the Republicans wanted the 50's back but the police in some cities seem to

[hollysmom]

want to recreate the police segregation riots.

as a child I had highly politicized parents. Dad marched with Walter Reuther and when I was 4 they made me watch the McCarthy hearings when I wanted to watch cartoons - they said it was history and I would thank them - actually all I remember is wanting to watch cartoons.
But I watched the news with them and saw the KKK marching down the streets as if they owned them. Sure they were immune for any prosecution, the police turning fire hoses on marchers. Yep, I remember something about cops not showing their badges. It went on through the 50's and 60's and seemed to go under ground or coded later in the 70's when the laws change, Heck when I started working in NYC in the end of the 60's it was still legal to discriminate by color in jobs and in housing. How young and liberal and righteous the country seemed then. Now it is back to the dark ages where my brother can tell me he hates black people and unions to my face (my father was a local union president and desegregated the local union and the local Elks. All I could say was that Dad would be so disappointed in him. My closest relative and I don't talk much. And he has young children.
every thing old is new again - has the tea party won?

[merrily]

1. I am not sure if the country was liberal then. Maybe,

more liberals were willing to be arrested then. And liberals were more willing to protest against Democratic Presidents.

Between African Americans, including Black Muslims, CORE and SNCC, and many anti-Vietnam protestors, those in power were becoming uneasy. And, MLK, Jr. was coming around to the view that behind it all, it was about the rich and powerful versus the poor and powerless.

[hollysmom]

2. maybe I was younger and surrounded by young people but my parents and their friends

were very liberal and , of course, pro union.

[merrily]

3. Me, too.

My family-the entire family--parents, lone sibling, aunts, uncles, cousins--are Democrats.

When I posted, "I don't know," I really meant, "I don't know," not "it wasn't."

I think we get impressions from things that are publicized.

The civil rights movement then mobilized a lot of people. So did the Vietnam War. And the civil rights movement and the anti-war movement got a lot of ink and a lot of air time. But, a lot of the parents of those demonstrators had lived through the New Deal and WWII and were uber patriotic and horrified by what their kids were doing including drugs.. And it did not take long before Nixon was elected and, even after Watergate started hitting the fan, Nixon got overwhelmingly re-elected.

The rightists within the Democratic Party then tried to use Nixon's victories to undo the things that McGovern had instituted and put ultimate control of Presidential nominations into the hands of "super delegates." They did not succeed with the SD's until Reagan's victories, but they did succeed in undoing a lot of what McGovern had done.