And, it was an Eisenhower appointee to the Supreme Court, Earl Warren (who remembers the "Impeach Earl Warren" billboards?), who guided the Brown decision through the court. That's the same Earl Warren who was the Republican governor of California when the Japanese were interned during WWII (upheld as constitutional by a Supreme Court largely appointed by Democrat FDR) and who, many argue, was appointed to the Supreme Court in order to be neutralized as one of Eisenhower's strongest intra-party political threats. And how about that Democrat, George Corley Wallace, who lost his first run for governor of Alabama as a "moderate" on civil rights issues and then allegedly told his inner circle that he'd never be "out-(n-word)ed" again, becoming forever identified once he was elected governor as the man physically defying Ass't US Atty Nicholas Katzenbach who, on behalf of a Democrat President, forced the integration of the University of Alabama?These days, we don't think of the term "states' rights" and "Democrats" as going together, but it was a different world then. Interestingly, it was not a Democrat, but Truman's Republican successor, Dwight Eisenhower, under whose administration the Supreme Court decision in the landmark integration case Brown v. The Topeka Board of Education was made (in favor of integration). And it was Eisenhower who sent federal troops to Little Rock, Arkansas to protect the first group of black high school students who attended an all-white school on court order.
CCF -- Trying to understand US politics via labels and, unfortunately, issues is an exercise in futility. Except for me...I'm principled. As we say in Chicago: Ubi est mea?
