To commemorate Black History Month, I thought it might be worthwhile to revisit a few items from National Review, a prominent conservative journal some of you may have heard of or be familiar with, regarding issues such as integration and racial equality.
I have mentioned several times in other diaries that the effort to get civil rights legislation passed was not a Democrats vs Republicans struggle, it was a liberals vs conservatives struggle.
In the 1950s there were liberal Republicans as well as liberal Democrats, and there were conservative Democrats as well as conservative Republicans. Both parties back then were large coalitions with an odd mix of members. In general the conservative members opposed the Brown v Board of education decision, opposed efforts to integrate, opposed efforts to end the system of racial inequality which had prevailed for so long; and in general the liberal members supported the Brown decision, supported the passage of civil rights legislation, supported and end to Jim Crow laws and the system of racial inequality those laws perpetuated.
Many conservatives today would deny the truth of that. But 60 years ago they had no hesitation in calling the civil rights movement liberal, calling the Brown decision liberal, calling civil rights bills liberal, and denouncing all of these as contrary to what they as conservatives believed in.
Here’s a short item from page 3 of the June 29, 1957 issue of National Review:
In the dark ages when men were forced to submit to the hazards of trial by water or fire, the liberal mind hit upon the device of trial by jury. Ever since then the “judgment of one’s peers” as expressed by 12 good men and true has been accepted as a more certain guarantee of equity than the decision of a single judge.
The civil rights bill which has just been passed by the modern breed of Liberal in the House of Representatives, however, has reversed the trend of at least ten centuries, for it has been sent up to the Senate without a provision for trial by jury for anyone cited for contempt in a civil rights case. As matters stand this is sectional legislation, directed against one part of the country. If the Senate concurs in the judgment of the House, we may shortly be witness to the jailing of Southerners for arguing against integration after a single judge has told them to shut up.
The prospects for the House bill are, of course, dubious as long as Southerners in the Senate can avail themselves of the filibuster. Even so, what the House has done is deeply disturbing to anyone who takes the whole historic fabric of Common Law seriously.
National Review’s objection to the 1957 civil rights bill sounds rather silly 60 years later, and has been largely lost to history. But really, any objection would do — they just needed some reason to oppose the bill, and to support a filibuster of it.
But back then they were honest enough to say that the civil rights bills were liberal legislation, and that as conservatives they opposed these bills.
(Buckley and National Review were also consistent strong opponents of the Brown v. Board of Education decision, and remained so well into the 1970s before finally giving the matter up as largely a lost cause.)