During MSNBC's Tuesday coverage of George Floyd's funeral in Houston, Joy Reid took the opportunity to revise history and push the idea that all the racists became Republicans after the historic 1964 Civil Rights Act.
Reid explained, "It was Lyndon Johnson completing the work that Kennedy began. That act would have been a 1963 act had it been able to go through. But the resistance of white segregationists, at the time white Democrats in the south, people who ultimately moved into the Republican Party in outrage over the betrayal by Lyndon Johnson, who betrayed his region and his race by pushing through the martyred Kennedy's bill after the martyrdom of so many black men and women."
At least Reid admitted that the primary opponents of the Civil Rights Act were Democrats, which is more than some others in the media are willing to admit.
But, while it's true that some segregationists Democrats, such as Strom Thurmond, became Republicans, most did not. If all the segregationists became Republicans, why did Joe Biden get in trouble for fondly recalling his work with fellow racist Democrats? As the New York Times recalled in June of 2019:
Several Democratic presidential candidates sharply criticized Joseph R. Biden Jr. on Wednesday for invoking two Southern segregationist senators by name as he defended himself over accusations of being “old-fashioned” and fondly recalled the “civility” of the Senate in the 1970s and 1980s.
The implication of Reid's assertion is that racism still plagues the Republican Party today as a result of racist Southerners switching their party affiliation does not explain how, even after opposition to civil rights supposedly turned the South red, the South voted for Jimmy Carter in 1976 and, to a lesser extent, Bill Clinton in 1992 and 1996. Maybe there are other reasons the South votes overwhelming Republican.
It is possible to honor the life of George Floyd without twisting history for your own ends. Unfortunately, Joy Reid failed in that on Tuesday.
Here is a transcript for the relevant portion of Reid's June 9 remarks:
MSNBC
George Floyd Funeral Coverage
12:37 PM ET
JOY REID: It was that act, that after Kennedy himself was slain, that became the Civil Rights Act we all know, the Civil Rights Act of '64. It was Lyndon Johnson completing the work that Kennedy began. That act would have been a 1963 act had it been able to go through. But the resistance of white segregationists, at the time white Democrats in the south, people who ultimately moved into the Republican Party in outrage over the betrayal by Lyndon Johnson, who betrayed his region and his race by pushing through the martyred Kennedy's bill after the martyrdom of so many black men and women, the beatings, the terrorism quite frankly by the Klan, which by the way is still not a terrorist organization, at least according to the United States government.
