A party serious about Civil Rights in the 60’s wouldn’t have nominated Goldwater and wouldn’t have embraced Strom Thurmond, the original Dixiecrat into its own ranks. Yes, there were Republicans in Congress even a majority of them that supported the Civil Rights legislation that LBJ signed into law but their actions as a party showed that civil rights wasn’t a priority for them. Not to mention that beloved and whitewashed conservative editor William F. Buckley pushed the insidious lie that Civil Rights was a communist plot. That always needs to be brought up when discussing WFB. He wasn’t the noble conservative he’s retrospectively made out to be. Sorry just because WFB was articulate doesn’t take away from the fact he came into the political scene a McCarthyite and died one and was a bigot on civil rights.