Jordan's Webstream

It was a dreary April morning that opened the 1964 World’s Fair in New York City. Rain was soaking the crowd, and many of the promised exhibits were not yet open at what was intended to be a cosmopolitan show of the United State’s industrial and commercial power.

Nonetheless, 10,000 people showed-up to marvel at a mechanical Abraham Lincoln, and other novelties. This, despite the fact that “massive demonstrations” had been threatened by civil rights groups, and there had been rumors of attempts to pull brake cords on the subway to disrupt the flow of traffic around the city.

The organizers of the demonstrations were surely disappointed by a turnout of just a few hundred “militant integrationists” who showed-up to protest. But it’s probably not much of a surprise, considering the climate of the civil rights fight which, by and large, seemed to have peaked the year before.

By the opening of the World’s Fair, it had been over eight years since Rosa Parks had refused to give up her seat on a public bus. The Freedom Rides were three years behind, and Martin Luther King, Jr.’s famous speech at the March on Washington was just a little over a year past, with King being selected as Time Magazine’s man of the year for 1963 as a result. Successes were beginning to stack, and a little over two months before this rainy April morning, the United States House of Representatives had passed H.R. 7152, their version of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

In his civil rights speech of June 11, 1963, President John F. Kennedy had asked for legislation “giving all Americans the right to be served in facilities which are open to the public,” as well as “greater protection for the right to vote.” After the bill was introduced by representative Emanuel Celler of New York, it was sent to committee where a number of provisions were added to strengthen the bill, including the authorization for the Attorney General to file lawsuits against the deprivation of any rights secured by the Constitution or U.S. law., a controversial measure that had been removed from two earlier civil rights acts.

Kennedy’s assassination left the bill’s passage in question, as segregationalists held up the bill through procedure. But Lyndon Johnson, who had stated just five days after the death of Kennedy, “No memorial oration or eulogy could more eloquently honor President Kennedy’s memory than the earliest possible passage of the civil rights bill for which he fought so long,” maneuvered the bill through to a vote in the House, where it passed handily by a vote of 290 to 130.

Just when it seemed like this landmark legislation was finally a foregone conclusion, after years of heavy slogging in the civil rights movement, the southern Democrats of the Senate launched a filibuster and held up the bill. Although pro-rights senators were well-prepared for this, the Senate was nonetheless immobilized under the strain of eight-hour speeches, and a rotating group of determined legislators. It appeared, at the time, that the bill may be weakened to make it more palatable to conservative southern Democrats who were ready to filibuster the proceedings indefinitely.

Meanwhile, at the World’s Fair in New York, Bayard Rustin (fresh off organizing the March on Washington), James Farmer (organizer of the Freedom Rides), and their band of picketers were doing their darnedest to disrupt the festivities. They marched with signs, conducted sit-ins blocking pavilions and clashed with the police, even injuring one with a kick to the face.

After a parade, and a multitude of speeches, President Johnson — a fierce advocate of the civil rights movement — took the stage to talk of world peace in the face of the Soviet Cold War, and an escalating Vietnam War. While he made no mention of the demonstrators, he at one point foreshadowed the passage of the Civil Rights Act, stating that the United States would soon be a nation “in which no man is handicapped by the color of his skin, or the nature of his belief.”

Despite the mounting success, the momentum on their side, a President expending political capital in the face of a looming election (which he won, but without the support of southern states, once solidly Democrat), and a Civil Rights Bill in congress that intended to sweep segregation off the table, the assembled demonstrators led by Rustin and Farmer still repeatedly interrupted Johnson’s speech with shouts of “Freedom Now!”

Rustin and Farmer, among 200 others, were arrested by that evening. Charges were dismissed against all but 30, including Rustin and Farmer, and of those, all pleaded guilty to disorderly conduct. The Judge suspended the sentences of the two leaders, telling them that he could not in good conscience give them jail time when they were known as “outstanding representatives of [their] cause.” Others received small fines, and the heckling — the leading disturbance mentioned by the New York Times in their coverage of the fair’s opening — was not even mentioned.

In comparison, one would think by the tone of criticism from progressives everywhere after the disruption at Obama’s fundraising gathering for Barbara Boxer, that gay and lesbian hecklers had hurled racial slurs. Compared to Tea Partiers, and widely condemned by bloggers as “disrespectful,” the gay and lesbian protesters who repeatedly interrupted the President to demand when “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” would be repealed were especially vilified by prominent African-American voices. Pam Spaulding said she was “unimpressed,” and two noted Los Angeles activists in the African-American community posted on their Facebook pages strongly-worded admonishments of the heckler’s actions and their lack of support for Obama’s agenda. Jonathan Capehart of the Washington Post questioned why the hecklers were not putting the heat on legislators who “hold the key” to repealing DADT.

Just a short review of history will remind anyone that, in fact, Presidents hold a great deal of power in negotiating a bill through Congress. From Johnson’s participation in the passage of the Civil Rights Act, to Obama’s fervent push on Health Care reform, the Executive indeed stands at a bully pulpit with the ability to compel congress to include the repeal of DADT in the Defense Authorization, an effort which is seemingly now being discouraged by the White House itself.

History is quite clear on the subject of disobedience and sometimes-questionable tactics for the purpose of achieving civil rights: when your cause is righteous, your actions are often questioned, but mostly justified.

© Jordan Krueger, 2010