Hopefully this leads to a lot of cool posts! I was reading a very, very good book (one of my favorites) called
Republicans and Race: The GOP's Frayed Relationship With African Americans, 1945-1974, and I found this passage super interesting, and possibly enlightening to many. It is speaking of an opinion poll released before the 1956 elections ... keep in mind, Eisenhower had compiled a pretty impressive (on paper) civil rights record by this point, and even Truman's crowning civil rights achievement (desegregating the military) was really effectively implemented by the Eisenhower Administration. Anyway:
"Asked which party had done the most for blacks over the previous decade, 67 percent of African Americans identified the Democrats, and just 16 percent chose the Republicans" (pg. 73).
This is right after Brown v. Board, Ike's executive order 10590 and after Democrats picked an open segregationist as VP on their ticket to aggressively keep Southern support. I think it really shows how much of "civil rights" was actually viewed - at least by the Black community - as aggressive economic initiatives that would result in Blacks holding a more equal financial standing in society. This, IMO, explains why the GOP "gave up" on civil rights (to the extent that they did) ... they'd support the obvious measures like the CRA and VRA no problem, but they simply weren't willing to go against what their OWN constituents wanted, and that wasn't economic progressivism.
What interesting opinion polls have you come across that people might not have seen before??
