I’ve been lurking here and following your great work debunking David Barton. It’s no surprise that his purported history of civil rights skips over anything that might disprove his thesis. I’ve ordered a (used) copy of Setting the Record Straight and of his Original Intent. I’ll be interested in your further thoughts. I’m also looking into his many claims about various legal cases and legal issues, which are just as error-ridden as his claims about Jefferson and the other Founders.

One other thing that I think he overlooks on the civil rights history is the decade between the Brown decision in 1954, and the Civil Rights Act of 1964, years of endless litigation, riots, southern intransigence, and federal disinterest. I didn’t start elementary school until the fall of 1965, but in my segregated South Florida small town, schools weren’t integrated until my 7th grade year in the fall of 1971. I had never before met a black person to speak to.

Your post made me dig up my copy of an excellent book I read in college (late 70’s), “Fifty-Eight Lonely Men,” by JW Peltason, prof. of Political Science at Univ. of Illinois and later president of Univ. of California, written in 1961. My copy is of the 1970 version that includes an epilogue and a detailed bibliographic essay for further research. The 58 men were the southern federal judges, 48 at the trial court level and 10 appellate judges, including Democrats and Republicans, before whom the NAACP litigated the desegregation cases after Brown. Although written by a political scientist, it mostly avoids partisan politics and refers instead to the groups as “segregationists,” “integrationists,” “southern moderates,” etc. It is organized around the efforts in various southern states to fight for, or against, desegration, including role (if any) of the federal government. By the end of 1960, when the main part of the book concludes, little progress had been made and while the book is mostly about the federal judges, it also asserts that “southern moderates” believed Pres. Eisenhower had let them down. It’s a gripping account, written in the midst of frustrating times. Even after all these years, I would still highly recommend it.

By the end of 1960 “[i]n the rural South, no school integration is in sight. Here the [African-Americans]** is still economically depressed; he has no vote, and the white community is opposed to even symbolic integration. Federal judges handling suits concerning rural communities are likely to find reasons why no integration injunction should be issued. Even if they order desegregation, orders are not likely to bring it about.” (p.250)

Although Pres. Eisenhower’s nationalization of the guard troops in Little Rock in 1957 was dramatic, and let the black students attend Central High in the 1957-58 school year, the US Attorney General resigned shortly thereafter and Eisenhower replaced him with someone who refused to prosecute the whites who had organized and led the riots. This was true in many instances other instances around the country. pp. 51-53) Some local school boards that were trying to comply with Brown had to beg the US DOJ to intervene to stop the violence and rioting. One letter in 1956 out of Tennessee, where there had been mob riots and the national guard brought in, which would be funny if it weren’t so heartbreakingly sad, questioned the DOJ: “For the authorities of the federal government … [to] take the position that the carrying out of such an order [from the federal judge] is a ‘local problem’ would seem to be the height of absurdity…. The local F.B.I. agents and U.S. District Attorney’s officers spend considerable time in this country tracking down moonshiners … but for some unexplained reason are oblivious to the internationally known Clinton [Tenn.] integration problem.” (p. 51-52)

The year after Eisenhower sent the federal toops to Little Rock, the school board petitioned the federal court that they be permitted to delay desegregation for another two and a half years. Eisenhower had long refused to state his position on the Brown decision and when in 1958 the new Little Rock case was before the Supreme Court (on an emergency basis!), a rumor circulated in Washington that Eisenhower believed the Court should never have ruled against segregated schools. When asked at a press conference whether the rumor was true, Eisenhower again refused to state his position about Brown but then said “I might have said something about ‘slower,” but I do believe that we should — because I do say, as I did yesterday or last week, we have got to have reason and sense and education, and a lot of other developments that go hand in hand as this process — if this process is going to have any real acceptance in the United States.” (p. 48, quoting transcript of press conference). This non-support was haled by Gov. Faubus and other segregationists as “vindication of their contentions.” (p.48)

Martin Luther King also implored Pres. Eisenhower to speak out on several occasions. King also met with VP Nixon in 1957 and implored him as well to come south and speak out in favor of civil rights. Nixon refused. The growing frustration was palpable.

mlk-kpp01.stanford.edu/primarydocuments/Vol3/15-Mar-1956_ToEisenhower.pdf

mlk-kpp01.stanford.edu/primarydocuments/Vol4/14-Feb-1957_ToEisenhower.pdf

mlk-kpp01.stanford.edu/primarydocuments/Vol4/13-June-1957_StatementonMeetingwithRMN.pdf

mlk-kpp01.stanford.edu/primarydocuments/Vol5/9Mar1960_ToDwightD.Eisenhower.pdf

Barton claims that it was “the Democrats” that “gutted” the 1957 Civil Rights Act, but as this book makes clear, Pres. Eisenhower, when asked at a press conference about whether he supported removing the key provision (later included in the 1964 Act) to allow the DOJ to initiate lawsuits against recalcitrant states and school boards, said “Well … I was reading a part of this bill this morning and … there were … certain phrases I didn’t completely understand …. I would want to talk to the Attorney General and see exactly what they do mean.” (58 Lonely Men at p. 54, quoting Congressional Quarterly Almanac, 1957, p.. 562) . “The president’s revelation of ignorance about a bill he had recommended to Congress did not, to say the least, strengthen the hands of the Senators working for Title III. Following Eisenhower’s apparent withdrawal of support, the Senate deleted it.” (p. 54). The book makes clear that it was southern Democrats, combined with conservative Republicans, who were thwarting civil rights legislation. (p. 212)

So I agree with you about the breaking point with Goldwater’s vote against the 1964 Act, but I think it’s important to also note the years of frustration that lead up to MLK’s decision to speak out against Goldwater. At some point, the heartbreaking frustrations of the black plaintiffs as year after year their efforts to actually enjoy the rights the Supreme Court had acknowledged they had as citizens, translated into a shift in black support from the Republican party to the Democratic party.

One of the things that is so disturbing about Barton, which this book highlighted to me again, is that he supports so many of the same legal themes that the southern segregationists did. In particular, in his American Heritage Series, and in other more current presentations, he asserts that the other branches of the federal government, and the states, can “ignore the Supreme Court,” which is exactly what the segregationists argued.

In 1956, 96 members of Congress signed what became known as the “Southern Manifesto,” which commended the southern states “which have declared the intention to resist.” “It did much to dignify the posture of definance, as did the interpositions resolutions [states could interposed themselves against federal statutes] adopted by Southern legislatures. These resolutions varying in tone from calm protest to proclamations that the Brown decision is null and void, have no legal significance. But their use of the great names of Jefferson and Madison gave a mantle of legitimacy to the notion that it is honorable for a [federal] district judge or a school board to ignore the Supreme Court’s construction of the Constitution, and that the path of honor is to disobey the Court.” (pp. 41-42)

If anyone thinks this is ancient history, think again. Here is Barton peddling this same theoryTHIS YEAR, March 27, 2012, at a forum sponsored by the Tennessee Judicial Reform initiative, the Salt & Light Institute, the Faith and Freedom Coalition, the Black Robe Regiment, the 9/12 Project Tennessee, and something called “Gideon’s Army.” This is the whole presentation, so there is lot’s of detail and you can see the whole context. Barton starts at 14:33 and goes till the end of the hour. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h0IZhtprGnI

Thanks again for all your good work and apologies for the length of this comment.

-CL

** Written 1960, the book uses the then-currently-proper term “Negroes.” It also quotes the segregationists in their own raw words, without the nicety of euphemisms such as “the N-word.”