In response to the letter in the Monitor on April 2 headed “A flawed history of the South,” please let me unflaw someone’s idea of history.
Nothing really changed for the Democrats in the Deep South in 1948. It took many years. The Dems were in full control in the Deep South until at least the late 1970s.
Brown v. Board of Education was the unanimous vote of the Warren Supreme Court and was enforced by the Eisenhower administration (Republicans). It was Democratic Gov. Orval Faubus in 1957 with his National Guard troops who stood at the school house doors in Little Rock.
There were four civil rights bills passed in the late 1950s and ’60s, and Republicans generally voted in significantly higher percentages than Democrats in favor of them.
Specifically, in the Civil Rights Act of 1964, Republicans in the House voted 76 percent in favor; Democrats voted in favor by 60 percent. In the Senate the votes in favor were Republicans 82 percent and Democrats 69 percent.
It was George Wallace and Lester Maddox, two Democratic governors, who did their level best to defy that bill.
GLENN K. CURRIE
Concord