Besides Not Being A Warhawk-No Wonder the Right Did Not Like Carter
Sep 6, 2015 17:46:26 #
Jimmy Carters civil rights legacy
By Ari Berman
IN 1954, AS segregationist organizations were springing up all over the South in response to Brown vs. Board of Education, the chief of police and a Baptist minister in Plains, Ga., visited a peanut farmer at his warehouse and urged him to join the local White Citizens Council. The farmer refused. The men returned a few days later and told the farmer he was the only white man in Plains who hadnt signed up. That didnt change his mind. The men returned a third time with some of the farmers customers, who threatened to boycott his business. If he couldnt afford the $5 dues, they would lend it to him. Ive got $5, the farmer responded. And Id flush it down the toilet before Id give it to you.
The farmer, in case you havent guessed, was Jimmy Carter.
The news that Carter has brain cancer has led many to consider his lifes work, as a controversial president and a dynamic former president. Carter is largely remembered as a feckless leader; even his own party tends to ignore his time in the White House. But he had a strong record on civil rights, and his work to advance the cause would have been far more consequential if his successor, Ronald Reagan, had not reversed course.
Few predicted that Carter would be an advocate for civil rights. When he ran for governor in 1970 as a little-known 46-year-old state senator, many thought hed be just another second-rate George Wallace, like so many Southern governors before him. But in his inaugural address, Carter revealed his progressive views on race.
I say to you quite frankly that the time for racial discrimination is over, he told the people of Georgia.
Carter quickly became the poster child for the ascendant New South. Time magazine even put his face on the cover with the headline Dixie Whistles a Different Tune.
In his 1976 p**********l campaign, Carter embraced the power of the 1965 V****g Rights Act, which enfranchised millions of African Americans and expanded protections for Latinos and language minority groups a decade later. Carter defeated Wallace the symbol of the Old South in the Democratic primary in part by appealing to black v**ers. His high-profile backers included Andrew Young and Barbara Jordan, the first black members of Congress from the South since Reconstruction. At the 1976 Democratic Convention in New York, Jordan gave the keynote speech, Young helped nominate Carter and Martin Luther King Sr. delivered the closing benediction.
While campaigning in black strongholds like Watts, Carter told audiences: I could not stand here today as a candidate for president of the United States had it not been for Martin Luther King Jr. The V**er Education Project, led by civil rights icon John Lewis, plastered thousands of posters across the South that read, Hands that pick cotton ... now can pick our public officials.
Carter owed his general e******n victory against Gerald Ford to black b****ts. He carried every Southern state except Virginia by winning 95% of the black v**e compared with 45% of the white v**e. The V****g Rights Act, said Lewis, created the climate for someone like Jimmy Carter to become the Democratic nominee and be elected president.
Once in office, Carter pledged, There will never be any attempt while I am president to weaken the great civil rights acts that have passed in the years gone by. He appointed the first black division head at the Department of Justice, the first black female Cabinet member and the first black ambassador to the United Nations. Carter named more b****s, Latinos and women to the federal judiciary than all previous administrations combined.
But his Republican challenger in 1980, Reagan, took a very different position on civil rights, having opposed the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the V****g Rights Act and the Fair Housing Act of 1968. Reagan kicked off his general e******n campaign for president in Neshoba County, Miss., where civil rights activists James Chaney, Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner had been murdered in 1964. I believe in states rights, Reagan told the nearly all-white crowd at the county fair.
Carter responded to Reagans speech at Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta, where King once preached. Youve seen in this campaign, he said, the stirrings of h**e and the rebirth of code words like states rights in a speech in Mississippi. Again Carter attracted minority support, but that wasnt enough to overcome Reagans commanding margin among w****s.
When we look back on Reagans victory over Carter, we think of the end of the Iran hostage crisis and the beginning of Morning in America. Less well known is that Reagans triumph also ushered in a counterrevolution against the countrys civil rights laws.
Whereas Carter had appointed Drew Days III, a former lawyer with the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, to run the Justice Departments Civil Rights Division, Reagan installed the conservative lawyer William Bradford Reynolds, who believed that government-imposed discrimination had created a kind of racial spoils system in America, favoring historically disadvantaged minorities over w****s. The future leaders of the contemporary conservative legal movement, including Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr., came of age in the Reagan Justice Department, where they aggressively tried to weaken the civil rights laws of the 1960s.
Now we live in the world Reagan created. The five conservative justices on the Supreme Court who gutted the V****g Rights Act in the 2013 decision Shelby County vs. Holder were all appointed by Reagan or served in his administration. Reagans ideological descendants, post-Shelby, have imposed strict v**er-ID laws, cut early v****g and eliminated same-day v***r r**********n.
Of course, theres also a growing movement to fight these restrictions and to make v****g easier. In March, Oregon became the first state to adopt automatic v***r r**********n for every eligible v**er who requests a drivers license or state ID card. California is considering a similar proposal, which would add 7 million v**ers to the rolls. Democratic p**********l candidates Hillary Rodham Clinton and Bernie Sanders have highlighted this ambitious e******n reform in their policy platforms.
What nobody seems to mention is that Carter had the same idea 39 years ago. In 1976, while appearing with John Lewis, Carter proposed automatically registering every U.S. citizen 18 and older, which he said would t***sform, in a beneficial way, the politics of our country.
ARI BERMAN is a contributing writer for the Nation and the author of Give Us the B****t:
The Modern Struggle for V****g
Rights in America.
By Ari Berman
IN 1954, AS segregationist organizations were springing up all over the South in response to Brown vs. Board of Education, the chief of police and a Baptist minister in Plains, Ga., visited a peanut farmer at his warehouse and urged him to join the local White Citizens Council. The farmer refused. The men returned a few days later and told the farmer he was the only white man in Plains who hadnt signed up. That didnt change his mind. The men returned a third time with some of the farmers customers, who threatened to boycott his business. If he couldnt afford the $5 dues, they would lend it to him. Ive got $5, the farmer responded. And Id flush it down the toilet before Id give it to you.
The farmer, in case you havent guessed, was Jimmy Carter.
The news that Carter has brain cancer has led many to consider his lifes work, as a controversial president and a dynamic former president. Carter is largely remembered as a feckless leader; even his own party tends to ignore his time in the White House. But he had a strong record on civil rights, and his work to advance the cause would have been far more consequential if his successor, Ronald Reagan, had not reversed course.
Few predicted that Carter would be an advocate for civil rights. When he ran for governor in 1970 as a little-known 46-year-old state senator, many thought hed be just another second-rate George Wallace, like so many Southern governors before him. But in his inaugural address, Carter revealed his progressive views on race.
I say to you quite frankly that the time for racial discrimination is over, he told the people of Georgia.
Carter quickly became the poster child for the ascendant New South. Time magazine even put his face on the cover with the headline Dixie Whistles a Different Tune.
In his 1976 p**********l campaign, Carter embraced the power of the 1965 V****g Rights Act, which enfranchised millions of African Americans and expanded protections for Latinos and language minority groups a decade later. Carter defeated Wallace the symbol of the Old South in the Democratic primary in part by appealing to black v**ers. His high-profile backers included Andrew Young and Barbara Jordan, the first black members of Congress from the South since Reconstruction. At the 1976 Democratic Convention in New York, Jordan gave the keynote speech, Young helped nominate Carter and Martin Luther King Sr. delivered the closing benediction.
While campaigning in black strongholds like Watts, Carter told audiences: I could not stand here today as a candidate for president of the United States had it not been for Martin Luther King Jr. The V**er Education Project, led by civil rights icon John Lewis, plastered thousands of posters across the South that read, Hands that pick cotton ... now can pick our public officials.
Carter owed his general e******n victory against Gerald Ford to black b****ts. He carried every Southern state except Virginia by winning 95% of the black v**e compared with 45% of the white v**e. The V****g Rights Act, said Lewis, created the climate for someone like Jimmy Carter to become the Democratic nominee and be elected president.
Once in office, Carter pledged, There will never be any attempt while I am president to weaken the great civil rights acts that have passed in the years gone by. He appointed the first black division head at the Department of Justice, the first black female Cabinet member and the first black ambassador to the United Nations. Carter named more b****s, Latinos and women to the federal judiciary than all previous administrations combined.
But his Republican challenger in 1980, Reagan, took a very different position on civil rights, having opposed the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the V****g Rights Act and the Fair Housing Act of 1968. Reagan kicked off his general e******n campaign for president in Neshoba County, Miss., where civil rights activists James Chaney, Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner had been murdered in 1964. I believe in states rights, Reagan told the nearly all-white crowd at the county fair.
Carter responded to Reagans speech at Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta, where King once preached. Youve seen in this campaign, he said, the stirrings of h**e and the rebirth of code words like states rights in a speech in Mississippi. Again Carter attracted minority support, but that wasnt enough to overcome Reagans commanding margin among w****s.
When we look back on Reagans victory over Carter, we think of the end of the Iran hostage crisis and the beginning of Morning in America. Less well known is that Reagans triumph also ushered in a counterrevolution against the countrys civil rights laws.
Whereas Carter had appointed Drew Days III, a former lawyer with the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, to run the Justice Departments Civil Rights Division, Reagan installed the conservative lawyer William Bradford Reynolds, who believed that government-imposed discrimination had created a kind of racial spoils system in America, favoring historically disadvantaged minorities over w****s. The future leaders of the contemporary conservative legal movement, including Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr., came of age in the Reagan Justice Department, where they aggressively tried to weaken the civil rights laws of the 1960s.
Now we live in the world Reagan created. The five conservative justices on the Supreme Court who gutted the V****g Rights Act in the 2013 decision Shelby County vs. Holder were all appointed by Reagan or served in his administration. Reagans ideological descendants, post-Shelby, have imposed strict v**er-ID laws, cut early v****g and eliminated same-day v***r r**********n.
Of course, theres also a growing movement to fight these restrictions and to make v****g easier. In March, Oregon became the first state to adopt automatic v***r r**********n for every eligible v**er who requests a drivers license or state ID card. California is considering a similar proposal, which would add 7 million v**ers to the rolls. Democratic p**********l candidates Hillary Rodham Clinton and Bernie Sanders have highlighted this ambitious e******n reform in their policy platforms.
What nobody seems to mention is that Carter had the same idea 39 years ago. In 1976, while appearing with John Lewis, Carter proposed automatically registering every U.S. citizen 18 and older, which he said would t***sform, in a beneficial way, the politics of our country.
ARI BERMAN is a contributing writer for the Nation and the author of Give Us the B****t:
The Modern Struggle for V****g
Rights in America.
Sep 6, 2015 17:52:38 #
Jimmy Carter is a fine Christian.
It is too bad more people cannot follow his example of honoring God.
It is too bad more people cannot follow his example of honoring God.
Sep 6, 2015 17:52:52 #
But his Republican challenger in 1980, Reagan, took a very different position on civil rights, having opposed the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the V****g Rights Act and the Fair Housing Act of 1968. Reagan kicked off his general e******n campaign for president in Neshoba County, Miss., where civil rights activists James Chaney, Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner had been murdered in 1964. I believe in states rights, Reagan told the nearly all-white crowd at the county fair.
Sep 6, 2015 17:53:41 #
Sep 6, 2015 17:58:16 #
KHH1 wrote:
Proves what I stated about the GOP, post-1964.......
Not only is their guy, Ronald Reagan, no hero none of them are.
Sep 6, 2015 18:00:34 #
KHH1 wrote:
But his Republican challenger in 1980, Reagan, took a very different position on civil rights, having opposed the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the V****g Rights Act and the Fair Housing Act of 1968. Reagan kicked off his general e******n campaign for president in Neshoba County, Miss., where civil rights activists James Chaney, Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner had been murdered in 1964. I believe in states rights, Reagan told the nearly all-white crowd at the county fair.
That Fair Housing Act, was half the cause of the fall of wall street....moron....all those loans that were never paid...thank you brain dead Carter......of course you are not educated enough to understand the finance issues that took all those years to have created the mess....
In fact, you are as educated as a walnut.
Sep 6, 2015 18:01:11 #
jelun wrote:
Not only is their guy, Ronald Reagan, no hero none of them are.
Oh please...you have nothing more to add to this life than USED toilet paper....stanky old Hag.
Sep 6, 2015 18:03:39 #
America Only wrote:
That Fair Housing Act, was half the cause of the fall of wall street....moron....all those loans that were never paid...thank you brain dead Carter......of course you are not educated enough to understand the finance issues that took all those years to have created the mess....
In fact, you are as educated as a walnut.
In fact, you are as educated as a walnut.
Another subject you know nothing about.
Too busy counting all that money, I suppose, to pay attention to civil rights.
Sep 6, 2015 20:26:37 #
jelun wrote:
Another subject you know nothing about.
Too busy counting all that money, I suppose, to pay attention to civil rights.
Too busy counting all that money, I suppose, to pay attention to civil rights.
You are whacko...there is little debate in the financial world as to how many millions of loans that were not paid and those loan sets had been used over and over again as collateral and "stocks" in the Mortgage industries and financial investments..only some small time nit wit like you (brown lunch bag crowd) do not have the intellect to have even bothered to review what took place. Don't kid yourself, you really are rat s**t stupid.
Sep 6, 2015 20:28:03 #
America Only wrote:
You are whacko...there is little debate in the financial world as to how many millions of loans that were not paid and those loan sets had been used over and over again as collateral and "stocks" in the Mortgage industries and financial investments..only some small time nit wit like you (brown lunch bag crowd) do not have the intellect to have even bothered to review what took place. Don't kid yourself, you really are rat s**t stupid.
You really are rat s**t stupid.
Sep 6, 2015 20:29:48 #
jelun wrote:
Another subject you know nothing about.
Too busy counting all that money, I suppose, to pay attention to civil rights.
Too busy counting all that money, I suppose, to pay attention to civil rights.
Unlike you...(pocket pool champ as about all you have even done in your pathetic life) I've been involved in Finance, and you could not begin to comprehend what happens in the finance industry....
Of course we know you dream of some day having a credit card so it will make you an "expert"on that...but sadly you will only be an expert of shoving your head in a toilet for lunch...dinner..or a fast early morning meal......
Sep 6, 2015 20:34:05 #
jelun wrote:
You really are rat s**t stupid.
http://useconomy.about.com/od/Financial-Crisis/a/Stock-Market-Crash-2008.htm
One of several articles for pig eating slime like you to read and learn what your small time pea brain does not know....
Enjoy, ol' Spawn of Hitler!
Sep 6, 2015 20:35:38 #
jelun wrote:
Another subject you know nothing about.
Too busy counting all that money, I suppose, to pay attention to civil rights.
Too busy counting all that money, I suppose, to pay attention to civil rights.
I pay REAL close attention to "civil rights" and damned sure will be willing to defend those civil rights against the skum suckers like YOU that desire to destroy those rights.
Sep 6, 2015 20:59:43 #
jelun wrote:
Jimmy Carter is a fine Christian.
It is too bad more people cannot follow his example of honoring God.
It is too bad more people cannot follow his example of honoring God.
Warn anyone near you, when you use that word, GOD, as he may just shoot a few lightning bolts at you and burn you like over cooked bacon fried to a small crisp! You speak of something that your sickness does all it can to destroy anything remotely connect to God, Jesus, or anything lse good or worth while on this Earth.
Sep 6, 2015 22:22:15 #
jelun wrote:
Jimmy Carter is a fine Christian.
It is too bad more people cannot follow his example of honoring God.
It is too bad more people cannot follow his example of honoring God.
A really genuine guy...he's the kind you will see that as soon as you meet him...very few people have that quality where you can see their honesty on the surface...............
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