Which came first - civil rights or public opinion?

[baby_bear]

An article in today's Seattle P-I about a huge rally against gay marriage in the Seattle Mariners' baseball field today, implies - states, really - that public opinion changes about civil rights for blacks changed before the laws were changed. My impression was the opposite. I thought Johnson went against the grain of public opinion in pushing for civil rights laws, and that once they were in place, public opinion followed. I realize that the facts differ by where one lived, but in general, didn't the federal action come despite, not because of, public opinion?

http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/local/171553_marriage01.html

<snip>
Momentum and history, however, are on the liberals' side, said Margaret Levi, a professor of political science at the University of Washington.

"In this country, at least until now, we have tended to liberalize rights over time," she said, pointing to the 1960s civil rights battle for blacks, when changes in public opinion presaged shifts in government and law.

</snip>

This is an interesting article, although flawed in a couple of respects. I just can't believe 35,000 "Christians" are going to rally against civil rights (marriage) for gays. Even if I were not "for" gay marriage, I would think I would be ashamed to gather en masse to wallow in my self-perceived, heterosexual "superiority."

s_m

[Guaranteed]

1. I wasn't around at the time,

but my guess is that you're right.

[Deja Q]

2. Civil rights had to have come first. Otherwise we'd

still have segregation, if not outright slavery of blacks.

Of course, the repukes are out to destroy the middle class and make us all slaves with slave wages that we can barely survive on...

[Political_Junkie]

3. The way I understand it

the public opinion that changed things was the opinion of the rest of the nation as opposd to the south-eastern U.S. where the Jim Crow laws were. Similar to the public opinion of slave labor in the North during the Civil War.
I don't know for sure if this is true, because I wasn't around either, but this is the way the story was taught in my History classes.

[RoyGBiv]

4. Long View

It depends on what you mean by changes in public opinion and how far back in time we go.

There is no doubt that some changes in public opinion preceded the civil rights laws, but this doesn't mean that the majority of public opinion had changed. In the early part of the century, WEB Dubois and others in creating the NAACP to publicize and fight against lynchings initiated a first major step in raising public awareness and changing the opinion of many. The involvement of blacks in WWI and WWII helped further, and the philosophical questions about race were placed center stage in the aftermath of WWII as the horrific extension of racialist logic as embodied in Nazi Germany's policies were help open to public view. And, remember, that the battles in favor of Civil Rights began well before the legislation, the court decisions, etc. The 1950's, despite the common perception portrayed in popular entertainment, was the decade during which the first full-scale battles for and against Civil Rights took place.

We could go back even further and explore the various intellectual debates in the late 19th century.

In short, the change in public opinion took place over a very long period of time. Legislation made its way into the effort in the middle of this shift and certainly helped to advance it, but it did not pre-date the shift entirely.

[baby_bear]

5. Apparently it's not a yes or no issue

Certainly there were pockets of bigotry in the U.S. who were vehemently against Johnson's push for civil rights. And it's not as if they don't still exist, to some extent, by any means.

I don't think legislators, whether state or federal, should wait for public opinion to change to protect civil rights, whether it's for women, blacks, gays or whomever. It just doesn't seem that many of them have the spines anymore. There are a few, surely - the AG in Massachusetts who won't support the governor's stance against gay marriage comes to mind - but at the federal level, it just doesn't seem that we have many truly principled representatives anymore.
I'm lucky to have Jim McDermott (Seattle) as my representative in the House, but he is in such a minority that he only gets attention when some right-winger gets outraged by him and he gets some press that way.

I just get discouraged by all the mean-spirited energy in this country these days. Like this Christian rally against gays here today.

Maybe if the Mariners were having a better season, I wouldn't be so glum!

s_m

[SarahB]

6. Civil Rights

Public opinion changes and wanes through the times which is why we have that little thing called a CONSTITUTION that's supposed to protect our civil rights. Too bad the current administration is now using it to line litter boxes. :mad:

[baby_bear]

7. But we had to have the Civil Rights Act

Apparently the Constitution was insufficient by itself to protect what we speak of as Consitutional rights, but such rights for blacks did not come about by courts' interpretation of the Constitution, but by Congress and the president in 1964, subsequently upheld by the court.
<snip>
(O)n November 27, 1963, addressing the Congress and the nation for the first time as president, Johnson called for passage of the civil rights bill as a monument to the fallen Kennedy. "Let us continue," he declared, promising that "the ideas and the ideals which so nobly represented must and will be translated into effective action." Moreover, where Kennedy had been sound on principle, Lyndon Johnson was the master of parliamentary procedure, and he used his considerable talents as well as the prestige of the presidency in support of the bill.

On February 10, 1964, the House of Representatives passed the measure by a lopsided 290-130 vote, but everyone knew that the real battle would be in the Senate, whose rules had allowed southerners in the past to mount filibusters that had effectively killed nearly all civil rights legislation. But Johnson pulled every string he knew, and had the civil rights leaders mount a massive lobbying campaign, including inundating the Capitol with religious leaders of all faiths and colors. The strategy paid off, and in June the Senate voted to close debate; a few weeks later, it passed the most important piece of civil rights legislation in the nation's history, and on July 2, 1964, President Johnson signed it into law.

Some members of Congress, however, worried whether the law would pass constitutional muster, since in 1883 the Supreme Court had voided the last civil rights measure, declaring such action beyond the scope of congressional power. They need not have worried this time. The Supreme Court accepted two cases on an accelerated basis and in both of them unanimously upheld the power of Congress under the Fourteenth Amendment to protect the civil rights of black Americans.

</snip>
http://usinfo.state.gov/usa/infousa/facts/democrac/39.htm