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Rosa Parks


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I challenged John to support his statement that the Republican Party "called the civil rights workers communists".

This is how he replied in part:

This was a common position of the far right in America, both in the North and South. It was of course the view of Barry Goldwater and the right-wing of the Republican Party. See for example Rick Perlstein’s Before the Storm: Barry Goldwater and the Unmaking of the American Consensus, (page 447). I know you have a copy of this book because you advised me to buy it.

After the hurricane it took me a while to find Perlstein's book. But I did and looked up John's reference. The only thing I could find on page 447 was the following:

Evans and Novak wrote after a reporting trip to San Francisco in March: "Here as elsewhere the Negro is in danger of losing control over the civil rights movement to thugs and Communists."

There is no reference on that page to any such statements made by Barry Goldwater or any other Republican, far-right or not. John has cited a reference that does not support his statement. Very interesting indeed.

John also wrote in response:

William Buckley’s belief that the civil rights movement was part of a communist conspiracy to undermine the American way of life was a common theme in the National Review. For examples of this see John B. Judis’ book, William F. Buckley: Patron Saint of the Conservatives, 1988 (pages, 56, 132, 139, 191, 209, 242, 268-69, and 308).

I do not have access to Judis' book. Considering the fact that Perlstein's book does not say what John attributed to it, I think John should include the actual statements in that book. I was a regular reader of National Review and although it was many moons ago I never remember words to the effect that John attributes to National Review.

So John I renew my challenge if indeed you are as accurate a historian as you claim to be, where is the support for the statement you made?

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Here is exactly what John wrote:

Those whites were left-wingers who were denounced by the Republican Party as “communists” who were trying to undermine respect for "law and order". I find the hypocrisy of Bush and company sickening. That goes for Tim Gratz as well.

He of course has so far failed to support his statement. Moreover, even if (which I doubt) a Republican politician made such a statement, that is not the same as the Republican Party as a party making such a statement. This is at a minimum very sloppy writing. Moreover, John has yet to provide any proof that any Republican politician made such a statement.

And how dare John call me a hypocrite! As I have said before, I was sickened by how the Southern Democrat Sheriffs treated the civil rights protestors. And why is Bush, in John's view, a hypocrite? Onviously, George cannot take credit for actions of his relatives but I'll bet you a dozen doughnuts that Prescott Bush always voted correctly on civil rights legislation while he was in Congress.

I proudly belong to the Party that elected the first black senator and will elect the first black president!

John says he is not a Democrat but why is his outrage directed at the Republican Party when it was the Democrats who were the racists? And of course that is the same party that still accepts a former leader of the Ku Klux Klan as a Senator! Talk about hypocricy!!! Where is John's outrage at the Party that for so long accepted the support of Southern racists and used that support to elect its presidents?

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I challenged John to support his statement that the Republican Party "called the civil rights workers communists".

This is how he replied in part:

This was a common position of the far right in America, both in the North and South. It was of course the view of Barry Goldwater and the right-wing of the Republican Party. See for example Rick Perlstein’s Before the Storm: Barry Goldwater and the Unmaking of the American Consensus, (page 447). I know you have a copy of this book because you advised me to buy it.

After the hurricane it took me a while to find Perlstein's book. But I did and looked up John's reference. The only thing I could find on page 447 was the following:

Evans and Novak wrote after a reporting trip to San Francisco in March: "Here as elsewhere the Negro is in danger of losing control over the civil rights movement to thugs and Communists."

I see you have not explained to the members what appears in the first two paragraphs of Rick Perlstein’s book. On line 11 Perlstein talks about members of organizations such as Young Americans for Freedom wearing badges “I AM A RIGHT-WING EXTREMIST” who compared their activities to Rosa Parks. Perlstein goes on to look at what he calls “an inappropriate overabundance of political commitment”.

As Perlstein points out, the journalists, Rowland Evans and Robert Novak, did claim that the civil rights movement was under the control of “communists”. Both these men are long-term apologists for the Republican Party. It is no coincidence that Libby and Rove leaked the Joseph Wilson story to Novak (see thread on the New Watergate).

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John, nothing you said in this post or in the first two paragraphs of the Perlstein book supports your statement that the Republican Party said that the civil rights movement was a communist conspiracy, John.

Do you have the intellectual integrity to withdraw the statement you made since you cannot support it?(You cannot support it because there is no truth to it.)

You wrote:

As Perlstein points out, the journalists, Rowland Evans and Robert Novak, did claim that the civil rights movement was under the control of “communists”.

John, can you read?

Here is exactly what Perlstein says Evans and Novak wrote:

Evans and Novak wrote after a reporting trip to San Francisco in March: "Here as elsewhere the Negro is in danger of losing control over the civil rights movement to thugs and Communists."

Now it is far different to say that a movement is in danger of losing control to the Communists than that it is (now) under the control of the communists.

So you are STILL not getting it right!

Evans and Novak were wrong (as Perlstein points out). But they were not "the Republican Party" and even they did not make the statement that the civil rights movement was a Communist conspiracy. What they said, rightly or wrongly, was that "thugs and Communists" were trying to take it over.

Edited by Tim Gratz
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There is no reference on that page to any such statements made by Barry Goldwater or any other Republican, far-right or not. John has cited a reference that does not support his statement. Very interesting indeed.

John also wrote in response:

William Buckley’s belief that the civil rights movement was part of a communist conspiracy to undermine the American way of life was a common theme in the National Review. For examples of this see John B. Judis’ book, William F. Buckley: Patron Saint of the Conservatives, 1988 (pages, 56, 132, 139, 191, 209, 242, 268-69, and 308).

I do not have access to Judis' book. Considering the fact that Perlstein's book does not say what John attributed to it, I think John should include the actual statements in that book. I was a regular reader of National Review and although it was many moons ago I never remember words to the effect that John attributes to National Review.

On page 133 Judis writing about the National Review’s constant attack on Eisenhower claims that Buckley and the other editors constantly “condemned the administration’s concessions to communism and the welfare state, and they defended the South’s resistance to racial integration.”

On page 139 Judis explains why Buckley argued against blacks having the vote. He writes: “Buckley would claim that he was asserting the de facto rather than genetic inferiority of blacks. But the inescapable point was that he was willing to cite an individual’s membership in a “race” – regardless of that person’s educational background or intelligence – to disqualify him from voting.”

Judis then goes on to look at why Buckley was so against blacks having the vote. Buckley explained in the National Review many times that if blacks got the vote they would support politicians who wanted to increase welfare spending. As quoted earlier, Buckley equated the welfare state with communism.

Buckley believed that Martin Luther King and other civil rights leaders were communists (based on information he received from J. Edgar Hoover). As he wrote in National Review on 19th August, 1967, as far as he was concerned, King was comparable to Hitler and Lenin. Therefore, King needed to be repressed: “the non-violent avenger Dr. King, that in the unlikely event that he succeeds in mobilizing his legions, they will be most efficiently, indeed most zestfully, repressed.”

Buckley, again relying on information given to him by Hoover, also believed the communists controlled the anti-war movement. Like many right-wingers, Buckley watched in horror as in the 1960s as the anti-war, civil rights, trade unions and anti-poverty groups began to merge (pages 308-309). It is of course no coincidence that Martin Luther King was assassinated at a time when he was widening his attacks to the Vietnam War and to the way that the poor were being treated in America. This grand coalition was indeed posing a serious threat to the power structure of the United States.

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John, I appreciate your time and effort in writing this, since I do not have access to the Judis book. I'll look closely at it and then comment tomorrow. But a few initial thoughts:

Hoover may very well have thought King a Communist. Perhaps (emphasize perhaps) Buckley did as well, as Judis claims.

If possible, I would like to see more of the quotation from the August 19, 1967 National Review where Judis claims Buckley compared King to Hitler and Lenin.

But a careful reading of your post does not support a statement that Buckley wrote that the civil rights movement was controlled by Communists. What it says is that Buckley believed King was a Communist and he wrote a column comparing him to Hitler and Stalin.

From your post, it appears that Judis does not claim that Buckley ever publicly stated or wrote that King was a communist (or that the civil rights movement was controlled by communists).

Therefore, the Judis book does not appear to support your assertion that "the Republican Party called the civil rights workers communists". We do not even have a clear reference that even Buckley ever wrote that.

What we seem to have is only this: J. Edgar Hoover and a prominent Republican thought King was a Communist. That is a far, far cry from your statement that "the Republican Party said civil rights workers were communists". You can hardly translate the thoughts of Hoover and Buckley into a statement by the Republican Party. That's quite a leap!

Next question: if Buckley never wrote that King was a Communist, how does Judis know what Buckley thought? If Buckley wrote a piece comparing King to Hitler and Stalin, maybe Buckley thought he was a Nazi. It's a non sequitur, John.

Edited by Tim Gratz
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The Democratic Party did contain a lot of racists in the Deep South. They also included a lot of people committed to civil rights. Members of the Democratic Party in the North of course favoured civil rights in the Deep South. When in 1964 the Democratic Party united to pass civil rights legislation, the Republican Party man an attempt to win the racist vote in the Deep South by putting up Barry Goldwater as its candidate. Goldwater had a long record of defending Jim Crow laws. Partly as a result of the great sadness people felt about the death of JFK, who had shown in the last two years of his presidency, the American party rejected the racism of Goldwater. However, since then, white racists in the Deep South have given their vote to the Republican Party.

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The civil rights legislation of 1964 was passed with strong support from the Republican Party and its Senate leader Everett Dirksen, a fact you conveniently fail to mention.

And Goldwater was no racist. He integrated his department store and did other things to advance race relations. He did not believe that the federal government should dictate to states. I think he was wrong to emphasize state's rights and proprty owner's rights over civil rights. I am not sure if he later came to accept that he was wrong in opposing the Civil Rights Act of 1964. But he was no racist.

What support have you for your statement that "white racists have given their vote to the Republican Party"? What a broad over-generalization! Do you mean every Southern racist. most southern racists, or what?

And let me remind you once more the party to which Harry Ku Klux Klan Byrd belongs. Do you suppose there are racists who support their former klan-mate (and thus Democrats)?

Edited by Tim Gratz
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Maybe you could point out where on the Forum I have accused members of the Republican Party of being murderers. Then we can take a look at the evidence for these claims.
John, your post above seems better than the last. It deserves a comment and I had started a long one and touched the wrong button and the whole thing disappeared. This has happened to me before. Microsoft Word has a "reverse" key that can reverse such mistakes. Are you aware of any way to reverse an inadvertent reversal here? Any help you or any other member has would be appreciated.

For now, cheers!

The same thing happened when you were going to provide evidence about Fidel Castro and the bombing of New York. We are still waiting. The evidence obviously does not exist. Nor will you find evidence on this Forum of me accusing Republican leaders of murdering JFK.

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John wrote:

Nor will you find evidence on this Forum of me accusing Republican leaders of murdering JFK.

But, when I repeatedly asked John to state that there was no evidence to support Shanet's claim that C Douglas Dillon orchestrated the assassination, he declined to do so. Granted, this is not precisely the same as John accusing Dillon but his failure to renounce Shanet's groundless claim certainly comes close to vouching for it.

and John also said this about William F. Buckley, Jr.:

I have never heard the name William Frank Buckley [he is refering to Junior--Tim] mentioned in relation to the JFK assassination. However, there is evidence to suggest that he was willing to go to extreme measures to get Barry Goldwater elected in 1964. Is it possible that after the Cuban Missile Crisis and the failure of Operation Tilt, Buckley thought that more extreme measures were needed.

. . .

Is it possible that by November 1963 Buckley knew that Goldwater would not be able to defeat JFK in 1964? After his experiences with the covert actions of YAF, might he have been tempted to use more extreme methods to stop JFK being reelected?

That comes to at least a hair's width of accusing Buckley of being a conspirator!

Edited by Tim Gratz
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Should any black person vote for a Democrat presidential candidate until the Democrats have forced Sen. KKK Byrd to apologize for his racism and his membership in the Ku Klux Klan? The Republican Party, of course, rightly stripped Trent Lott of his leadership merely because he made an inappropriate remark about slavery. Yet a Democrat Senator belonged to an organization that regularly murdered and terrorized blacks!

Talk about Democrat hypocrisy!!

Edited by Tim Gratz
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There is, of course, no such thing as a black Republican.

Well, the highest elected official on a state level who is a black is a Republican. (Lt. Governor of Maryland.) Read his resume. It'll knock your socks office. John and others from the UK, note he was in the London office of a major US Wall Street law firm.

http://www.mdarchives.state.md.us/msa/mdma...l/msa13921.html

And of course another rising star is Ohio Secretary of State Kenneth Blackwell who is the leading GOP candidate for governor, and whose resume is equally impressive.

http://www.kenblackwell.com/Biography.aspx

It is my prognostication that in 2006 there will be a black GOP governor and in 2008 a black GOP president or vice-president.

Edited by Tim Gratz
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Did you know that a black Republican wrote the theme song for the NAACP? And that the NAACP was founded by White Republicans on the 100th birthday of Abraham Lincoln?

A BLACK REPUBLICAN WROTE THE NAACP'S NATIONAL ANTHEM

James Weldon Johnson

(1871 - 1938)

Every time the NAACP sings its national anthem, Lift Every Voice and Sing, it honors a black Republican, James Weldon Johnson. This inspirational song, which was also adopted in the 1940's by millions of black Americans as the Negro National Anthem, was written in 1900 by Johnson in collaboration with his talented musician brother, John Rosamond Johnson, to commemorate President Abraham Lincoln's birthday.

The NAACP itself was founded on President Lincoln’s 100th birthday, February 12, 1909, by white Republicans who opposed the racist practices of the Democratic Party and the lynching of blacks by Democrats.

Johnson, who was born and educated in Jacksonville, Florida, served as field secretary for the NAACP in 1916 when he was offered the position by Joel E. Springham after attending the Armenia Conference on racial issues. In 1920, Johnson became the general secretary of the NAACP, the first black man to hold that office. He resigned from his position with the NAACP in 1930 after serving the organization for nearly 15 years.

After Johnson moved to New York in 1902 and became active in the Colored Republican Club of New York, he was appointed to the post of United States Consul in Puerto Cabello, Venezuela, by Republican President Theodore Roosevelt. Johnson transferred to a similar post in Corinto, Nicaragua in 1909. His role in helping the United States Marines defeat the rebels when a revolution broke out in Nicaragua in 1912 earned Johnson wide acclaim.

In 1914, after Democrat President Woodrow Wilson from Virginia was elected, Johnson resigned from the U.S. Consular Service because he believed that there would be little opportunities for black Americans in Wilson's administration. President Wilson subsequently dismissed all black American federal officials. During Wilson's presidency, the Democrat-controlled Congress introduced the greatest number of bills proposing racial segregation and discrimination than had ever been introduced before.

The Daily American, the first black American-owned newspaper, was founded by Johnson in 1895. In the newspaper, which lasted for less than a year, Johnson addressed racial injustice, and, in keeping with his Republican values, asserted a self-help philosophy that was shared by Booker T. Washington. He also argued for the merits of racial integration and cooperation in both his newspaper and later literary works. While serving as the principal of Stanton Elementary School in Jacksonville, Johnson studied law under a white lawyer named Thomas A. Ledwith, and, in 1898, became the first black American to pass the Florida bar examination.

Johnson was a songwriter, poet, civil rights leader, and novelist. He was most likely better known for his literary works in the 1920's during the golden era of black culture and writing, known as the Harlem Renaissance, than he was for his leadership of the NAACP. He was a mentor for young writers during that time, including Langston Hughes.

Among Johnson’s works is The Autobiography of an Ex-Coloured Man, a novel about a black man who passed for white, published anonymously in 1912 and reissued in 1927 under his own name. He wrote his autobiography Along the Way in 1933, but his most celebrated work is The Book of American Negro Poetry published in 1922 that helped define what became known as the Harlem Renaissance. He and his musically talented brother, John, became a successful songwriting team on Broadway with Bob Cole, writing such hit songs as Nobody’s Lookin’ but de Owl and de Moon in 1901, Under the Bamboo Tree in 1902 and Congo Love Song in 1903.

Although he died tragically in an automobile accident in 1938 while on vacation in Maine, he is remembered for his dedication to serving his fellow human beings and his unfailing integrity.

Information about Johnson's life can be found in his papers in Yale university's Beinecke Library. The Library of Congress also has manuscripts about Johnson, including the NAACP Collection and the Booker T. Washington Papers. A comprehensive biography is James Weldon Johnson: Black Leader, Black Voice by Eugene Levy published in 1973. An essay about Johnson written by Robert E. Fleming at the University of New Mexico and published in the Literary Encyclopedia on January 8, 2001 can be found on the Internet at www.LitEncyc.com .

Edited by Tim Gratz
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Earlier, John wrote (to me):

I see that right-wing politicians like George Bush are trying desperately to identify themselves with Rosa Parks. However, I would ask, where were you in the 1950s when she and millions of other black Americans were being treated as second-class citizens?

Answer:

Kindergarden. So was President Bush. (We are close to the same age.) His uncle, however, was in the Senate fighting for the civil rights bill against racist Southern Democrats.

The Democrat Party, by the way, has never apologized for the actions of its officials in defeating civil rights bills through the undemocratic filibuster, etc.

Edited by Tim Gratz
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