Henry Wade: Dixiecrat Segregationist

What's interesting is the civil rights issue was still a jump ball in the late 1950s and the biggest pivot point in 20th century American politics. Whichever party outlawed Jim Crow would both earn the loyalty of black voters and hand the other party white Southerners.

The most pro-civil rights politician in the Republican party at that time was VP Richard Nixon. If he'd been elected in 1960 and been the president who signed the Civil Rights Act of 1964, well, American politics would be a lot different today. It may sound surprising that Nixon was a leader on this issue but here's what Time magazine wrote about passage of the (watered down by LBJ) Civil Rights Act of 1957.


Through the fight, long after G.O.P. Senate Leader William Knowland had through in the towel and when even House Republican Leader Joe Martin was considering retreat, Vice President Nixon punched hard for a meaningful bill. The verdict on his efforts was best rendered by his opponents. Just when the Senate was about to pass his watered-down bill, Democrat Johnson arose to attack Nixon for leading "a concerted propaganda campaign" against it. And last week, after the final vote on the civil rights bill had been taken, Georgia's Senator Richard Russell, the most influential Southerner of them all, paid Nixon a bitter sort of tribute. Said Russell: the civil rights bill will be enforced by "political-minded" Attorney General Herbert Brownell who, in turn, will be "constantly pressed by the Vice President of the U.S. to apply the great powers of the law to the Southern states at such places and in such time and manner as the N.A.A.C.P., of which the Vice President is the most distinguished member, may demand.

http://cgi.cnn.com/ALLPOLITICS/1996/analysis/back.time/9609/10/

Yep, having to cater to interest groups is a bitch.

It's occurred to me that my little comment might be taken seriously instead of as I intended. Strange thing is that prior to visiting here yesterday, I had just entered my most recent blog post, which also contained some positive comments about Richard Nixon (though not from me).

http://xefdisposable.blogspot.com/2014/06/what-we-need-now-is-power-sweet-power.html

The person who transcribed this taped sermon by the Rev. Dr. Wesley Swift felt the need to explain how Swift's prediction of the End of the World had missed the mark, as people were still around in the later 1970's.

(Now, Dr. Swift missed this prediction, not because he did not understand the world affair. But because this was spoken in 1967 and in 1969, Richard Nixon was elected President, setting off schedule, Satan’s timetable. And in 1971, Richard Nixon went around the I.M.F. (International Monetary Fund) and saved our balance of payments and our dollar overseas. He also took us off the gold standard. Then he sat entrenched in the White House and turned the bombers loose on Hanoi. And in spite of the Congress, and the anti-war groups, he brought the boys home from the war he inherited. And he also sat and gave the orders to bomb the hell out of Hanoi. And they let the P.O.W.’s come home. So he threw their timetable off schedule. But of course, when President Nixon went to the Arabs (our half-brothers thru Abraham), and then went and stood at the Great Pyramid in Egypt and waved to the Christian people here in America, and said in his heart, look, look, on your post offices and on your 1 dollar bills.----Find out who you are. Then, the powers that control the Congress said, ‘shove him out before the people wake up.’ And he left in disgrace, but asking God to bless. Now I figure from where he was watching, up there, Dr. Swift was saying, ‘Sock em, Richard.’

Now, Richard Nixon didn’t stop them, but he delayed them. Thus bringing us closer to that day of deliverance. For you see, to bring him down, they went back to the same methods used to send the Christ to be crucified. That method, the false witness and the magistrate. Here the juries used against the President’s men and against him at the Grand Jury were many more blacks than Whites.

Well, it didn’t work when they ordered the crucifixion. For HE arose. And it won’t work today for God’s Israel will arise and fight and deliver this Kingdom and bring it into power.)

[the 3 paragraphs above are the tape transcriber's thoughts about Satan's timetable being thrown off schedule by the Advent of Richard Nixon, whose similarity to Jesus was striking, and who evidently sent some kind of secret message about symbols (involving Freemasons probably) at US post offices and on one dollar bills -- which naturally led to Nixon's downfall for coming too close to the truth (at last); the speculation about what Swift's opinion from heaven would be seems to be a garbled memory of Nixon's appearance on "Laugh-In," when he did the show's tag-line, "Sock it to me!" -dwd]

So it seems that Richard Nixon could sorta be "all things to all people," just like St. Paul -- too pro-civil rights for some, and damn near Christ-like for others.

Dan,

The article you quote is truly remarkable... Nixon "Christ-like"!!

The same sort of doggerel could probably make just about everyone seem like a messiah come to save us from... well, whatever devils are bugging us at present.

Damn! I am having some heavy mental cross-over from Carmine's misinformation diatribe against one Alex Jones.

So, would Alex be the Satan? Or the Messiah?

And I really don't intend for any of these comments to be taken any more serious than Dan's.

I think once we start "theorizing" too widely and without facts, we all too quickly leave the title of researcher behind. And there but for the Grace of God goes many of the community.

At times it seems a bit of a stretch to remain sane in these turbulent waters... (but didn't I just say that?)

Wade might have also been a disinfo agent in that he proclaimed the Civil War was fought about race. Others contend it was not.

But then Wade was also opposed to Roe.

[where the heck is my medication when I need it? I think I am rambling again.]
sorry

I admit, I'm a Nixon fan.  He did indeed take the US off the gold standard (which was the for the good), his Treasury Secretary-- our old friend John Connally-- memorably told pissed off Europe finance ministers, "the dollar is our currency and your problem".

Nixon also proposed a universal healthcare system that was broader and more progressive than what Obama achieved 36 years later (it was blocked by Democrats who wanted more, making the best the enemy of the good). He proposed a guaranteed income/workfare program more progressive than anything any president has proposed since then. It was blocked by liberals who wanted more and conservatives who wanted, if anything, less to the  poor (especially if they were black). Finally there is the small matter of Nixon single-handedly preventing a nuclear war between two of our enemies-- Russia and China (what Nixon didn't know, but we now do, was the nuclear winter aftermath might have  killed off the rest of us too).
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/china/7720461/USSR-planned-nuclear-attack-on-China-in-1969.html

Beowulf,

I remember how close we came to the nuclear winter when it happened. I had a relative in the Pentagon, and he said it was scarier than the Cuban missile crisis.

Yeah, there were many glowing things about Nixon that got overlooked in everyone's rush to crucify him. (religious correlation not intended, in Roman history many more were crucified than the one fellow, y'know)

To beowulf,

I'm not concerned about anyone being a Nixon fan, but about revisionist history, especially as reflected in the dismissive quality of "the civil rights issue" being "a jump ball ..... Whichever party outlawed Jim Crow would both earn the loyalty of black voters and hand the other party white Southerners." (my emphases) That was why my original comment was about "interest groups" -- known since the later 1960's as code for non-whites/minorities. Using that code, it's been traditional to bemoan "interest group politics" and "catering to interest groups" to get around no longer being able to get away with overtly bigoted statements, and continuing the disingenuous argument by appeals to "the middle class," "the working man," and our need for patriotic unity and "being color-blind."


And as I'm sure you and Terry are aware, white Southerners were resistant in the extreme to the Republican Party due to the Civil War "issue" while black (ahem) "voters" gravitated to the Democratic Party due to the progressive measures of the New Deal and to a great extent to the pro-civil rights work done by one Eleanor Roosevelt. Although a great, great many things can be said negatively about Lyndon Johnson, no one can seriously maintain that he didn't originate as an admirer of FDR and the New Deal. One CAN argue that his commitment to civil rights was not entirely sincere and was a case of political opportunism (that is, going with the general national consensus on it and particularly the requirements of his own party), or that he had the typical paternalistic attitude toward "our little brown/black brothers" to "allow" them to be part of society. But that would largely be true of Nixon also, who was no John Lindsey or Nelson Rockefeller in ideological perspective (i.e., a goddam liberal), and who used "the Southern strategy" of seeming more responsible than George Wallace while appealing to white people with the aforementioned code words and related arguments about "Law and Order." White Southerners were then able to gradually swallow their vomit and begin to support the Republican Party because they could see that was where their interests were being best represented, all culminating in the Advent of St. Reagan, with old white bigots like Strom Thurmond and Jesse Helms abandoning the Democratic Party to become Republicans.


So let's not bullshit ourselves.




To Terry,


You have my sympathies; that interpolation is actually the only thing I ever found in the material that was any kind of comedy relief, or relief at all for that matter. But you raise a serious question I hadn't considered before, largely because I've probably become numb to the content of Swift's hate speech. That shit really should have some kind of warning label so people will know what they're about to be exposed to. Thanks, I appreciate it.

Dan,
I'm hardly being dismissive of the civil rights issue when I call it "the biggest pivot point in 20th century American politics". As it happens, Nixon supported civil rights from the time he entered Congress in 1946 (his Quaker grandfather was an abolitionist active in the Underground Railroad).  Johnson voted the Jim Crow line in the Senate until he started to have presidential aspirations and even as late as the 1957 he was watering down a CR bill Nixon was trying to strengthen.

Remember what Nixon's AG John Mitchell said to civil rights activists, watch what we do, not what we say.  Nixon's administration desegregated schools and govt programs and started affirmative action hiring programs (he also pursued detente with Russia and China and created the EPA).  He got this done because he rather cleverly, "used the "the Southern strategy" of seeming more responsible than George Wallace while appealing to white people with the aforementioned code words and related arguments about "Law and Order"."  That's how he got Southern whites to swallow their vomit and accept civil rights laws.

His problem was he was too clever, the Democrats in Congress blocked his universal healthcare and guaranteed income safety net plan because they figured any Nixon plan must be regressive and they'd get more with the next Dem president.  Three Dem presidents later, they still haven't (Obamacare doesn't cover as much or as many people).

Sorry counselor, I already rested my case. Take care