Letter: 'Big bad federal government' overturned racist state laws

Why do so many conservative Republicans in the South like to condemn the “big bad federal government” and praise “states rights” and complain about an activist Supreme Court?

Consider the modern Civil Rights movement. What were the great milestones that overturned segregation and expanded voting rights for Black people? There were presidential acts such as President Truman’s Executive Order 9981 (1948) that mandated the integration of the armed forces. There were the monumental Supreme Court decisions Brown v. Board of Education (1954) which called for integrated public schools, Browder v. Gayle (1956) which called for integrated bus seating, and Loving v Virginia (1967), which ended state laws banning interracial marriage. There were monumental Congressional acts such as the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which banned segregation in public businesses and the Voting Rights Act of 1965 which invalidated state practices that kept Black people from voting in large numbers.

All of these were acts of the “big bad federal government” that contradicted or overturned state laws. No wonder so many Black people in the South abandoned the Republican Party for the Democratic Party, and no wonder so many white Southerners became conservative Republicans.

I am not saying that conservative Republicans are all racists, but I must suspect that many of them have been, and that is one of the reasons so many white Southerners turned from the Democratic to the Republican Party in the 1960s.

Daniel Haulman, Montgomery

This article originally appeared on Montgomery Advertiser: Letter: 'Big bad federal government' overturned racist state laws