Doug Henwood:
> It's often argued that the USG pushed for desegration in the South
> for Cold War reasons - it would have been hard to make friends in the
> Third World while Jim Crow still ruled.
To my recollection, the USG acted only when embarrassed, fearful of serious disorder, or driven by court decisions in cases brought by ordinary citizens.
In other words, it did not bully, it was bullied, if we want to use that word. The crucial events were often sparked by small numbers of people, in one case, the Montgomery bus boycott, by a single individual, none of whom had government power. Of course plenty of people rode into the government and other kinds of prominence on the back of the movement, but I'm not talking about that. In the various conflicts around Civil Rights, government was usually on the conservative side, from Bull Connor's dogs to the FBI hunting Martin Luther King. When it wasn't actively supporting the segregationists, it was whistling past the graveyard with its hands in its pockets. I'm astonished that this history has already been effaced.
-- Gordon