Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton in addition to her misreadingÂ of the role of Dr King’s prominence in the civil rights movement, demonstrated additional partisan and revisionist history that is inaccurate. Revisionist history is the motive force behind historiography but it can be wrong.
In her assertion that it was war criminal Lyndon B. Johnson who “passed” the Civil Rights Act of 1964, she states President Kennedy had been “hopeful” in doing so. What does that mean? Mr Kennedy (1961-1963)Â for several years resisted sending a civil rights bill to the Congress because he was afraid it would alienate southern voters. His own Nixonian southern strategy was evident in his appointment of racist, apartheid judges to lifetime appointments on the federal bench. Senator Clinton is attempting to state that idealism means nothing; implementation means everything and that the former is irrelevant or certainly secondary in the success of the latter. Well, being “hopeful” is hardly decisive presidential action but pusillanimity. While J.F.K. did assist James Meredith in integrating the University of Mississippi and ultimately supported the epochal August 1963 March on Washington, his presidency was not particularly decisive or proactive in the area of civil rights.
President Dwight David Eisenhower (1953-1961)
Hillary Clinton also dismissed entirely President Dwight D. Eisenhower’s role in the civil rights struggleÂ even though he sent troops in 1957Â to Little Rock, Arkansas to desegregate Central High School and was president when the significantÂ 1957 Civil Rights Act was passed, the first civil rights law since the 1866 Reconstruction act. Yes it is true Mr Eisenhower was not generallyÂ sympathetic to Brown v. Topeka desegregation guidelines and was not a strong supporter of civil rights, but his record is not devoid of any accomplishment and she should have mentioned the civil rights act passed during his presidency.
As a senator who voted for war in October 2002Â and subsequently lies on Meet the Press, that her vote was NOT a vote for the possibility of preemptive war, I can understand her dismissive statement of President Eisenhower. The latter warned against the military-industrial-complex to which the New York senator is so completely intertwined as she assumes the basic virtues of American imperialism, expansionism and its virtually unlimited right to use force.