"Segregation in the active Armed Forces of the United States has been ended.
"For the first time in our history there is no segregation in veterans' hospitals and among civilians on naval bases"
"The Republican Party accepts the decision of the U.S. Supreme Court that racial discrimination in publicly supported schools must be progressively eliminated."
The Platform caps off this litany of achievements by repeating its self-congratulatory declaration: "This is an impressive record."
Yet nowhere in this menu do we find any of the names of the leaders of the civil rights movement -- Martin Luther King, Rosa Parks, Rev. Ralph Abernathy, John Lewis, Andrew Young -- all names and a movement that were well-known in 1956.
Moreover, the full implementation of most of the items on the GOP checklist would have to wait almost another decade -- for the coming of Lyndon Johnson. Under LBJ's leadership, Congress passed the Voting Rights Act in 1964, and the Civil Rights Act in 1965.
It's not difficult to identify this document as the product of Republicans. Yes, perhaps there is a bit of exaggeration here and there; after all, this is politics, not beanbag. And yes, the document does gloss over some of the most critical issues of those days. And yes again, maybe a lot of us would disagree with some of the policy prescriptions advanced here.
But this is not the work of crazies. It is the work of Republican advocates. And they don't feel they have to annihilate their opposition to make their points.
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