Why Did Black Voters Flee the Republican Party in the 1960s?
Goldwater can be seen as the godfather (or maybe the midwife) of the current Tea Party. He wanted the federal government out of the states’ business. He believed the Civil Rights Act was unconstitutional — although he said that once it had been enacted into law, it would be obeyed. But states, he said, should implement the law in their own time. Many white southerners, especially segregationists, felt reassured by Goldwater’s words. Black Americans, says Vince Hutchings, felt anything but:
“African-Americans heard the message that was intended to be heard. Which was that Goldwater and the Goldwater wing of the Republican party were opposed not only to the Civil Rights Act, but to the civil rights movement, in large part, as well.”
An Abrupt Exit From The GOP
When Goldwater, in his acceptance speech, famously told the ecstatic convention “extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice,” he was speaking of “a very specific notion of liberty,” says Peniel Joseph: “Small government, a government that doesn’t give out handouts to black people. A government that doesn’t have laws that interfere with states’ rights. A government that is not conducting a war on poverty.”
It was a signal both sides heard loud and clear. Goldwater attracted the white Southern votes his advisers thought were essential, paving the way for the “Southern Strategy” that Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan would use successfully in later years. And the third of black Republican voters remaining speedily exited the party.
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