Sometimes you just feel old, and sooner or later you figure out that this is because you really are old. Milestones sneak up on you, and it hardly seems possible that it was fifty years ago that Lyndon Johnson signed the 1964 Civil Rights Act in to law. It seems like that was just yesterday – but July 2, 1964, is not July 2, 2014 – and we have a black president in his second term now. The thing must have worked, and that July fifty years ago was the summer before what most Americans reluctantly discover was the best year of the lives, that senior year in high school. The issues were being cool and somehow snagging the keys to the family car for a long drive with the cute but chunky redhead, and grades that would be just good enough keep you out of trouble with the parents, and maybe get you into college somewhere, without cramping your style. Lyndon Johnson could sign whatever he wanted. Other things were more important.
But you had to have a heart of stone to think this wasn’t a big deal – Rosa Parks refusing to ride in the back of the bus and then the bus boycotts, the lunch counter sit-ins, Bull Conner and his attacks dogs and fire hoses, used on kids, George Wallace standing in the doorway at that university, King’s amazing speech at the Lincoln Memorial, surrounded by what seemed like half of America – the good half – and 1964 was Freedom Summer too. Those three guys helping local black folks register to vote, and not much older than you, were grabbed by the local Klan and murdered. That was hard to ignore.
Something had to be done. This was not America. It couldn’t be. And something was done. Lyndon Johnson strong-armed Congress – he was good at that – and got his bill:
An act to enforce the constitutional right to vote, to confer jurisdiction upon the district courts of the United States of America to provide injunctive relief against discrimination in public accommodations, to authorize the Attorney General to institute suits to protect constitutional rights in public facilities and public education, to extend the Commission on Civil Rights, to prevent discrimination in federally assisted programs, to establish a Commission on Equal Employment Opportunity, and for other purposes.
Johnson also knew that this meant that his party, the Democrats, had lost the South “for a generation” – they just threw away those electoral votes – but it was the right thing to do. Sometimes common decency isn’t good politics. So be it, and two days later, on the Fourth of July, George Wallace gave a speech condemning that damned Civil Rights Act, telling his angry crowd that this thing threatened individual liberty, free enterprise and private property rights – “The liberal left-wingers have passed it. Now let them employ some pinknik social engineers in Washington to figure out what to do with it.”
He knew what they could do with it. The sun doesn’t shine there. But Wallace should have seen this coming:
The Civil Rights Act of 1964 was not the first attempt by Congress to pass sweeping legislation aimed at ending discrimination. According to Congresslink.org, legislation failed in the House and Senate every year from 1945 until 1957, when Congress passed, and President Dwight Eisenhower signed, a law allowing federal prosecutors to seek court injunctions to stop voting rights interference. That law, the Civil Rights Act of 1957, also created the Justice Department’s civil rights section, and the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights. Sen. Strom Thurmond of South Carolina, then a Democrat, filibustered the bill for 24 hours and 18 minutes, the longest one-man filibuster on record.
That law was followed by the Civil Rights Act of 1960, which introduced penalties for obstructing or attempting to obstruct someone’s attempt to register to vote or actually vote, and for obstructing federal court orders in school discrimination cases.
The writing was on the wall, and there was this:
President John F. Kennedy first suggested the Civil Rights Act of 1964 in a televised speech from the Oval Office. He said he would ask Congress “to make a commitment it has not fully made in this century to the proposition that race has no place in American life or law.” Kennedy was assassinated before the bill could become law.
Johnson, in addressing a joint session of Congress on Nov. 27, 1963, said “no memorial oration or eulogy could more eloquently honor President Kennedy’s memory” than passing the civil rights bill.
Maybe that wasn’t playing fair – one could oppose the legislation and still think assassinating presidents is a bad idea – but Johnson didn’t play fair and the rest is history:
Congress followed up with the Voting Rights Act of 1965, which banned the use of literacy tests, added federal oversight for minority voters and allowed federal prosecutors to investigate the use of poll taxes in state and local elections. The law was prompted in part by the “Bloody Sunday” attack by police on marchers crossing a Selma, Alabama, bridge that year.
The segregationists – who would tell you that they were merely the last people left in America who actually seemed to care about individual liberty and free enterprise and private property rights – had overplayed their hand. They lost twice, in the biggest possible way. The matter was settled.
Nothing is ever settled, and Politico fast-forwards to the situation we have now:
It was a painful tableau: The bipartisan leaders of Congress linking hands in the Capitol Rotunda and swaying to the strains of “We Shall Overcome” as they commemorated the 50th anniversary of the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi sang along with the crowd, but Mitch McConnell and John Boehner’s lips were frozen in silent, self-conscious smiles.
There’s no way this thing could pass now:
The climate in today’s Washington is so different from the one that produced what many scholars view as the most important law of the 20th century that celebrating the law’s legacy is awkward for Republicans and Democrats alike – neither party bears much resemblance to its past counterpart, and the bipartisanship that carried the day then is now all but dead.
Congress is deadlocked on every big question, from immigration reform to a grand bargain on taxes and spending, so it’s hard to believe the two parties once cooperated to address the single most controversial domestic issue of the day – legal equality for the races – or that Lyndon B. Johnson signed the bill 50 years ago Wednesday, in the middle of a presidential election year. Now Boehner is suing President Barack Obama for failing to faithfully execute the laws, and Reid inveighs daily about the Koch brothers’ contributions to GOP causes.
Legislation is a secondary matter now, but the same folks are still making the same arguments:
Although the Civil Rights Act passed the Senate by 73-27, with 27 out of 33 Republican votes, one of the six Republicans who voted against it was Barry Goldwater of Arizona, who weeks later became the GOP’s presidential standard-bearer and started the long process by which the Party of Lincoln became the party of white backlash, especially in the South. Today, Republicans hold complete legislative control in all 11 states of the Old Confederacy for only the second time since Reconstruction.
Current GOP Chairman Reince Priebus has hired dozens of black and Latino field organizers, and he himself has made the rounds to historically black colleges and universities in an effort to launch College Republican chapters there. “Having bipartisanship on campus and giving our students options is really important,” he told a gathering at Central State University near Dayton, Ohio, in May.
But the position of the GOP’s congressional wing on issues from immigration, to voting rights, to the minimum wage (while helping to rack up Republican victories in individual districts) is broadly alienating to most African-American voters. So are efforts at the state level to impose new voter identification laws or other limits on access to the ballot box that disproportionately affect black voters.
Nothing was settled in 1964:
At a forum at the Library of Congress the same day as the Rotunda ceremony – co-sponsored by Rep. Eddie Bernice Johnson (D-Texas) to commemorate LBJ’s role in passing the bill – few if any Republicans were in attendance, and Rep. Corrine Brown (D-Fla.) made a fiery speech, noting that “the Red South” could yet be vanquished if hundreds of thousands of unregistered black voters signed up and cast ballots for Democrats…
It fell to Johnson’s daughter, Lynda Johnson Robb, to remind the audience that one top Republican, House Minority Leader Charles Halleck (R-Ind.) actually lost his leadership for daring to work too closely with her father in the support of civil rights and other measures, to the ire of his conservative caucus.
Indeed, to a degree astounding to modern partisan sensibilities, Republican congressional leaders effectively neutralized civil rights as a political issue in 1964, by cooperating with northern Democrats to pass the bill, instead of torturing the opposing party by letting it fall victim to its internal divisions on civil rights. And Halleck was not the only Republican to pay a price.
Four years later, on the night of Robert Kennedy’s assassination in 1968, Kuchel, the Senate’s Republican whip, who had tirelessly supported civil rights, lost the California Republican primary to Max Rafferty, the conservative state superintendent of education. Rafferty charged that Kuchel was a creature of Washington, too consumed with national issues, not loyal enough to Republican orthodoxy and out of touch with the folks back home. Eric Cantor’s recent defeat is a reminder that some things haven’t changed in fifty years.
It’s odd how that can make you feel young again. It’s still 1964 out there – the law changed, but angry people don’t change. The nation hasn’t changed and people are still angry:
Protesters shouting anti-immigration slogans blocked the arrival of three buses carrying undocumented Central American families to a U.S. Border Patrol station on Tuesday after they were flown to San Diego from Texas.
The migrants, a group of around 140 adults and children, were sent to California to be assigned case numbers and undergo background checks before most were likely to be released under limited supervision to await deportation proceedings, U.S. immigration officials said.
But plans to bring the immigrants to a Border Patrol outpost in Murrieta, 60 miles (100 km) north of San Diego, sparked an outcry from town mayor Alan Long, who said the migrants posed a public safety threat to his community.
The group is part of a growing wave of families and unaccompanied minors fleeing Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras and streaming by the thousands into the United States by way of human trafficking networks through Mexico.
Most have shown up in Texas, overwhelming detention and processing facilities there.
That’s why they’re out here. Most of them are just kids, alone, but they’re here illegally, but when the younger Bush was president he signed a law that says that kids – unaccompanied minors – have to be fed, clothed, and housed, and reunited with relatives here, if possible, and not just shown the door, but then they’re not Americans, damn it and they shouldn’t be here. Who cares if they’re just kids?
Fifty years later the minority changed. Nothing else changed:
As the buses neared their destination, some 150 protesters waving American flags and shouting “Go home – we don’t want you here,” filled a street leading to the access road for the Border Patrol station, blocking the buses from reaching the facility.
The demonstrators disregarded orders from police to disperse, but officers did not attempt to intervene physically to break up the demonstration.
After about 25 minutes, the buses backed up, turned around and left. A board member of the union representing border patrol agents, Chris Harris, said the buses would likely be rerouted to one of six other Border Patrol stations in the San Diego sector.
It wasn’t George Wallace at the classroom door, but it was the same sort of thing – just like old times, where political principle meets common decency:
After anti-illegal immigration protesters in Murrieta successfully forced buses full of migrants to divert to San Diego for processing, groups of immigration advocates have quietly galvanized.
Among the supporters of the migrants is Tina Nicholas, who oversees Mercy ministries at Centerpoint Church in Murrieta.
“Even though you’re seeing on TV and the public so much outburst of anti-immigrant feelings,” she said, “I think there are a lot of people that want to respond and have compassionate hearts.”
Nicholas, who has lived in Murrieta for 25 years, has been working with local churches to coordinate relief for the migrants since she learned last week that they would be arriving in town.
Locals have been collecting bags of groceries, personal hygiene products and diapers in anticipation of the arrivals, she said.
As she watched the protests on the news Tuesday, she said, “My husband and I were just so saddened. We just did not believe people would not be more compassionate. We have so much here … we can’t turn away from this.”
Back in 1964 you had to have a heart of stone to think common decency didn’t matter, in that racial matter, but some things never change:
Burke Hinman, also of Murrieta, waited for about two hours to see if protests would materialize before leaving for work. He also took part in the protest Tuesday after hearing about it on the news and from neighbors.
“Why is the executive branch not cracking down and enforcing the laws that are on the books?” he asked.
He said he fears that immigrants arriving at the border are involved in gangs, bring drugs or are potential terrorists.
Most of them are just little kids of course, but you never know. Bull Conner let loose with those high-velocity fire hoses on nine-year-old little girls – one cannot be too careful.
It all depends on how you look at it. See Racist Murrieta Residents Terrorize Bus Full Of Immigrant Kids – or conversely, see Californians Prevent the Federal Government from Dumping Illegal Immigrants in their Community (a state’s rights victory) or Outraged Murrieta Patriots Protest Illegal Alien Onslaught, Block Amnesty Buses! That means Americans win. Everyone else should get the hell out, and there’s Fox News’ medical expert:
Since illegal immigrants who enter the U.S. are not prescreened in any way, many carry disease. The Rio Grande Valley Sector of the Border Patrol has detained 150,000 illegal immigrants so far in just this year alone. Eighty thousand children are expected to cross the southern border illegally in 2014. The Border Patrol and the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) have set up temporary holding centers in southern Texas and Arizona, where conditions are cramped and unsanitary. Ten to 25% of the immigrants in that area are suffering from scabies, a highly contagious intensely itchy rash caused by insect mites.
It is clear that a public health crisis on a grand scale is occurring, and that the Centers for Disease Control needs to be directly involved. When these immigrants leave the camps and get on buses and trains, they spread disease to other states.
We’re all going to die! And then there’s Bill O’Reilly:
As the chaos on the southern border mounts and thousands of children pour into the USA President Obama finds himself in a very bad place. In five and a half years he has not been able to secure immigration reform and now as things are falling apart, Americans are growing angry. Pictures of innocent children suffering will do that.
So the President has decided to take matters into his own hands. Because the Republican Party senses political danger, it will not even consider immigration reform this election year so the President says he’ll do it by himself.
The man has to be stopped before he fixes this on his own, which is tyranny, or something – and send all these people home – and boycott Mexico too. Don’t buy a Cadillac Escalade or SRX, or a Chevrolet Avalanche or Silverado, or a Ford Fiesta or Fusion, or a GMC Sierra, or a Lincoln MKZ or a Dodge Ram truck of any kind – all assembled there of course. Bill doesn’t think these things through, but everyone is angry, right?
Well, there’s not much to do about this, as the Economist explains here:
El Salvador, Honduras and Guatemala have had shockingly high murder rates for years, however. The reason so many of them have decided to leave at once is a widespread rumor that Mr Obama’s administration has relaxed the barriers against children – and their mothers if the children are young enough – entering the United States.
A leaked border-agency memo based on interviews with 230 women and children apprehended in the Rio Grande Valley concluded that they had crossed the border mainly because they expected to be allowed to stay. Migrants talk of a “permiso” (permit) to stay in the United States, although this may be a misunderstanding of the American immigration procedure in which many children are put in the care of family members while waiting for deportation hearings. Some Hondurans conspiratorially say they think America is preparing for war; that’s why they are letting more youngsters in. Others blame Facebook: it is easy for relatives in the United States to show the trappings of prosperity.
Yeah, but it’s Obama’s fault, but Julianne Hing thinks that’s nonsense:
Republican lawmakers are having a field day casting Obama administration policy, namely DACA – a program initiated in 2012 which gave a narrow class of undocumented youth short-term work authorization and protection from deportation – as responsible for the sudden uptick of new migrants. In early June, Alabama Sen. Jeff Sessions even called Obama “personally responsible” for the influx… It’s become popular political fodder for politicians with midterm elections on the mind.
However, humanitarian groups like the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops and the Women’s Refugee Commission have noted the jump in unaccompanied minor border crossings since late 2011, long before Obama announced DACA in June of 2012. What’s more, in interviews with hundreds of detained youth, multiple agencies and researchers have found that the vast majority have no idea about the existence of DACA, let alone the notion that they might take advantage of it for themselves.
At Vox, however, Dara Lind thinks Obama has it all backwards anyway:
The Obama administration now believes that the government’s top priority should be swiftly returning a child to his or her home country if it’s not immediately clear that he or she deserves legal status here. That means the administration sees this as an immigration crisis – children coming to the United States because they can, for economic opportunity, family reunification, or to game the system. If that’s the case, a crackdown will deter families from sending their children, because the odds would no longer be in their favor.
It means they don’t see it as a refugee crisis – children will now be assumed not to be in danger unless they can prove otherwise. But if families are currently sending children because they’re genuinely convinced the children are in mortal danger, a crackdown won’t have as much of a deterrent effect.
Obama can’t win for losing here, and this isn’t 1964, when folks on both sides, except for a few hold-outs, decided to do the right thing. That was then, and this is now:
The two-year attempt to push immigration reform through Congress is effectively dead and unlikely to be revived until after President Obama leaves office, numerous lawmakers and advocates on both sides of the issue said this week.
The slow collapse of new border legislation – which has unraveled in recent months amid persistent opposition from House Republicans – marks the end of an effort that Democrats and Republicans have characterized as central to the future of their parties. The failure also leaves about 12 million illegal immigrants in continued limbo over their status and is certain to increase political pressure on Obama from the left to act on his own.
Some of the most vocal proponents of a legislative overhaul say they have surrendered any last hope that the parties can reach a deal.
John Boehner has told Obama that his Republican House will NOT take up the bipartisan Senate comprehensive immigration reform bill from last year, even if it would pass in a heartbeat, and they have no plans to propose one damned thing on their own – they obviously want Obama to twist in the wind on this one – and they don’t give a damn about the Hispanic vote, or the vote of anyone who simpers around taking about common decency. They have their base and the midterms are coming. And they know Obama is no LBJ who can twist arms or turn on the charm or hand out pork.
It’s funny, in an odd way. It’s like 1964 all over again – common decency versus political principle, or political expediency – but this time no one can convince the reluctant that common decency might be good politics. No one believes that any longer, and that can really make you feel old.