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Discussing the devastating impact that the congressional conservative coalition (1930s-1970s) had on racial equality is not being hysterical, "politically correct," histrionic, or uncivil. Rather, debating the issue is the responsible thing to do./1
Historians have traced how the alliance between Southern Democrats—of which Senator Eastland was a key member--and Midwestern Republicans protected white supremacy and forced every legislator to live with the racism that was baked into the nation’s institutions and policies./2
Northern Democrats were unable to dismantle this racial system if they wanted the votes needed to pass any domestic legislation. The situation was more akin to conservative legislators demanding ransom than to working together./3
Eastland, who chaired a civil rights subcommittee, bragged that, “for the three years I was chairman that committee didn’t hold a meeting, I had special pockets put in my pants and for years I carried those bills everywhere I went and every one of them was defeated./4
Because of senators such as Eastland and procedures like the filibuster, journalist William White called the upper chamber, “the South’s unending revenge upon the North for Gettysburg.”/5
One of the main goals of the civil rights movement was to break the power of the conservative coalition. Movement activists understood that the "regular way" of doing business meant that civil rights legislation would never pass./6
The movement was finally successful in 1964 and 1965, though the resurgence of the coalition in the 1966 midterms helped blunt efforts to tackle institutional racism./7
The continued power of legislators like Senator Eastland was one of the reasons that younger Democrats reformed Congress in the mid-1970s and undercut the power of senior committee barons to do whatever they wanted./8
I wrote about all this in two of my books: The Fierce Urgency of Now and On Capitol Hill. @penguinpress @CambridgeUP/9
@JoeBiden, who started his campaign with a powerful video about the battle taking place over the nation's values in the shadow of Charlottesville, should be eager to engage this conversation./10
Given what we have seen in the era of Trump, it is more urgent than ever that the nation address the long arc of history that produced the tragedy in Charlottesville. This is at the heart of the critique about using Eastland in a comment about political civility./11
We could recall future Congressman John Lewis's comments at the March on Washington in 1963: "American politics is dominated by politicians who build their careers on immoral compromises and ally themselves with open forms of political, economic, and social exploitation."/12
"There are exceptions, of course. We salute those. But what political leader can stand up and say, 'My party is the party of principles'? For the party of Kennedy is also the party of Eastland. The party of Javits is also the party of Goldwater. Where is our party?"/end
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