Abstract
Despite the role that Congress would play in the eventual passage of legislation like the Civil Rights Act 1964 and the Voting Rights Act 1965, its role during the war has traditionally been overshadowed by a focus on the steps towards racial equality taken by the Supreme Court and the White House. The war years did not pave the way for those later developments but instead represented a period of conservative retrenchment in Congress. Southern Democrats tightened their grip on the reins of power during the war. Inside key committees, they crushed many nascent efforts at reform; in the House and Senate, they worked with conservative Republican allies to stop the rest. In the end, southern Democrats succeeded in stalling meaningful civil rights legislation. As a result, congressional conservatives emerged from the war more confident in their abilities to prevent change and more determined to use them to defend white supremacy in the postwar era. Yet there was one unexpected legacy of conservative defiance. Incoming young liberal Democrats learned the importance of controlling congressional machinery.
Original language | English (US) |
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Title of host publication | Fog of War |
Subtitle of host publication | The Second World War and the Civil Rights Movement |
Publisher | Oxford University Press |
ISBN (Electronic) | 9780199932641 |
ISBN (Print) | 9780195382419 |
DOIs | |
State | Published - May 24 2012 |
All Science Journal Classification (ASJC) codes
- General Arts and Humanities
Keywords
- Civil rights act
- Congress
- Reform
- Southern democrats
- Voting rights act
- White house
- White supremacy