.
President Johnson:
–that if you just take a simple thing and repeat it often enough, even if it wasn’t true, why, people accept it. Well, now, this is true, and if you can find the worst condition that you run into in Alabama, Mississippi, or Louisiana, or South Carolina, where–well, I think one of the worst I ever heard of is the president of the school at Tuskegee or the head of the government department there or something being denied the right to a cast a vote. And if you just take that one illustration and get it on radio and get it on television and get it in the pulpits, get it in the meetings, get it every place you can, pretty soon the fellow that didn’t do anything but follow–drive a tractor, he’s say, “Well, that’s not right. That’s not fair.” [Emphasis supplied]
King:
Yes.
President Johnson:
And then that will help us on what we’re going to shove through in the end. [Emphasis supplied]
King:
Yes. You’re exactly right about that.
The reason LBJ needed to get media attention is because he needed pressure on congressional Democrats to stop filibusters. The Democrats had filibustered the 1964 Civil Rights Act (most notably Robert Byrd of West Virginia, who was a recruiter for the KKK, yet later called the “conscience of the Senate” by Democrats).
The Republicans were already on board, thanks in part to the efforts of Senator Everett Dirksen of Illinois. Look at this part of the same phone conversation between President Johnson and Dr. King:
President Johnson:
I’ll tell you what our problem is. We’ve got to try with every force at our command–and I mean every force–to get these education bills that go to those people [with] under $2,000 a year [of] income, 1.5 billion [dollars]. And this poverty [bill] that’s a billion, and a half and this health [bill] that’s going to be 900 million [dollars] next year right at the bottom. We’ve got to get them passed before the vicious forces concentrate and get them a coalition that can block them. Then we have got to–so we won’t divide them all and get them hung up in a filibuster. We’ve got to–when we get these big things through that we need–Medicare, education–I’ve already got that hearing started the 22nd in the House and 26th in the Senate. Your people ought to be very, very diligent in looking at those committee members that come from urban areas that are friendly to you to see that those bills get reported right out, because you have no idea–it’s shocking to you–how much benefits they will get. There’s 8.5 billion [dollars] this year for education, compared to 700 million [dollars] when I started. So you can imagine what effort that’s going to be. And this one bill is a 1.5 billion [dollars]. Now, if we can get that and we can get a Medicare [bill]–we ought to get that by February–then we get our poverty [bill], that will be more than double what it was last year. [Emphasis supplied]
King:
Yes.
President Johnson:
Then we’ve got to come up with the qualification of voters. That will answer 70 percent of your problems.
King:
That’s right.
President Johnson:
If you just clear it out everywhere, make it age and [the ability to] read and write. No tests on what [Geoffrey] Chaucer said or [Robert] Browning’s poetry or constitutions or memorizing or anything else.
King:
Yes.
It is therefore an inaccurate recital of history to claim that President Johnson was somehow Dr. King’s antagonist.
Joseph Califano, Jr. was President Johnson’s top advisor on domestic affairs, and he strongly objects to the movie’s portrayal of LBJ as someone standing in the way of King, going so far as to say Selma was LBJ’s idea. Perhaps that’s an exaggeration, as King was likely laying the groundwork for the marches before January, but LBJ clearly was encouraging Dr. King.
A retort has come from the director of the movie, Ava Duvernay. She told Rolling Stone that she changed the script to downplay Johnson so she could represent her own point of view, because she didn’t want to make a “white savior movie.” That of course begs the question: What if there was a white savior? History be damned?
There is also a negligent (intentional?) omission in the movie: The failure to identify Southern Democrats as Dr. King’s actual antagonists. Party identification was left out of the movie, but at one point President Johnson states that “white liberals” were on King’s side.
“Liberal” is a vague word and has seen so many definitional shifts that it is unfair to position it in an historical movie without further context. Today’s version of “liberal” is attached to the Democratic Party. However, at various times in history, “liberal democrat” could be synonymous with Western, American, or even Republican.
The vagary of political labeling is fraught with complications. An American right-winger is left compared to an anarchist and an American leftist is on the right compared to a communist (even that sentence is confusing without pointing out first that I’m using “left to right” as a measuring stick for government’s control of economic production in society). See how complicated it can be without explanation?
The word liberal, like conservative, is a completely relative term. To use the word in the movie with no context was sloppy and can lead to the incorrect assumption that Democrats were on King’s side and Republicans were not. The opposite was true.
Lots of bad guys were identified in the movie without their party, but let’s list them here with their partisan affiliation:
George Wallace — Democrat
Bull Connor — Democrat
Selma Sheriff Jim Clark — Democrat
Jim Crow Laws — drafted by Democrats throughout the South
Ku Klux Klan — terror arm of the Democratic Party, the original oath required members to swear they were never in the Republican Party.
Every fire hose-spraying, attack dog-unleashing, vicious government official who was keeping blacks down in the South was a Democrat. Failure to put that in an historical movie is just wrong. This is a movie about politics, the efforts to pass a law. Which party violently opposed Dr. King and the Voting Rights Act is therefore an integral part of the story that should always be included when it is told.
Selma is a good movie worth watching for the parts about Dr. King’s efforts and what blacks in the South had to go through, but don’t be fooled into thinking it is a complete or accurate recitation of history.
Published in General
Like.
One of the things I really like about the Spielberg film Lincoln was that it made it very clear that Democrats were pro-slavery and that Republicans were the ones fighting to end it.
Machiavelli had a lot to learn from LBJ.
Not to detract from your overall thesis, but should the GOP be proud that it now owns the South that voted against the Civil Right Act?
If you look at the votes, it’s much more North vs. South than Republican vs. Democrat
In the House:
Yay: 155D/139R
Nay: 95D/37R
Entire states typically voted for or against it independent of party affiliation.
Splitting the states into the Confederacy and “other” you get this (yay-nay):
The original House version:
The Senate version:
Look closely at those percentages. In every case Republicans voted slightly more against the Civil Rights Act than Democrats of the same demographic.
Mike, I take the following from your posts: Back when the south was populated by racist creeps, those racist creeps identified strongly with the Democrat Party. As the racist creeps died off and their kids and grand kids became more tolerant, they began to identify strongly with the GOP. Is that the point you’re trying to make? Good work!
I wonder where the riots will break out first when Selma doesn’t win…….
My point is it bothers me when the GOP (or Democrats) try to use historical examples like which party Lincoln belonged to or who voted for the (good hearted but deeply flawed) Civil Rights Act as somehow indicative of who the party is today. These things don’t indicate anything about the people who are in the party now or what it stands for. People just use them to give themselves credit by proxy and feel good about themselves for no good reason.
And my point is the average Democrat was more likely than the average Republican to vote in favor of the Civil Rights Act, so all this talk about which party was responsible and who was to blame is patently ridiculous.
Today’s South is not nearly the same as the South that voted against the Civil Rights Act.
By nearly every quantifiable measure, today’s South is far more tolerant, diverse, and integrated than much (most?) of the North.
Mike H: #5 “Look closely at those percentages. In every case Republicans voted slightly more against the Civil Rights Act than Democrats of the same demographic.”
If the Republicans in the House had voted against the Act, it would have lost.
If the Republicans in the Senate had voted against the Act, it would have lost.
The Republican response in the Senate was 27 for, six against. The Republican response in the House was 138 for, 34 against. The Republican vote was more than 80-percent in favor of the Act. That is a favorable position on an important subject.
We should be capitalizing on it.
The South moved toward the Republican Party, but not because of Jim Crow, which Republicans never supported. I prefer to think that Southern whites became Republican because they were tired of being poor. Kevin Williamson argued that the shift towards the Republican Party in the South started in urban areas, which were the least racist, and worked its way out to the rural areas later, where there was more racism.
In the Jim Crow era, Southern whites were very backwards, and I think they constituted an aggrieved minority of the sort that Democrats specialize in courting. Democrats are great at finding special favors to offer particular minorities to gain their support. For Southern whites, the special favor was Jim Crow. The Democratic Party supported Jim Crow until it was no longer politically advantageous to do so. Given how quickly the Democratic Party shifted its stance on civil rights in the 60s, I tend to think that Democratic politicians were not generally that sincere in their desire to oppress blacks. It was just something they did to please their base. Likewise, I don’t believe that a typical Democratic politician today really cares that much about blacks. Race is just a tool they use to brand themselves as the good party, and Republicans as racists for opposing them.
The political finesse of the Democrats leaves me reeling. The New Deal coalition managed to get blacks and the KKK in the same tent. Today, Jews and the people that really hate Jews (or Israel) are both in the same base too. If the Democrats weren’t wrong about every issue they would never lose an election.
Yes. Moreover it confuses conservative with Republican and liberal with Democrat in a way that does not fit today. The Republicans who most strongly supported both the Civil Rights and Voting Rights Acts were the equivalent of today’s RINOs.
The data the Mike H presents is revealing. It wasn’t Democrats in general that opposed civil rights. It was only the Southern Democrats. That is consistent with the way Democrats operate. There was little political advantage for Northern Democrats to oppose civil rights. Likewise, in 2015 the people who hate Israel are mostly alligned with the Democrats. But that doesn’t mean all Democrats stand against Israel. A Democratic politician from New York City is likely to be pro-Israel, or at least not anti-Israel. If I try to think of Democrats as having principles that they follow, I will go crazy. If I just think of them as sending the signals that get them the most money and votes in the existing political environment, then what they do is not hard to figure out.
However, I think those Republicans that opposed the Civil Rights Act didn’t do so because they wanted to preserve Jim Crow or oppress blacks. They were concerned about real constitutional issues. Barry Goldwater opposed the Act for those reasons, even though he had been a civil rights supporter for years.
Many Northern Democrats supported civil rights because they thought it the right thing to do and recognized that the north had its own racial problems.
I agree with your statement about Goldwater and, for that matter, William Buckley falls in the same category. I think they are both admirable. They just were wrong on this.
I’m sure that’s probably true in many cases, but Democrats get so much undeserved credit for being nobler and more compassionate than Republicans that I’m not giving them an inch more credit unless I’m sure they deserve it.
I share your sentiment on that. The self-congratulatory compassion and caring shown by passing legislation and spending other people’s money is hard to take.
Mike H,
Work took me away from the computer, so let me respond to your various comments made during my absence:
It’s almost universally understood that the South held the slave states and the North the abolitionists. Even the Democrats have not been able to pull the wool over history’s eyes on that one. The point I make is that they have been able to obscure the view that Democrats were the pushers of slavery and segregation while Republicans were their opposition. That point is lost on the average Joe because history tellers avoid it.
So your breakdown of Southern vs Northern voting for the Civil Rights Act is within expectation.
Regarding the numbers you posted, aside from the typo you made that increased the Democrat vote, you also don’t highlight that the there is a higher percentage of Republicans voting FOR the Civil Rights Act than Democrats, and a higher percentage of Democrats voting AGAINST the Civil Rights Act than Republicans overall:
House FOR the Act: Dems: 63%, Repubs 80%
House Against the Act: Dems 37%, Repubs 20%
Senate FOR the Act: Dems 69%, Repubs 82%
Senate AGAINST the Act: Dems 31%, Repubs 18%
While the average American can tell you the fight was North v South, how many will tell you that the Republican support for the act outstripped the Democrats by about 15%?
Regarding the numbers you posted on Confederate State senators and congressmen, to be fair don’t you have to point out there was 1 Republican and 21 Democrat Senators? 100% of Republicans voting against it looks bad out of context, but in context it was 1 guy! Democrats had 21 chances to vote for Act and 20 said no!!! As an analyst, political or statistical, are you really positing that opposition to the Act was driven by Republicans not Democrats? C’mon, man! You’re better than that!
Mike, you make this statement:
Since the numbers show Republicans outvoting Dems in favor of the bill by about 15%, I say with certainty I’m not being ridiculous – you’re just wrong on the facts.
You also say this:
Good grief. I hope you are talking about the director of Selma and not me. She is the one who admits to changing the script away from history while I’m citing facts about history.
You really aren’t being fair to me. I said nothing about today’s parties. I’m correcting the flawed record this movie makes about Democrat history.
Mike H let’s look at the parties today (off topic but you brought it up).
The Democrat sins of the past against Blacks was slavery, lynching, breaking up families, torture, KKK, lack of due process, secession, civil war, segregation, Jim Crow laws, fire houses, attack dogs, filibuster and opposition to the Civil Rights Act, opposition to the voting rights act (the last piece of civil rights legislation this country has seen).
What are the Republican sins?
Southern strategy: Wow. An attempt to get elected.
Opposition to social welfare programs: Economics.
Opposition to affirmative action: Quotas are bad.
Please tell me, you or anyone else, why Blacks vote over 90% Democrat?
The only thing the Democrats ever did for them that we opposed are the welfare programs that keep them in subsistence and stunts their financial growth. A policy dispute.
How does a policy dispute wipe away centuries of slavery, rape, killing, torture and oppression by Democrats?
Current Democrats dismiss these arguments by saying that the parties switched or something or other. I have yet to look into that enough to refute it. Have you?
I’ve heard the comment but not seen the proof.
There was some trickling over – the DixieCrats were former Democrats who ended up with us. Other than that I don’t believe there was a mass switching of parties, at least by white people.
Until FDR, Blacks voted as much Republican as they do Democrat today. It’s my understanding that the promise of social programs is what changed them.
The mass block voting by blacks came in the wake of the Civil Rights and Voting Rights Acts and the Great Society. The vote was competitive as late as the 1960 election in which Jackie Robinson endorsed Richard Nixon.
I think the Black switch started before the 60’s. From 1936 on Democrats got around 70 of the black vote, some years dipping into the mid 60 percentile. Then Johnson got about 96% in 64. It never got out of the mid 80s after that.
I’ll extend and revise my remarks! Yes, the trend started in the 1930s, but the monolithic block occurred as you note in 1964.
I remember in the 1980s when groups like the Christian Coalition were going strong, the left began excoriating us as group-think, lockstep zombies who couldn’t think independently.
I don’t think Christians ever voted anywhere near 96% for one party. Probably not more than 60%.
LBJ had an ear out for history in those phone calls.
He was the most important Dem leader in the Senate after 1952. The Dems – and LBJ – filibustered and filibustered Ike’s efforts at civil rights legislation. Ike got two bills through, but the second was heavily watered down by the Dems.
If LBJ became a big believer in civil rights, there must have been some Road to Damascus moment between 1960 and 1964. What was it?
What you are going to find is that the Rev. Dr. had made the black vote a powerful political weapon and LBJ decided to run around and get in front of that parade. The tragedy is that in order to overcome the deplorable record of the Dem party on civil rights – the Dems were the party of slavery, segregation, lynching and the Klan – LBJ bought off a significant segment of the black community with comprehensive welfare that destroyed families that received it and kept a large part of the black community in thrall to the Dems for another 50 years and counting.
more here, I think:
http://ricochet.com/the-pernicious-lie-liberals-civil-rights-and-southern-voting-patterns/
It’s not that long ago. The guy who refused to desegregate Little Rock, requiring the Republican Eisenhower to send in the National Guard was Arkansas Governor Orval Faubus. Faubus was embraced by Bill Clinton, who repeatedly honored him, putting a bust of him up on the capitol and such. Hillary Clinton is likely the be the nominee next cycle. Today’s Democrats still have ties to the worst of the abusers.
To the more direct charge, look at the 20 Democratic Senators who voted against the Civil Rights Act.
Alabama: Joseph Hill. Died a Democrat
Alabama: John Sparkman. Died a Democrat. Adlai Stevenson’s Veep nominee.
Arkansas: James Fulbright. Died a Democrat. Also still a hero to today’s Dems.
Arkansas: John McClellan. Died a Democrat.
Florida: Spessard Holland. Died a Democrat.
Florida: George Smathers. Died a Democrat. Current Democratic Senator Bill Nelson interned for him.
Georgia: Richard Russell. Died a Democrat.
Georgia: Herman Talmadge. Died a Democrat.
Louisiana: Allen Ellender. Died a Democrat.
Louisiana: Russel Long. Died a Democrat.
Mississippi: James Eastland. Died a Democrat.
Mississippi: John Stennis. Died a Democrat. A key opponent of Bork’s nomination.
North Carolina: Samuel Ervin. Died a Democrat. Led the Senate Watergate Committee.
North Carolina: Benjamin Jordan. Died a Democrat.
South Carolina: Olin Johnston. Died a Democrat.
Tennessee: Al Gore. Died a Democrat. His son was the Democrat Presidential nominee in 2000.
Tennessee: Herbert Walters. Died a Democrat.
Virginia: Harry Byrd. Died a Democrat.
Virginia: Absalom Robertson. Died a Democrat.
West Virginia: Robert Byrd. Died a Democrat. Leading opponent to Bush 43.
That doesn’t look to me like a demographic that can be fairly claimed to have switched entirely. When we talk about the New Deal, Medicare, Medicaid, Watergate, Vietnam opposition, opposition to McCarthy, or any of the other stuff that these guys engaged in, no one says that that’s really the Republicans. And they’re right not to. That was the Democratic party.
There is no question that the Southern vote flipped from Democrat to Republican since 1964. I did a quick analysis of electoral votes in the 11 former Confederate states, with the following results:
1932-1960: 84% Democrat, 16% Republican — this is the “Solid South” period for the Democrats
1964-1976: 53% Democrat, 47% Republican — this is the transitional period
1980-2012: 15% Democrat, 85% Republican – this is the “Solid South” period for the Republicans
[Note: I included third-party electoral votes as Democrat votes, as such votes were cast for Democrats running on a third-party ticket against a non-Southern Democrat — e.g. votes for Strom Thurmond in 1948.]
My impression is that there was a similar transition in the House, Senate and state offices, with about a 15-25 year lag. Currently, Republicans hold 86% of the Senate seats and 73% of the House seats in the 11 former Confederate states.
These facts do not tell us why the “Solid South” switched parties, but there’s no question that it happened. The Democrats’ story, of course, is that all of those evil Southern racists joined the Republican party after LBJ’s successful support of the Civil Rights movement. The Republicans’ story is that racism ceased to be a significant political issue after both parties rejected segregation, so Southern whites were naturally attracted to a Republican party that was, at least relatively speaking, more supportive of their traditional values on social issues, and more supportive of free markets and lower taxes.