r/PresidentsbutBetter • u/InvestmentSad1670 • 1d ago
In Defense of Mr. Barry Goldwater's Views on Civil Rights
PART A (African-American Rights)
For over 60 years, people have laughed at Conservative Republican Senator Barry Goldwater. A man who voted against the Civil Rights Act 1964, ran a campaign opposed to Johnson’s Great Society, allegedly began the Southern Strategy & lost in a humiliating landslide. They have called him a “racist”, a “white supremacist” and “last hope for Jim Crow”.
But history shows, he was a supporter for the cause of African Americans:
- Integrated his family business in Phoenix in 1930s, opening its doors to all customers long before it was fashionable or profitable to do so. Meanwhile the TVA for example (New Deal) was segregated
- Became a member of the NAACP and kept that membership active through his public life.
- Helped found the Phoenix chapter of the National Urban League and, when it struggled , paid its dues and debts personally to keep it alive.
- Desegregated the Arizona Air National Guard in 1946 — two years before Truman’s Executive Order 9981 and nearly a decade before full military integration. Later, Goldwater was instrumental in pushing the Pentagon to support the desegregation of the armed services
- Worked to desegregate Arizona’s public schools even before Brown v. Board of Education, helping finance the legal costs (one time 400 USD) that ended segregation in Phoenix schools.
- Integrated the Phoenix Airport restaurants, movie theaters etc. as a member of the City Council, insisting they serve and entertain all citizens equally..AND DID SO QUIETLY, not letting himself take any credit
- Integrated the Senate cafeteria so that his Black legislative assistant (Katherine Maxwell) could be served alongside everyone else.
- Voted for the Civil Rights Acts of 1957 would have voted yes for CRA 1960 if he wasnt absent, supported the 24th Amendment, and co-sponsored a 1953 bill to make discrimination in Washington, D.C., on the basis of race, religion, color, or national origin a misdemeanor, punishable by fine or imprisonment.
- Voted for Representative Adam Clayton Powell’s amendment to withhold federal funds from any school that refused to integrate (Congressional Quarterly, Sept. 25, 1958).
- Supported the creation of the Civil Rights Commission and twice voted for its renewal.
- Voted to confirm Thurgood Marshall to the U.S. Court of Appeals, praising his qualifications and rejecting racial prejudice.
- Co-sponsored with Senator Jacob Javits legislation applying FEPC (Fair Employment Practices Commission) restrictions to all federal contracts.
- Criticized Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy for “not pushing hard enough” to prosecute civil rights violations in Georgia and elsewhere in the South.
- Declared in 1953: “As President, I would use Federal authority to obtain compliance with Federal court integration orders.” (Congressional Quarterly, 1953) 15.) Voted for the CRA 1964 to be releases from committee and the Senate version of the bill
- Said: “My position is one of total opposition to segregation. As a member of the NAACP, and a founder of the Urban League in my state, I have expressed this position.” (Saturday Evening Post, Aug. 4, 1964)
- Said: “I believe it is both wise and just for Negro children to attend the same schools as whites.” (Television Address, Chattanooga, Aug. 4, 1964)
- Said: “No state or city has the right to segregate bus terminals or railroad stations that serve interstate commerce.” (Congressional Quarterly, 1953)
- Said: “I am utterly opposed to discrimination in any form. In Arizona I helped desegregate the National Guard, swimming pools, public schools, and restaurants.” (Congressional Quarterly, 1953)
- Said: “When I was Chief of Staff in Arizona I desegregated the National Guard. I was a substantial contributor to the court costs to end segregation in the high schools. When I was a member of the city council, my first political task was to desegregate the restaurants at Phoenix Airport.” (New York Tribune, Aug. 22, 1963)
- Said: “I would use the law, if elected, to promote prompt and peaceful obedience to civil rights laws.” (Campaign Statement, July 16, 1964)
- Said: “If the Attorney General honestly feels more laws are needed, I’m in favor of giving them to him — to be used like a rifle against the precise problem.” (California Radio Interview, Oct. 22, 1958)
- Said in the Senate, July 16, 1963: “On the record, I am unalterably opposed to discrimination of any sort. I believe that the Negro should have the same rights as the white man, and I believe we must strive to attain those rights.”
- Said in the Senate, April 24, 1963: “I am unalterably opposed to discrimination or segregation on the basis of color or creed or anything else. My opposition to the 1964 Civil Rights Bill does not mean that I am opposed to the objectives of this bill, but only that I believe the means used to achieve them are unconstitutional.”
- Said in the Senate, May 27, 1963: “I have helped to bring about desegregation in schools, in the armed services, in employment, and in the use of public facilities.”
- Voted to forbid racial discrimination in hospitals, natural housing, schools, service corps, and the youth conservation program. (Congressional Quarterly, Aug. 4, 1964) Said in May 1964: “At one time I felt it improper for government to intervene in local school systems as far as segregation goes. I believe now that position is wrong.” (ABC-TV Interview, May 24, 1964)
- Said: “I wouldn’t be patient if I were a Negro in Alabama. Hell no, I wouldn’t be patient.” (Saturday Evening Post, Aug. 31, 1963)
- Said: “I would vigorously enforce the Civil Rights Bill of 1964... for it is only just and right.”
- Threatened to withdraw his 1964 campaign if white supremacist violence was used in his name, despite it being one day before election daY!
- Rejected the endorsement of the Klan and refused to campaign with them
- Yet again, through the GOP Platform, promised to enforce the CRA (—full implementation and faithful execution of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, and all other civil rights statutes, to assure equal rights and opportunities guaranteed by the Constitution to every citizen; —improvements of civil rights statutes adequate to changing needs of our times; —such additional administrative or legislative actions as may be required to end the denial, for whatever unlawful reason, of the right to vote; —continued opposition to discrimination based on race, creed, national origin or sex. We recognize that the elimination of any such discrimination is a matter of heart, conscience, and education, as well as of equal rights under law.") While he did vote in favor of it while in committee, Goldwater reluctantly voted against the Civil Rights Act of 1964 when it came to the floor. Later, Goldwater would state that he was mostly in support of the bill, but he disagreed with Titles II and VII, which both dealt with employment, making him imply that the law would end in the government dictating hiring and firing policy for millions of Americans. Congressional Republicans overwhelmingly supported the bill, with Goldwater being joined by only five other Republican senators in voting against it. It is likely that Goldwater significantly underestimated the effect this would have, as his vote against the bill hurt him with voters across the country, including from his own party. In the 1990s, Goldwater would call his vote on the Civil Rights Act "one of his greatest regrets
In the words of MLK "While not himself a racist, Mr. Goldwater articulates a philosophy which gives aid and comfort to the racists."
King disagreed with his method, not his intentions.
In his final years he reconciled with some African Americans. The National Urban League conferred on him the 1991 Humanitarian Award "for 50 years of loyal service to the Phoenix Urban League". In response to League members who objected, citing Goldwater's vote on the CRA the League president pointed out that he had saved the League more than once, saying he preferred to judge a person "on the basis of his daily actions rather than on his voting record"
Basically, he was one of the anti-racist White leaders in Arizona. He voted against CRA despite a long and ongoing history of anti-racist actions PLUS he supported the Act anyway
PART B (Gay Rights)
People calling him right-wing fail to consider the fact that he was an early advocate for gay rights!
June 11th 1993; Former Senator Barry Goldwater opposes Don't Ask Don't Tell and instead advocates for unrestricted Gay participation in the Military... linking it with acceptance of African Americans and Women in the Military
LA Times June 11th 1993; Goldwater in two articles opposed both total ban of Gays from the military AND Dont Ask..Dont Tell
Article 1 is his commentary; Article 2 is a summary
ARTICLE 1:
https://www.cs.cmu.edu/afs/cs/usr/scotts/ftp/bulgarians/barry-goldwater.html
Ban on Gays is Senseless Attempt to Stall the Inevitable
By Barry M. Goldwater
The following is a transcript of Barry Goldwater's commentary on the military gay ban that appeared this week in the Washington Post and the Los Angeles Times.
After more than 50 years in the military and politics, I am still amazed to see how upset people can get over nothing. Lifting the ban on gays in the military isn't exactly nothing, but it's pretty damned close
Everyone knows that gays have served honorably in the military since at least the time of Julius Caesar. They'll still be serving long after we're all dead and buried. That should not surprise anyone.
But most Americans should be shocked to know that while the country's economy is going down the tubes, the military has wasted half a billion dollars over the past decade chasing down gays and running them out of the armed services.
It's no great secret that military studies have proved again and again that there's no valid reason for keeping the ban on gays. Some thought gays were crazy, but then found that wasn't true. then they decided that gays were a security risk, but again the Department of Defense decided that wasn't so-in fact, one study by the Navy in 1956 that was never made public found gays to be good security risks. Even Larry Korb, President Reagan's man in charge of implementing the Pentagon ban on gays, now admits that it was a dumb idea. No wonder my friend Dick Cheney, secretary of defense under President Bush, called it "a bit of an old chestnut"
When the facts lead to one conclusion, I say it's time to act, not to hide. The country and the military know that eventually the ban will be lifted. The only remaining questions are how much muck we will all be dragged through, and how many brave Americans like Tom Paniccia and Margarethe Cammermeyer will have their lives and careers destroyed in a senseless attempt to stall the inevitable.
Some in congress think I'm wrong. They say we absolutely must continue to discriminate, or all hell will break loose. Who knows, they say, perhaps our soldiers may even take up arms against each other.
Well, that's just stupid.
Years ago, I was a lieutenant in charge of an all-black unit. Military leaders at the time believed that blacks lacked leadership potential - period. That seems ridiculous now, as it should. Now, each and every man and woman who serves this nation takes orders from a black man - our own Gen. Colin Powell.
Nobody thought that blacks or women could ever be integrated into the military. Many thought that an all-volunteer force could never protect our national interest. Well, it has, and despite those who feared the worst - I among them - we are still the best and will continue to be.
The point is that decisions are always a lot easier to make in hindsight. but we seldom have that luxury. That's why the future of our country depends on leadership, and that's what we need now.
I served in the armed forces. I have flown more than 150 of the best fighter planes and bombers this country manufactured. I founded the Arizona National Guard. I chaired the Senate Armed Services Committee. And I think it's high time to pull the curtains on this charade of policy.
What should undermine our readiness would be a compromise policy like "Don't ask, don't tell." That compromise doesn't deal with the issue - it tries to hide it.
We have wasted enough precious time, money and talent trying to persecute and pretend. It's time to stop burying our heads in the sand and denying reality for the sake of politics. It's time to deal with this straight on and be done with it. It's time to get on with more important business.
The conservative movement, to which I subscribe, has as one of its basic tenets the belief that government should stay out of people's private lives. Government governs best when it governs least - and stays out of the impossible task of legislating morality. But legislating someone's version of morality is exactly what we do by perpetuating discrimination against gays.
When you get down to it, no American able to serve should be allowed, much less given an excuse, not to serve his or her country. We need all our talent.
If I were in the Senate today, I would rise on the Senate floor in support of our commander in chief. He may be a Democrat, but he happens to be right on this question.
( Unfortunately Clinton eventually signed Dont Ask Dont Tell to get some compromise)
ARTICLE 2:
https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1993-06-11-mn-2039-story.html
Goldwater Backs Lifting Gay Ban
L.A. Times Archives
June 11, 1993 12 AM PT
Former Sen. Barry Goldwater declared Thursday that the military should lift its ban on gays because “you don’t need to be straight to fight and die for your country. You just need to shoot straight.”
He said study after study had proved that homosexuals are not security risks and said the current debate is a waste of time because the ban ultimately would be lifted, just like prior bans on blacks and women in the military.
Conservatives and former colleagues accepted the 1964 Republican presidential nominee’s typically blunt comments with deference but said they are not ready to embrace his opinion.
“I certainly would respect his comments,” Sen. Sam Nunn (D-Ga.), chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, said. “I don’t agree with it.”
If he were still in the Senate, Goldwater said, he would support President Clinton’s effort to lift the ban. In an opinion piece in The Times today, Goldwater said that after 50 years in politics and the military, he still marvels that people can get upset over nothing.
“Lifting the ban on gays in the military isn’t exactly nothing, but it’s pretty damned close,” he wrote.
Goldwater said conservatives who supported the military ban were ignoring their movement’s core principle, “that government should stay out of people’s private lives.”
PART C (the Worse then Watergate scandal LBJ got away with, leaving Goldwater with no justice!)
American intelligence agency spying on a presidential campaign. It happened in the summer of 1964; the target was Republican presidential candidate Barry Goldwater, and the perpetrator was the CIA, not the FBI.
A CIA officer named E. Howard Hunt — later made infamous for his role in the Watergate break-in — was in charge of the operation. Hunt’s role in the Goldwater caper can be traced back to his involvement in the CIA’s disastrous attempt to depose Fidel Castro by landing a ragtag group of Cuban exiles at the Bay of Pigs in April 1961. Like many agency officers associated with the fiasco, he was put in a kind of purgatory, assigned to a desk job that lacked the excitement or career-advancement potential of foreign clandestine operations.
In Hunt’s case, the CIA tasked him with oversight of clandestine operations with cryptonyms like WUBONBON and WHUHUSTLER that produced and disseminated propaganda for consumption in the United States and internationally. One such propaganda project was a CIA front company called Continental Press, which operated as a news service based out of an office in the National Press Building in downtown Washington. Run by a former Associated Press reporter, Continental Press fed news and propaganda to obscure newspapers in developing countries, and provided cover for CIA operatives in Africa, India and elsewhere.
Over a six-week period in the late summer of 1964, Hunt deployed Continental Press staff to undertake a new type of project: infiltrating the presidential campaign of Barry Goldwater on behalf of President Lyndon Johnson.
There is some dispute about whose idea this was. In a memoir published in 2007, Hunt claimed the idea to spy on Goldwater originated in the White House. Johnson, had, Hunt claimed, “become obsessed with obtaining his competitor’s plans.” Having come to office through tragedy, and deeply resenting suggestions that he wasn’t up to the job, Johnson yearned for a blow-out victory in 1964’s presidential race.
In 1975, then CIA Director William Colby told the House Select Committee on Intelligence that spying on Goldwater had been the brainchild of Tracy Barnes, head of the CIA’s Domestic Operations Division. According to Colby’s version of events, Barnes proposed it to Chester L. Cooper, a CIA officer working in the Johnson White House on temporary assignment to the National Security Council.
According to a CIA memo Colby provided to Congress, in 1973 Cooper told a member of the CIA Office of Inspector General that in 1964 Barnes had asked him “if he would like to have copies of [Goldwater’s] speeches and would it be useful to have them before he (Cooper) read them in the newspapers.” The memo concluded: “There is no question that Mr. Cooper was serving the White House in the political campaign while on the CIA payroll and that he was assisted, in part, by a member of the Agency’s Domestic Operations Division.” The CIA didn’t say why Barnes offered to spy on Goldwater. He may have been seeking to enhance the agency’s stature at a time when President Johnson had a strained relationship with its director.
In blaming Barnes and saying that he hadn’t informed anyone more senior about the operation, Colby created a convenient dead-end: by the time the Agency pinned responsibility on Barnes, he had been dead for several years.
Whether the impetus came from the White House or Langley, it is clear that Hunt arranged the infiltration of the Goldwater campaign headquarters. “My subordinates volunteered inside, collected advance copies of position papers and other material, and handed them over to CIA personnel,” Hunt wrote. Hunt’s assets included a secretary on Goldwater’s campaign staff who provided advance copies of speeches and press releases. A female CIA employee who worked from the Continental Press offices would pick up the material and deliver it to Cooper.
LBJ wasn’t squeamish about using the inside information, and he did so in a blunt fashion that must have made CIA officers cringe. Goldwater campaign staff noticed that the Johnson campaign had the unnerving habit of responding to points in their candidate’s speeches before he had delivered them. Johnson didn’t seem to care that his actions made clear to Goldwater that he was being spied on.
One of the most glaring incidents took place on September 9, 1964, after Hunt’s operation delivered to Cooper an advance copy of a speech Goldwater was slated to deliver that evening in Seattle. The Republican planned to announce formation of a Task Force on Peace and Freedom headed by former Vice President Richard Nixon that would advise Goldwater on foreign affairs. The idea was to calm fears that Goldwater had insufficient foreign-policy experience and that he would pursue a radical international agenda.
Johnson swung into action and called a “flash” press conference. While Goldwater was on an airplane and unable to respond, LBJ announced the formation of a task force of his own: a “panel of distinguished citizens who will consult with the president in the coming months on major international problems facing the United States.” Johnson’s ploy worked perfectly: news of his advisory panel was widely reported, including on the front page of the New York Times, while Goldwater’s announcement received little attention.
The disparity caught the attention of the journalist Arthur Krock, who in a nationally syndicated column suggested that Goldwater had “forfeited a chance to name his ‘task force’ first, and then represent the President’s as another instance of ‘me too.’”
Krock presented the situation as a triumph for Johnson and an example of the natural advantages a sitting President had in an election campaign. “Among advantages a president in a campaign to succeed himself has over his opponent is command of the channels of publicity,” he told his readers. Goldwater was hopelessly outmatched when going up against the full weight of the presidency, Krock wrote: “The President of the United States in the classic décor of his oval office at the White House; his helplessly scooped opponent in the modernistic carnival setting of the Coliseum that was built for the Seattle World’s Fair.”
The CIA’s surveillance of Goldwater didn’t alter the outcome of the election — Johnson was up big, and won in a landslide. But, at least in Hunt’s mind, it eventually led to the downfall of a president — just not the president involved.
Hunt retired from the CIA in 1970 and was hired by the White House in 1972 to lead a unit known as the Plumbers that was dedicated to plugging leaks within the Nixon administration, playing dirty tricks on Nixon’s opponents and obtaining political intelligence. Years later, Hunt justified his actions by comparing them to the CIA’s spying on Goldwater. His logic was that if it was OK to use surreptitious methods to obtain political intelligence on behalf of one president, it was acceptable to do the same for another president. “Since I’d done it once before for the CIA, why wouldn’t I do it again [inside Watergate in June 1972] for the White House?” Hunt explained to the New York Times in late December 1974.
In 1973, Judge John J. Sirica imposed a provisional 35-year prison sentence on Hunt for his role in planning the Watergate break-in, and said he would reduce the term only if Hunt cooperated with government investigators. Traumatized by prison, grieving the death of his wife in a December 1972 plane crash, and feeling the government had betrayed him, Hunt decided to talk. On December 18, 1973, on a closely guarded excursion from a federal penitentiary in Allenwood, Pennsylvania, Hunt met with Senator Howard Baker, Jr. and the staff of a Senate committee that was investigating CIA abuses of power.
Hunt told Baker that he’d been disturbed by the order to spy on the Goldwater campaign. This wasn’t because he had any hesitation about conducting what was obviously an illegal violation of the CIA’s charter, which imposes strict limits on the agency’s domestic operations.Rather, it was because Hunt was one of the few Goldwater supporters in the agency. “However, as distasteful as I thought it was, I performed the duty, accepting White House orders without question,” he recalled. A year later, news of Hunt’s testimony leaked to the New York Times.
In testimony before the House Intelligence Committee in 1975, CIA Director William Colby indicated that he also found Hunt’s activities distasteful. “I certainly would not countenance picking up speeches by another candidate and giving them to the White House,” Colby said.
After Hunt’s revelations were leaked to the press, Sen. Goldwater told Washington Post reporters that during the 1964 campaign, he had come to believe he was being spied on. “I just assumed it was one man or two men assigned at the direction of the President … It never bothered me,” he said. “I guess it should have, but knowing Johnson as I did, I never got upset about it.” Goldwater never suggested that the CIA’s spying had cost him the election.
Even in the heat of the ’64 campaign, as he thought he was being spied on, Goldwater never mentioned his concerns publicly, and even insisted that his aides kept quiet. Going public with the allegations would have distracted attention from his agenda, and absent any proof that surveillance was actually happening, complaints about being spied upon would’ve likely reinforced the common perception that he was paranoid.
