Every now and again some liberal comes out and praises the Democrat party for passing the Civil Rights Act of 1964, and calling Republicans racist for opposing it. And that always ticks me off because it is so blatantly untrue, as the Congressional Record shows. As a matter of fact, the record shows that since 1933 Republicans had a more positive record on civil rights than the Democrats.
In the 26 major civil rights votes after 1933, a majority of Democrats opposed civil rights legislation in over 80 percent of the votes. By contrast, the Republican majority favored civil rights in over 96 percent of the votes.
[See http://www.congresslink.org/civil/essay.html and http://www.yale.edu/ynhti/curriculum/units/1982/3/82.03.04.x.html.]
As for the Civil Rights Act of 1964, I believe that Democrats have lied about who supported the Civil Rights Act for so long that they actually believe their own lies. But anytime this lie is retold, I feel compelled to debunk it. So here we go again - here are the actual facts...
The Congressional Quarterly of June 26, 1964 (p. 1323) recorded that, in the Senate, only 69% of Democrats (46 for, 21 against) voted for the Civil Rights Act as compared to 82% of Republicans (27 for, 6 against). All southern Democratic senators voted against the Act. This includes the life-long senator from West Virginia and former KKK member Robert C. Bryd and former Tennessee senator Al Gore, Sr..
In the House of Representatives, 61% of Democrats (152 for, 96 against) voted for the Civil Rights Act; with 92 of the 103 southern Democrats votong against it. Among Republicans, 80% (138 for, 34 against) voted for it.
The ONLY reason the Democrats claim to be the party of Civil Rights is because the president who signed the bill happened to be a Democrat (Johnson). But it was the Republicans who broke the filibuster and got the bill passed because of the wide majority of them that voted for it.
Before the Senate could even consider the bill, it had to pass in the House. In the House, the Democrats had an overwhelming majority (248 to 172), yet the Democrats could not come up with a 2/3 majority in favor of Civil Rights. It was the 80% of Republicans that got the bill pushed through.
The short take - in both the House and the Senate, only 61-69% of the Democrats favored Civil Rights, while 80-82% of Republicans favored it. And it was Democrats who filibustered against it - for a whopping 74 days.
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