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1 HelloDare  Thu, Jul 1, 2010 4:27:10am

All 11 Senators who voted against Thurgood Marshall were Democrats.

Notwithstanding Tom Coburn idiocy, you'd think Steve Kornacki would mention that fact in the article. It sure makes the story even more interesting.

He said the following but somehow forgot to mention that they were all Democrats.

Only 11 senators voted against Marshall, and their opposition “had everything to do with race — and, more specifically, with lingering white Southern resentment of the court’s 1954 school desegregation ruling (in which Marshall, as the NAACP’s chief counsel, had played a leading role).” All 11 were White and Southern, and most had signed the “Southern Manifesto,” a pro-segregation document drafted by the late Sen. Strom Thurmond.

Here are the eleven.

* Spessard Holland (Florida): Signed the Southern Manifesto and pushed for Brown to be overturned.

* James Eastland (Mississippi): Infamously suggested to the LBJ that the disappearance of young civil rights activists in Mississippi in 1964 was a hoax and "a publicity stunt." The activists, of course, had been murdered by white supremacists.

* Allen Ellender (Louisiana): Once led a 27-hour filibuster of legislation that would have banned lynching.

* Sam Ervin (North Carolina): A "kinder, gentler" bigot, who won praise from some media outlets in the '60s for at least not using ugly words when describing black people -- even as he voted against virtually every piece of civil rights legislation.

* J. Lister Hill (Alabama): Another "moderate" who nonetheless signed the manifesto and voted against civil rights.

* Herman Talmadge (Georgia): As Georgia's governor, he decreed after the '54 Brown decision that "blood will run in the streets of Atlanta".

* John Sparkman (Alabama): Here's how Time summarized Sparkman's civil rights "problem" in 1965: "Not that John Sparkman is an integrationist -- far from it. Over the years he has voted against more than 100 civil rights bills. But to diehard segregationists, he has never sounded as though he really meant it."

* Ernest Hollings (South Carolina): He did oversee the integration of Clemson University as South Carolina's governor, but, facing a Senate re-election campaign in 1968, he voted against Marshall.

* Russell Long (Louisiana): Another Southern Manifesto signatory

* Robert Byrd (West Virginia): He's being remembered as a lion of the Senate this week, but not because of this period of his career.

* Strom Thurmond (South Carolina):

2 Lidane  Thu, Jul 1, 2010 8:07:57am

re: #1 HelloDare

All 11 Senators who voted against Thurgood Marshall were Dixiecrats.

FTFY. There was a very strong racist, pro-segregation, and anti-civil rights wing in the Democratic party at the time, largely in the south. No one denies that. And that's why those 11 men voted against Marshall. HOWEVER, it's also worth noting that since the Civil and Voting Rights Acts in the 1960's, most of that wing of Democrats became Republicans.

That said, nitpicking about partisan affiliation misses the point entirely. The point is that the GOP, including Coburn, are so far gone these days that they're now blatantly using coded racist language, casting doubt on someone like Thurgood Marshall in order to try and score points against Kagan, and against Obama. That should be troubling to anyone.

3 HelloDare  Thu, Jul 1, 2010 10:33:23am

I know what your point was and acknowledged it: "Notwithstanding Tom Coburn's idiocy ..."

Dixiecrats were Democrats. What point are you making there?

Not one of those 11 Senators became a Republican.

Here is the Senate Vote on the 1965 Voting Rights Act.

The two numbers in each line of this list refer to the number of representatives voting in favor and against the act, respectively.

Senate: 77–19

* Democrats: 47–17 (73%-27%)
* Republicans: 30–2 (94%-6%)

House: 333–85

* Democrats: 221–61 (78%-22%)
* Republicans: 112–24 (82%-18%)

Civil Rights Act of 1964

By party

The original House version:[10]

* Democratic Party: 152-96 (61%-39%)
* Republican Party: 138-34 (80%-20%)

Cloture in the Senate:[11]

* Democratic Party: 44-23 (66%-34%)
* Republican Party: 27-6 (82%-18%)

The Senate version:[10]

* Democratic Party: 46-21 (69%-31%)
* Republican Party: 27-6 (82%-18%)

The Senate version, voted on by the House:[10]

* Democratic Party: 153-91 (63%-37%)
* Republican Party: 136-35 (80%-20%)
------------------------

There was an equally racists element in the Southern Republicans at the time.
All that aside, the article should have mentioned that those 11 Senators who were all white and Southern and signed the Southern Manifesto were Democrats.

That fact does not change the information about Tom Coburn. But it does punch a hole in the belief that Republicans have historically been more racists than Democrats, including those Democrats that were Dixiecrats.

4 Lidane  Thu, Jul 1, 2010 11:14:27am

re: #3 HelloDare

Not one of those 11 Senators became a Republican.

You're forgetting about Strom Thurmond.

But it does punch a hole in the belief that Republicans have historically been more racists than Democrats, including those Democrats that were Dixiecrats.

None of that was ever implied by me or by this post. That's your own partisan paranoia talking.

5 HelloDare  Thu, Jul 1, 2010 3:37:23pm

Good point about Thurmond.

None of that was ever implied by me or by this post.

I was questioning Steve Kornacki's motives for leaving out the information that all 11 Senators were Democrats, not your motives.

And you call me paranoid.


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