A Precarious Bandwagon

According to polls and commentary in the press, Rockefeller began 1963 as the presumed Republican presidential nominee, but to maintain that lead, he moderated his positions to avoid alienating mainstream Republicans. Unlike his first presidential bid when he critiqued the Republican Party, Rockefeller emphasized party unity and tempered some of his critiques of the GOP’s civil rights record in hopes of repairing his relationship with party establishment. Gallup poll takers across the country from November 1962 to April 1963 found that among a field of five Republicans, including Rockefeller, Goldwater, Michigan governor George Romney, Pennsylvania governor William Scranton, and Oregon governor Mark Hatfield, Rockefeller and Goldwater consistently led the pack with the governor far in the lead.⁴ Rockefeller’s lead seemed even more secure because Hatfield and Romney were less well known as newcomers to politics and Scranton—a favorite son candidate—expressed no interest in running for president. In December 1962, for example, Rockefeller led a Gallup poll with 42 percent followed by Goldwater with 14 percent.⁵ Rockefeller was the clear front-runner; he experienced the greatest popularity in the West and East but also, to a lesser extent, in southern states where his numbers remained strong. Roscoe Drummond of the Washington Post concluded that although some conservatives “bitterly opposed” Rockefeller because they thought him identical to Kennedy, his reputation as a vote getter could win him the Republican nomination.⁶

As the front-runner, Rockefeller traveled the nation giving speeches intended to convince Republicans that he was conservative or, at least, closer to the mainstream of the party. He criticized Kennedy whenever possible and advocated policies that situated him to the right of Kennedy in relation to the nation’s economy and Cold War national security. Lloyd Free, a political analyst whom Rockefeller hired for the campaign, recommended Rockefeller appeal to Republicans’ traditional loyalties by speaking on the economy and the administration’s foreign policy in an effort to present himself as an alternative to Kennedy. While Rockefeller should remain largely positive, it was time, in Free’s estimation, to take a few “well-calculated jabs and sideswipes at Kennedy and his administration,” with the intention of uniting the party behind his candidacy and convincing skeptical conservatives that he was not too far to the left. George Hinman, Rockefeller’s longtime political adviser and special counsel for Rockefeller Family & Associates, called these trips a “dehorning” process, where Rockefeller could show party regulars that he was not dangerous.⁷

In March, Rockefeller ventured west revisiting some of the midwestern states where he received the coolest reception when he considered an official presidential bid in the winter of 1959. His first and possibly most significant stop in early 1963 was a trip to Milwaukee to speak at a $100-a-plate Republican fundraising dinner. In contrast to his previous visit to the state, Republicans welcomed Rockefeller warmly. A segment of the state’s conservatives, however, were still decidedly against Rockefeller, this time supporting Goldwater.⁸ Rockefeller gave a speech intended to allay conservatives’ fears and encourage unity within the party, an important message from a man who was considered a divisive party spoiler in 1960. Laurence Stern of the Washington Post observed that “it was [Rockefeller’s] exhortation for Party unity, for the pursuit of ‘free enterprise in a climate of growth,’ ” and his calls for local rather than federal solutions to government problems that drew the heaviest applause. In sharp contrast to his last foray into national politics when he criticized his Republican rival, Rockefeller reserved his criticism for the Kennedy administration. He also met with Nixon privately in New York City before leaving for Wisconsin. As for Goldwater, Rockefeller praised the senator, calling him one of the “outstanding men” who should be actively considered a contender for the 1964 presidential nomination.⁹ Despite the positive response in Milwaukee, Rockefeller’s appearance had a limited affect. Free interviewed Milwaukee residents before and after the visit and found that Kennedy’s approval rating declined seven points from 64 to 57 percent—suggesting that Rockefeller lowered Kennedy’s numbers—but Rockefeller continued to trail the president by thirty points. If Rockefeller were going to convince party professionals who supported Goldwater that he was the only Republican who could defeat Kennedy, he would need to demonstrate that he was a real threat to the president.¹⁰

Rockefeller’s critique of Kennedy’s economic policies did strike a conservative tone likely to surprise his constituents in New York, but his economic proposals provided only an incremental contrast with the president. He advocated for a $10 billion tax cut that would become effective on July 1, 1963, with $7.5 billion going to individuals and the remainder to corporations. This plan was in opposition to Kennedy’s plan for a tax cut that would be spread out over three years. Rockefeller made sure to discuss his plan using the phrase “fiscal integrity” to appeal to “GOP fundamentals,” while insisting that government spending would be held at current levels. When asked where he would cut spending, Rockefeller said he would postpone items that were not high priority, but he refused to name any specific low-priority items.¹¹ When asked if he would delay introducing social legislation until the budget was balanced, he said no, explaining that not all social legislation costs money. Rockefeller explained that there would be money “to meet urgent social problems” once taxes were cut, the budget was balanced, and incentives and confidence were returned to the economy. Journalist Marquis Childs wrote that he was surprised by Rockefeller’s calls for tax cuts and fiscal austerity because they were the antithesis of the 1958 Rockefeller Brothers Fund reports’ recommendations. The reports had recommended an increase in total government cash expenditures from $114 billion to $203 billion between 1957 and 1967 to help states with mounting indebtedness created by communities that consistently rejected tax increases despite being unable to meet their growing populations’ needs.¹² While Rockefeller labored to distinguish himself from Kennedy, Walter Lippmann observed that both leaders’ proposals were based on Keynesian economics. They asserted that a tax cut, although initially creating a deficit, would ultimately produce more tax revenue from an expanding economy making it possible to balance the budget.¹³

Rockefeller did not adopt a less liberal stance on federal civil rights legislation, but he refrained from critiquing his own party’s mixed record on civil rights at what remained a critical moment in the fight for civil rights. This was not Rockefeller’s first time refusing to draw attention to the Republican Party’s inconsistencies for the sake of partisanship, but his silence in early 1963 obscured a troubling and foundational shift occurring within the national party. On February 12, 1963, Rockefeller spoke at two gatherings commemorating Lincoln’s birthday. The first was a $100-a-plate black-tie fundraiser organized by the New York County Republican Committee. The second was a larger $25-a-plate fundraiser held by the Kings County Republican Committee where Massachusetts attorney general Edward W. Brooke, the nation’s first African American to be elected state attorney general, gave a speech. Rockefeller touted the Republican Party’s foundation in a “deep-rooted belief in and concern for equality and human dignity” and enumerated New York’s civil rights laws that were passed under Dewey and a Republican-controlled legislature. He also mentioned the passage of antidiscrimination laws related to private housing, commercial space, and job training during his own administration. Rockefeller went on to criticize Kennedy’s reliance on “high publicity” administrative actions such as his intervention in James Meredith’s attempt to desegregate the University of Mississippi instead of introducing new legislation or supporting bills introduced by Democratic members of Congress. In comparison, Rockefeller noted that Senators Javits and Keating had also introduced civil rights bills that the Democratic-controlled sessions let languish in late 1960 and early 1961. Rockefeller concluded that despite Kennedy’s pledges, Democratic control of congressional committees, and Democratic majorities in the House and Senate, the Democrats remained divided over civil rights.¹⁴ Rockefeller praised his party’s civil rights record while offering an effective critique of the Kennedy administration for comparison, but members of his staff suggested he make a different speech that would have revealed that Republicans were, like Democrats, similarly split on civil rights.

Elmer A. Carter, who served as chairman of New York’s SCAD from 1959 to 1961, had encouraged Rockefeller to use that year’s customary Lincoln Day commemoration as an opportunity to warn Republicans about an effort in the South to gain support from white Democratic voters by rejecting the party’s traditional support for African American freedoms. With this in mind, Carter encouraged Rockefeller’s speechwriter Hugh Morrow to include an anecdote illustrating the Republican Party’s commitment to African Americans in the governor’s speech planned for the New York County Republican Committee Lincoln Day Dinner. Carter explained, “It was in the heat of a Republican campaign some years after the Civil War when Frederick Douglass, who had been appointed by President Hayes as U.S. Marshall of the District of Columbia and by President Harrison as Minister to Haiti, said to an audience of Negroes, ‘The Republican Party is the ship; all else is the sea.’ ” The speech would also provide the perfect opportunity for Rockefeller to reiterate a statement he had made in previous speeches vowing “that no temporary political advantage would prompt him or lead him to abandon the historic principles of civil rights which the Republican Party had enunciated in 1860.”¹⁵ This was an important issue for Carter, an African American Republican, who believed the party was turning away from its traditional support for civil rights. Carter was one of the original members of SCAD named by Dewey at its inception in 1945. By 1953, Carter, a commissioner from the New York Fair Employment Practices Commission, was the first African American nominated by the Republican Party to run as a Republican candidate for Manhattan Borough president.¹⁶ Carter’s concern that his party was dissociating itself from civil rights was not merely caused by a fear that Republican voters were becoming resentful of the civil rights movement, although there were recent newspaper reports to that effect. Rather, Carter had received word from a fellow Black Republican that the rising popularity of the party in the South was the direct result of segregationists usurping the party.

Party leaders had hailed the midterm elections of November 1962 because the Republican Party experienced successes in the South that were unseen since Reconstruction, but there were signs this was a result of shifting racial politics within the party. Republicans won elections for local offices along with seats in state legislatures and Congress. The Republican Party gained house seats in Florida, Texas, Tennessee, and North Carolina, and demonstrated great strength in cities such as Dallas, Texas, where Republicans won all six state house seats from the district. Hedrick Smith of the New York Times wrote that “many victorious Republicans ran on platforms of economic conservatism, with subtle undertones of segregationism.” I. Lee Potter, chairman of the Republican National Committee’s Operation Dixie, was so encouraged by the results in Tennessee that he declared that party gains had “shattered for all time the so-called Democratic Solid South.”¹⁷ The Republican National Committee organized Operation Dixie in 1957 to expand on Eisenhower’s popularity among southern white voters. By the 1962 election cycle, the Republican National Committee’s efforts garnered historic successes in the South, as Kennedy’s support for civil rights angered white southerners.¹⁸ While the Times noted “subtle segregationism” in southern Republicans’ success, Carter received an account that attributed the advances to segregationist interests more explicitly.

George W. Lee of Memphis, Tennessee, a lifelong African American Republican and grand commissioner of education in the Improved Benevolent and Protective Order of Elks of the World, informed Carter of a racist agenda to usurp the Republican Party in the South. Lee shared with Carter a copy of a letter he had sent to Congressman Robert A. Taft Jr.—he had also forwarded the letter to Rockefeller—and requested that Carter ask Rockefeller to respond. Lee wrote, “We are fighting a last ditch battle in the South against great odds, and unless we get support from northern interest, the Republican Party will be taken over lock, stock, and barrel by the Klu Kluxers [sic], the John Birchers and other extreme rightwing reactionaries.” Lee had sent the letter to the congressman in response to Taft warning the Republican Party not to compromise itself in an attempt to woo the South. He explained that these gains were the result of “right wing radicals” in the Democratic Party joining the Republican Party in an attempt to create an all-white party in the South that could counter the growing liberalism in the Democratic Party. According to Lee, Republicans who adhered to “the true principles of the Party” were concerned about the party’s success in the South. “The leaders of Operation Dixie,” he explained, “are not conducting their organizational efforts by advocating principles of the GOP platform or the progressive republicanism advocated by the Eisenhower administration.” Lee said that allowing Democrats turned Republicans to transform the GOP into the “first major all white political party” would be a mistake and that the Republican Party could find success in 1964, if not in the South, in the industrial North, with Rockefeller as the standard-bearer. The lifelong Republican hoped that with Rockefeller at its helm, the party would reject this segregationist strategy and embrace “middle of the road” Republicanism that could appeal to Black voters.¹⁹ Although Rockefeller had challenged his party on civil rights before, he decided to stick to his typical partisan civil rights speech that portrayed the Republican Party as unequivocally in support of advancing civil rights.

The day before Rockefeller was scheduled to give his Lincoln Day speech, Morrow sent an addition to the text of the speech that developed further the case against the Kennedy administration but also alluded to the Republican Party’s uncertain future in relation to civil rights. Morrow wrote the governor, “Here is a nine-minute insert in your basic political speech which you could either use as an opener or hold.… George Hinman … heartily approves—I have plowed some new ground re the South and felt his policy clearance was essential.” The revised speech acknowledged that although the Republican Party “was, is, and must remain the party of Abraham Lincoln,” there were Republicans who wanted to “compromise on these principles” and the party’s traditional commitment to civil rights.²⁰ Morrow’s addendum called for Rockefeller to address the tactics of Operation Dixie and argue that the Republican Party could make gains in the South without compromising on civil rights—or turning away from a moderate Republican such as himself—by focusing on other Republican principles that would attract a southern voter. Rather than discuss the growing divide in the Republican Party, Rockefeller touted the civil rights initiatives of fellow moderates like Javits, Keating, and John Lindsay. Many Republican leaders had expressed support for civil rights legislation at various points in their careers (e.g., Nixon), but it was unclear how many would be willing to risk jeopardizing Republican gains in the South or alienating their constituencies for an uncertain political yield.

Rockefeller’s partisan civil rights speeches drew criticism from those who expected him to address the inconsistencies within his own party. A few weeks after Rockefeller’s Lincoln Day speech, he spoke at an NAACP rally in Albany, New York, where he reiterated his case against Kennedy’s civil rights record. He noted that Kennedy had failed to fulfill his promises regarding civil rights such as supporting federal legislation establishing a Fair Employment Practices Commission, granting the attorney general the power to file civil injunction suits in federal court, or strengthening and making permanent the power of the Federal Civil Rights Commission.²¹ In an editorial titled, “A Bipartisan Guilt,” the New York Post supported Rockefeller’s call for action but highlighted his silence on Republican responsibility for the lack of new civil rights legislation. The editorial criticized Rockefeller for critiquing Democrats while failing to admonish his “backward GOP brethren” who had recently banded together with southern Democrats, as they had on numerous other occasions, to block an attempt to require fewer votes to break a filibuster making it easier to force a vote on a bill. The New York Post noted that although the governor had been speaking on a variety of national and international issues, he had “issued no flaming manifestoes designed to promote the fight against the filibuster.”²² The New York Post was willing to concede Rockefeller’s criticisms of Kennedy, but he needed to keep his own party accountable as well.

Rockefeller’s Loss, Goldwater’s Gain

A decision in Rockefeller’s personal life delivered a blow to his campaign that weakened his position in the party in the spring as conflicts over civil rights flared up again in the South. On May 4, 1963, Rockefeller, who had divorced his first wife a year and a half before, married Margaretta “Happy” Fitler Murphy, a former campaign volunteer and recently divorced mother of four with whom he was presumed to have been having an affair. Happy Rockefeller’s first husband, who was affiliated with the Rockefeller Institute, gained full custody of their four children who ranged in age from eleven years to eighteen months.²³ Although he would not be the first divorced presidential nominee—Democrats nominated two divorced men on three occasions—Rockefeller’s remarriage to a divorcée would set him apart. The news upset the presidential nomination race and gave people reason to reconsider their support for the governor—with negative results. Rockefeller was the expected nominee, but there were always significant challenges that ranged from opposition from conservatives to doubts that he could beat Kennedy. A controversial remarriage did not demolish the Rockefeller candidacy, but it did provide convenient ammunition for his detractors.

Rockefeller’s remarriage to a woman who gave up custody of her young children would draw ire in any period, but it was unclear how the development would impact Rockefeller’s career in an era when the press avoided covering male politicians’ personal lives in detail.²⁴ A lack of intense scrutiny in the press and his 1962 reelection after his divorce from his wife of thirty-one years may have given Rockefeller the impression that his personal life would not harm his political career.²⁵ Despite unflattering details about his divorce becoming known, Rockefeller said little about his personal life and went on to win a sizable reelection victory. Rockefeller did not escape without some criticism, but his divorce appeared to have had little effect on his political future throughout 1962. On May 2, 1963, newspapers such as the New York Times and Washington Post reported that Washington, D.C. Republican national committeeman Carl L. Shipley said that many of the voters he had spoken to had said Rockefeller’s impending marriage would be political suicide. He told the press that he agreed, but there was dissent among Republican chairmen across the country who were unsure what would be the outcome.²⁶ The hope within the Rockefeller team was that any negative impact would wear off in a few months. Rockefeller and his bride flew to Venezuela for a seventeen-day honeymoon on his private ranch in Chirgua, even inviting the press who eagerly photographed them.

While Rockefeller was on his honeymoon, his aides were optimistic that he would be able to repair any damage to his reputation. Staffers, including Free and the assemblage referred to as the Public Relations Group, convened to analyze the repercussions of the governor’s wedding and develop strategy for his campaign. Free, who summarized their conclusions for Rockefeller, wrote encouragingly regarding the remarriage: “As you know, the initial press reaction ha[s] been much friendlier in general than I had dared expect. Nevertheless, I still anticipate a backlash in terms of public opinion in certain sections of the country, and especially from some of the more hidebound church elements.” Rockefeller and his advisers believed there would be ample opportunity to repair any losses. Free’s main recommendation was for the governor to continue to present himself as an “economizer.” Free suggested that in lieu of introducing any costly new programs, the governor could announce a conference on crime or find an organization to give the governor an award honoring his record on education or civil rights to improve his public profile.²⁷

Rockefeller’s remarriage eventually fueled numerous attacks on the governor, but his marriage was not the only event that occurred in this period that was likely to impact his nomination run. The day before Rockefeller’s imminent remarriage, Joseph Alsop in his Washington Post column wrote that the governor’s liberal race record was the main obstacle to his nomination. Alsop explained, “The plain truth of the matter is that Rockefeller’s heaviest single handicap, with great numbers of professional Republican politicians, is his aggressively and consistently liberal record on the racial issue. On many other subjects, he has recently been sounding a neo-conservative note; but on this subject he stands four-square with Sen. Jacob Javits.” Even though this position had served him well in New York, Alsop continued, it was the reason why leaders of both parties predicted that if he did receive the nomination, he would lose all of the southern states. The volatility of the race issue was a major reason why Kennedy still had not introduced new civil rights legislation. Rockefeller’s remarriage would cause party professionals, Alsop predicted, to reassess whether he was the best nominee but not to write him off altogether. The remarriage did, however, damage the aura of certainty that had fueled his nomination run. Given reason to hesitate, party professionals were more likely to question the wisdom of nominating a politician who would already have a difficult time defeating a popular incumbent. Rockefeller’s liberal stance on civil rights made many Republicans fear that he was too similar to Kennedy and would be unlikely to win votes in the South—the region where Kennedy was most vulnerable and Goldwater was the strongest.²⁸

While early May marked a milestone in Rockefeller’s personal life, a bigger story that threatened the nation’s social order dominated the news and complicated Rockefeller’s candidacy. On May 3, 1963, the nation read and watched reports of a civil rights protest in Birmingham, Alabama that devolved into stark violence when dogs and the spray of fire hoses were used to attack demonstrators. The world took notice as five hundred youths were arrested under the direction of segregationist Bull Connor, Birmingham’s commissioner of public safety. On May 5, the New York Times front page was dominated by continued daily coverage of the melee in Alabama alongside a story announcing Rockefeller’s remarriage.²⁹ Although Goldwater’s approval ratings had climbed slowly in the spring, in hindsight, Rockefeller’s staff blamed his precipitous decline in the polls and Goldwater’s simultaneous increase after his marriage to backlash inspired by the Birmingham riots. During the week that Rockefeller had married, the polling data revealed a narrow lead of 6 percentage points between Rockefeller and Goldwater. Two weeks later, only three points divided the two front-runners. By June, Rockefeller’s lead dwindled to 1 percent, and by July, Goldwater overtook Rockefeller for the first time with 31 percent to Rockefeller’s 27 percent.³⁰ It is unclear what specifically motivated the shift in the polls, but Rockefeller’s loss was not the gain of fellow moderate contenders like Romney and Scranton, whose records on race mirrored his own. Instead, Goldwater, a known opponent of federal civil rights legislation who was associated with the southern effort to maintain segregation, quickly overtook Rockefeller in the polls. Until May 1963, it appeared that the Republican Party was prepared to accept a Rockefeller nomination. Rockefeller was willing to adjust his message to appease party members, particularly regarding fiscal conservatism and criticism of Kennedy, but he remained consistent in supporting civil rights, a major concern for conservatives.

The Politics of a Moral Crisis

On the evening of June 11, 1963, President Kennedy informed the nation that it faced “a moral crisis” that demanded Congress pass new civil rights legislation. Kennedy’s statement, however delayed, was resolute, but legislators from both parties would disagree on whether the federal government should do more to address civil rights violations. The president said he came to this conclusion after he sent National Guardsmen to protect two African American students who sought to desegregate the University of Alabama. Kennedy announced—after two and a half years of failing to introduce new civil rights legislation—he would ask Congress “to make a commitment it ha[d] not fully made in this century” to end segregation and discrimination.³¹ The spring of 1963 had been a particularly turbulent period when local authorities used brute force to maintain the racial status quo and Blacks responded in self-defense unlike in the past when they had refrained from retaliation. Kennedy emphasized that inequality was not a regional problem relegated to diner counters; he said African Americans nationwide experienced unemployment at rates two and three times greater than whites. He attributed many of these injustices to a persistently segregated educational system despite the Supreme Court’s Brown v. Board of Education decision nine years prior.

The following week, Kennedy ended his practice of appeasing southern Democrats and presented Congress with a far-reaching omnibus civil rights bill calling for desegregation in education, public accommodations, employment, and voting. Specifically, the president’s bill called for enforcement of laws to protect voting rights, a ban on discrimination in privately owned public accommodations, power for the attorney general to join lawsuits against segregated school systems, a proposal for a new Community Relations Service to seek voluntary compliance, and an extension for the Civil Rights Commission. The most controversial element of the bill called for the desegregation of privately owned public spaces based on the premise that the federal government was obligated to eliminate discriminatory practices under the commerce clause of the Constitution and under the equal protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. The resolve of the activists who comprised the civil rights movement paired with escalating violence in the South had finally convinced Kennedy to fulfill his campaign promise. Kennedy referred to the rising threat of violence several times during his speech and warned Blacks to refrain from retaliation and marches that could result in violence. Only hours after Kennedy’s speech, however, White Citizens’ Council member Byron De La Beckwith murdered NAACP field secretary Medgar Evers in his driveway, underscoring the relentless violence that African Americans experienced at the hands of white terrorists.³²

With the objections of southern Democrats widely expected, the press focused on the GOP to see if it would provide, particularly in the Senate, the bipartisan support needed to pass Kennedy’s civil rights bill. Despite the party’s inconsistent record, the first civil rights legislation since Reconstruction had been passed under the Eisenhower administration, but it had been stripped of the elements to ensure enforcement. Eisenhower introduced what became the 1957 civil rights bill with little fanfare, yet it passed largely because of the exhaustive work of Senator Lyndon Johnson aided by the common knowledge that little would change because of it. Even though both parties had labored for decades to appease the overtly racist legislators and lawmakers of the South, the press questioned whether the Republican Party, with Goldwater as its rising star, would become the “White Man’s Party” as Kennedy associated his party with the nation’s fight for civil rights. In the Senate, Republican support for civil rights was pivotal because twenty-five of the thirty-three Republican senators would be needed for cloture or suspension of discussion to stop a southern filibuster intended to prevent a vote on the bill.

Although the issue of civil rights did not divide Republicans as starkly as it did Democrats, it evinced a range of responses for and against the bill that revealed significant disagreements within the party. Numerous Republican senators such as Senator Leverett Saltonstall of Massachusetts expressed support for Illinois senator Everett Dirksen’s alternate civil rights bill, which did not call for desegregation of privately owned public spaces.³³ Dirksen opposed the public accommodations provision because, he argued, it was an invasion of private rights without due process of law. Dirksen intended for his bill to avoid cloture—although the bill would still require substantial compromise with Democrats to gain passage—but as a result, he proposed a bill that civil rights activists would consider symbolically and practically inadequate.³⁴ Other Republicans offered unqualified support for new civil rights legislation such as Keating who said the Republican Party must lead the struggle for freedom rather than be a “sympathetic observer” if it hoped to play an important role in America and win the 1964 presidential election. Rockefeller also offered unequivocal support for Kennedy’s legislation. He called for swift bipartisan support for Kennedy’s civil rights bill, calling the bill “an essential first step in assuring full equality of opportunity for all Americans.” Rockefeller went on to say that if Kennedy had acted sooner, some of the tension in the nation could have been avoided.³⁵ Conservative Ohio congressman Robert Taft Jr., the son of the late Republican presidential hopeful Robert A. Taft, supported the bill as well. While speaking at a gathering in Newark, New Jersey, Taft criticized Kennedy for not going far enough in his civil rights program by omitting a fair employment practices provision and deemphasizing the public accommodations phase of the program. Taft also gave an interview with the Newark Evening News where he said Goldwater did not represent the consensus of the Republican Party. He went on to say that his father would have been somewhere between Rockefeller and Goldwater.³⁶

There was also outspoken Republican opposition to federal civil rights legislation—namely, from Goldwater, who was an important symbol of opposition for his burgeoning faction of supporters. Initially, he had opposed any new civil rights legislation, but at the time Kennedy introduced his bill, Goldwater was willing to accept portions of it such as making the Civil Rights Commission permanent.³⁷ Earlier in Goldwater’s career, he had supported desegregation laws in Phoenix, Arizona and at various points had said that he opposed racism on moral grounds; however, his record in the Senate did not reflect that position. In 1957, for example, Goldwater helped his friend Strom Thurmond break the record for the longest filibuster by taking the Senate floor long enough for Thurmond to take breaks.³⁸ Goldwater’s voting record in the Senate included voting against the Eisenhower civil rights bill in 1957; he voted for the Thurmond amendment to prohibit withholding federal aid to segregated schools in 1961; and he voted against attempts to enact anti–poll tax legislation in 1960 and 1962.³⁹ It was reported that Goldwater considered the effort to end desegregation a moral issue rather than legislative and that the president should appeal to the national conscience, perhaps going on a speaking tour in support of equality. Another Republican in Congress who opposed the bill was House Judiciary Committee member Richard H. Poff, who joined with a fellow Virginian Democrat, William M. Tuck, to attempt to block the bill in committee on the grounds that the bill was an “unconstitutional and needless invasion of the rights of the people.”⁴⁰

Campaigning against Great Odds

On July 14, 1963, Rockefeller publicly admonished his party for allowing a “radical right” to infiltrate its ranks and subvert the party’s principles in hopes of gaining votes outside of the industrialized North. “The Republican Party stands today at the crossroads of its destiny,” he declared. “Its destiny is to save the nation by first saving itself.” Once again, Rockefeller was challenging the direction of his party but in a way that was more deeply critical than expressing concern that party leaders had not articulated its plans forcefully enough as he did in 1960. The speech, which the New York Times referred to as a statement “on the problems of the Republican party,” had three main ideas. First, the radical right, represented by groups such as the John Birch Society, was seeking to fundamentally warp the principles of the Republican Party by encouraging it to adopt its message of hate. Second, the radical right was encouraging the GOP to embrace states’ rights, which he said was a pretext for racism, as a pathway to appeal to racist and segregationist voters. Third, Rockefeller warned that if the majority of Republicans did not endeavor to stop this movement, the GOP would lose its Lincolnian heritage as a purveyor of equality and individual rights. Rockefeller directed a couple of criticisms at the Democratic Party and mentioned the impending 1964 Republican National Convention, but his purpose was not to give a typical campaign speech; rather, it was to criticize the “radical right” and the Republican Party’s failure to root it out. Rockefeller said the recent convention of the Young Republican National Federation (YRNF), which met in San Francisco, was evidence of the John Birch Society and “others of the radical right lunatic fringe” using intimidation tactics to overtake the Republican Party. The YRNF met in San Francisco on June 26 and 27 with Goldwater as keynote speaker.⁴¹ According to Rockefeller, these organizations, which he equated with the “radical left,” offered no solutions to the nation’s problems. He argued that members of the “radical right” also advocated for states’ rights as a pretext for defending segregation and racism. This politically amoral and well-financed minority threatened Republican traditions by encouraging the party to “write off” racial minorities, the industrial North, and big cities in favor of building a new Republican constituency in the South and West “based on racism and sectionalism.” Rockefeller warned that such a strategy would lead to the party’s destruction. Rockefeller praised federalism and the sovereignty of states, but he said it could not be used to trample on the rights of Americans.⁴²

Rockefeller critiqued his party, but he did so in a way that avoided the reality that numerous mainstream Republicans, including some legislators in New York, were prepared to turn away from the party’s “Lincolnian heritage,” as related to a defense of African Americans’ rights. He also provided a defense for people like himself, who he said had remained quiet too long for the sake of unity. According to the governor, the majority of the party fell into three categories: those who were either complacent, too afraid to complain, or “fantastically short-sighted” and opportunistic. As a leader in the GOP, Rockefeller sought to orient the party to the motivations of its founding, which he associated with abolitionism and equality. “The Republican party is the party of Lincoln,” explained Rockefeller. “It was founded to make men free and equal in opportunity. It is the party of all men, the only truly national party in America. For that party to turn its back on its heritage and its birthright would be an act of political immorality rarely equaled in human history.” According to Rockefeller, the “radical right,” which he portrayed as outsiders, were determined to take over the party of Abraham Lincoln, Theodore Roosevelt, and Robert Taft, who kept the party “fiscally responsible,” “humanely principled,” and situated within “mainstream American thought.” Rockefeller blamed the John Birch Society, but this framing of the intraparty conflict obscured the commonly held, although minority, position that the party should not advocate for enhanced civil rights legislation. Days before Rockefeller’s speech, members of his staff expressed concern that Rockefeller could give the impression that the party had already been subverted. To avoid this perspective, Rockefeller was to identify the “clear and present danger” while saying leadership like himself could prevent the party’s transformation. Despite Rockefeller’s desire to lead from within—he wanted the nomination after all—few elected Republicans supported his message publicly.⁴³

Rather than unite the party behind Rockefeller, Republican leaders favored neutrality over public support for his statement. Senator Thruston Morton agreed that there had been a recent shift to problematic aggression among some in the party but immediately qualified his statement saying that the radical right was of little consequence.⁴⁴ Senate Minority Leader Dirksen said that although all Republicans had the right to express their opinion, the party would ultimately rally around whomever was nominated. Rockefeller never mentioned Goldwater by name, but since he was the favorite candidate of the so-called radical right, critics dismissed his speech as a typical campaign speech. New York senators Keating and Javits were willing to side with Rockefeller, but few other local politicians were. Fellow moderates such as Scranton remained conspicuously silent, while Hatfield offered to mediate between liberals and conservatives in hopes of avoiding “fratricide.”⁴⁵ Meanwhile, two days after Rockefeller’s speech, the biweekly Look magazine published an article titled, “The Rampant Right Invades the GOP,” which offered an explanation for why some Republicans chose not to speak out about the changes occurring within the GOP. Look reported that the John Birch Society was overtaking the California Republican Party and Young Republican clubs in the state by taking advantage of divisions among traditional and moderate Republicans. An anonymous GOP central committee member was quoted as saying that even though right-wing organizations were raiding the party, he refused to discuss the problem publicly because “I don’t want to be attacked as a Communist.” R. Mort Frayn of Seattle, Washington, who worked in Nixon’s 1960 campaign, said he thought “responsible leadership” in the GOP would soon rein in these groups. Even though he was said to be worried about their influence, he did offer some optimism: “This crowd can blow the whole bundle if we’re not careful. If we can keep a balance, the party will come out stronger.”⁴⁶ By and large, prominent moderates were unprepared to take a definitive position like Rockefeller.

Although Rockefeller’s statement failed to galvanize a movement among elected moderates, he did get some noteworthy positive responses. Rockefeller received more than ninety supportive letters in the eight days after the statement was published. The letters hailed from twenty-seven states with New York and California being the most popular points of origin.⁴⁷ Rockefeller received thanks for his courage and expressions of hope that he would be the presidential nominee. Most newspapers criticized Rockefeller’s decision to challenge his party, although the more liberal New York papers did praise him, particularly for his effort to recommit the Republican Party to the advancement of civil rights. The New York Times printed an editorial praising the governor’s efforts to save his party by writing what it called his own 1964 Republican platform and a warning against nominating Goldwater. The editorial was most enthusiastic about Rockefeller’s stand on civil rights. The New York Herald Tribune, the flagship paper of moderate Republicanism, also endorsed Rockefeller’s statement unreservedly, regardless of its effect on Rockefeller’s possible candidacy. Furthermore, the paper’s editorial stated that if the Republican Party nominated any candidate that prolonged segregation, it would “bear the shame of abandoning the cause of freedom and equality that gave it birth.”⁴⁸ The New York Herald Tribune declared Rockefeller a hero, but its readership tended to disagree. A common theme in readers’ responses was that Rockefeller’s statement was desperate and self-serving and he was in no position to criticize Republicans because he was too liberal to be a Republican. Others expressed outrage that the paper would suggest Goldwater was racist. Whereas numerous letter writers criticized Rockefeller, there was the occasional letter of approval. David White of Plainfield, New Jersey, for example, supported Rockefeller and his belief that Goldwater would be a terrible presidential nominee. “[Goldwater’s] stand against the public accommodations section of the civil rights bill,” he argued, “would give the party a lily-white label and destroy the heritage of Lincoln.” For White, Rockefeller’s fear that Goldwater would succumb to the influence of the radical right had already come to fruition. He stated that Goldwater’s support of the RS-70 bomber, a “Cuban Government in exile,” and “Bible reading in public schools” was proof that he was a “captive of the ultra-Right.”⁴⁹

While Goldwater’s supporters expressed outrage, the senator downplayed Rockefeller’s statement. Despite reports that Rockefeller’s speech shocked Goldwater—the two had shared an amicable relationship and had met privately in Washington, D.C., in recent years—he said it was nothing more than Rockefeller’s “formal declaration of candidacy.” In response to the accusation that Goldwater intended to run a campaign that disregarded northeastern cities, industrial centers, and African Americans, he replied, “I have never had any theory of that kind.… I am not giving up on anybody’s vote.” Regarding the Black vote, he clarified, “I have said that the Negro vote is going to be very difficult for us to get, but I never advocated giving up on it.”⁵⁰ Earlier in 1963, Goldwater was asked to attend a conference in New York City that dealt with finding new ways for the party to connect with minority voters. Goldwater said he gave the conference his “wholehearted support,” but he was unable to attend. In a letter to Leonard Nadasdy, chairman of the YRNF, which was eventually published as a news release by the Republican National Committee, Goldwater explained that he thought the Republican Party should refrain from making specific overtures to minority groups and instead reach out to all Americans. “It seems to me that the whole subject of ethnic and minority groups and their relationships within our society has been talked to death.” Goldwater said it was unnecessary for Republicans to focus on minorities because of the party’s history of lessening the divisions in society and consistent record on civil rights. He went on, “Too often in the past we have seen our Party’s solid record of accomplishment largely ignored by those who benefited the most from it.”⁵¹ Goldwater never said that the Republican Party should reject African Americans or other ethnic or religious minority groups, but because these people, he explained, were choosing Democrats over Republicans, it was now time for a new strategy.

Limitations of a Moral Crisis

Despite accusations that Rockefeller was motivated by self-interest, Rockefeller and his staff had collected evidence that revealed a direct connection between Goldwater’s rise and efforts to protect the Jim Crow South. Although the majority of Republican politicians agreed that segregation in the South was a moral crisis, this did not mean they would join Rockefeller in publicly rejecting all strategies to thwart the advance of civil rights in exchange for votes. Rockefeller learned quickly that there were severe limitations to this so-called moral crisis and decided it was best to be more measured with his words. Numerous Republicans accused Rockefeller of unfairly attacking his own party, but the narrative he chose not to tell was far more revealing and illustrative of internal attempts to abandon the Republican Party’s history of advocating for African American equality.

Members of Rockefeller’s inner circle concluded that his decline in the polls was inextricably tied to his support for civil rights, but after July, he and his staff decided not to draw additional attention to the rising opposition to civil rights legislation in the GOP. Rockefeller commissioned a biography by Frank Gervasi, a respected veteran journalist and author who wrote for numerous publications including the New York Post and the Atlantic Monthly. As a campaign biography, The Real Rockefeller: The Story of the Rise, Decline and Resurgence of the Presidential Aspirations of Nelson Rockefeller advocated for a Rockefeller presidency and documented his life from childhood to his campaign for the 1964 presidential nomination. As a promotional publication, several people within the Rockefeller staff edited it to ensure that it reflected the message of his campaign. Initially, Gervasi’s work included a detailed discussion of Rockefeller’s most recent presidential bid, which meant an entire chapter that detailed his precipitous decline in the polls in 1963. In subsequent revisions, Gervasi was directed to cut this section. Rockefeller staffer and future National Endowment for the Arts chairwoman Nancy Hanks, for example, suggested the book should avoid discussions of the current political terrain to avoid controversy. Gervasi’s original examination of Rockefeller’s 1963 campaign correlated his decline in the polls to his stand on civil rights. If published, this chapter in particular would have linked Goldwater’s rising popularity to racism and an overt backlash to the civil rights movement. Republican Party professionals would have been embarrassed by such an account. In the revised final chapter of The Real Rockefeller, the candidate’s decline in the polls was attributed to his remarriage alone, saying that Rockefeller and his new bride returned to a “political hornet’s nest.”⁵² The final draft was candid about the controversy caused by the remarriage but offered no explanation why Goldwater was the only potential candidate to benefit from Rockefeller’s decline. Although the published work steered clear of much of the controversy related to civil rights, it did include an excerpt from Rockefeller’s statement against the radical right, which warned of a strategy to write off the Negro and other minorities in favor of the electoral votes of the South and West.

The popularity of Goldwater with segregationists was the issue that the omitted chapter, “Thunder on the Right,” argued was the reason Rockefeller’s numbers in the polls had fallen the summer of 1963. Gervasi wrote that Goldwater “ran a poor second to Rockefeller until Bull Connor catalyzed the counter-revolution to the Negro Revolution.” Birmingham resulted in a “collective shift of allegiance from a Rockefeller whose political commitments to advancement of Negroes’ civil rights were well and widely known, to a Goldwater whose advocacy of States’ Rights had been vocal and consistent throughout his career.”

What spelled danger to Democratic party unity, spelled opportunity to Republican counterparts of Democratic diehards who shared the prevalent white resentment of Federal “interference” with States’ Rights, and antagonism to desegregation. “I’m afraid,” said a prominent Republican Senator to an important GOP official in Washington soon after the Birmingham riots, “that a lot of our people down there agree with Bull Connor on the racial issue.” He was right, of course, for the Republican party has its fair share of politicians who would … roll back to pre-McKinley days the progress made in civil rights.… And the man around whom Republican rightwingers and their Democratic bed-fellows rallied was Barry Goldwater.⁵³

The chapter acknowledged that Goldwater’s supporters represented a range of opinions from people who opposed a growing federal government to those who had long supported politicians like Ohio senators Robert Taft and John W. Bricker. However, with the controversy surrounding civil rights growing, Goldwater attracted people who hoped to maintain segregation and who agreed with Goldwater’s argument, for example, that African Americans did not have a civil right to attend school with whites. The Goldwater movement was not in toto a vehicle for segregationists, the Ku Klux Klan, John Birch Society members, and racists, but it did provide a safe haven for these factions who did not choose a more blatant champion for their cause such as Alabama governor George Wallace.

The chapter made an argument that Rockefeller had refrained from making during his July 14 speech. Segregationists and racists were a significant element of Goldwater’s bandwagon. Goldwater conservatism, wrote Gervasi, was intended to give the rising extremism, particularly in the South, a respectable face. The chapter quoted Ralph McGill, a liberal editor of the Atlanta Constitution, who observed the relationship between segregationists and racists and Goldwater. McGill wrote that Goldwater found support among southerners who opposed school desegregation. For example, “at a recent Ku Klux Klan rally at Stone Mountain, some 20 miles out of Atlanta, a State Trooper said, ‘My God, is this a rally for Goldwater, or the Klan?’ Most of the bumpers had Goldwater stickers. Senator Goldwater is not that kind of person. Yet, he does not disown them.… The Senator says he is not a segregationist. Yet, he sees nothing contradictory in saying he believes in leaving the problem to ‘the State.’ … The Senator, by being so vague, had given aid and comfort to the nation’s extremists.”⁵⁴ The Real Rockefeller intended to present Rockefeller in the best light, and this should not be discounted, but the discussion of southern Goldwater support demonstrated that it was Goldwater, not Rockefeller, who would benefit from the rising “moral crisis” triggered by the civil rights movement.

In the summer of 1963, many Republicans dismissed Rockefeller’s statement against the radical right as a ploy to boost his campaign, but he had received warnings from Republicans that there was a crisis occurring in the South. The accusations that Rockefeller was merely attempting to reinvigorate a campaign derailed by personal impropriety seem to bear more weight when one looks at photos of Rockefeller’s honeymoon alongside the polling data, but the governor’s declining status in the party takes on a new significance when put in the context of the national crisis sparked by the civil rights movement. What most people did not know was that Rockefeller had received letters from George W. Lee of Memphis, Tennessee, who told firsthand accounts of segregationists, including members of the Ku Klux Klan, entering the Republican ranks with the intention to use the party as a means to counter the liberalism of northern Democrats. Letters in support of Rockefeller’s statement against the radical right, along with letters like that from Lee earlier in the year, revealed that Goldwater’s popularity in the South was inextricably intertwined with the fight to counter the civil rights movement. Letter writers from the South and Southwest described what they considered to be a drastic shift within southern politics and their hope that Rockefeller would stop this trend. The sense of urgency was expressed succinctly by Edward Coyne of Phoenix, Arizona, who wrote, “Dear Governor: Your statement July 14 was long overdue. If you think you merely made a political speech you are wrong. The fruit cake fringe masquerading as conservative Republicans has complete control of the state of Arizona.”⁵⁵ Another Arizonan by the name of Earl C. Calkins was most troubled by Goldwater’s position on segregation. He wrote, “Dear Governor: You are so right [about] Barry Goldwater and his right wing support.… He seems to think a state has the right to let half of its citizens go uneducated.… If the right wing is not stopped, a civil war could be in the making.”⁵⁶ A southerner from Columbia, South Carolina, who made a point to say he was a white man with a Republican heritage dating back to the 1860s, wrote a letter similar to the letter Rockefeller received in January from Lee, equating the new southern Republicanism with overt racism:

Dear Gov. Rockefeller,

Thank you for what you said about the RADICAL RIGHT. My grand father Andrea was a Republican in 1861 in S.C. and followed Lincoln. Today in South Carolina and evidently in many other states in the South the Klu Klux Klan [sic], White Citizen Councils and the John Birch Society have captured and taken over the Republican Party lock stock and barrel. They are making the Republican Party a Lilly [sic] White party filled with haters of Civil Rights for negroes. This to me, a white man, and a liberal Republican and a Catholic, fills my heart with sadness to see the Grand Old Party taken over by the far right.⁵⁷

Amid severe criticism, Rockefeller received support from Republicans who agreed with his assertion that something extraordinary was happening in US politics.

Rockefeller and Kennedy agreed that the nation was in the throes of a moral crisis, but a significant portion of the population was less certain of the cause or potential solutions. A U.S. News & World Report article published in July 1963 titled “The Changing Mood of America” addressed the nation’s concern over civil rights, fear that the demonstrations would lead to widespread violence, and growing sentiment that African Americans were pushing too hard too fast. U.S. News & World Report pointed out that civil rights had recently overshadowed communism as the issue that most concerned Americans: “You find much sympathy for the Negroes in their drive for equal rights. Yet there is a widespread feeling—even outside the South—that Negroes may be pushing things too fast. There is a growing fear of a racial conflict.”⁵⁸ Gallup reported a similar sentiment less than a week after Kennedy’s televised appeal for an end to racial discrimination. Poll takers found that 36 percent of the nation said Kennedy was moving too fast on civil rights, up four points from the year before. One month later, that number increased to 48 percent and hovered around 50 percent the remainder of the summer.⁵⁹ The article also captured a rising sense of resentment for African Americans. A freelance writer in New York City said, “The guilt complex of the white man has been worn very thin by the pushing for extreme integration.… People whom I have always thought to be extremely liberal are against further action on civil rights.” While southerners were most concerned about the integration of public accommodations, respondents in the North and West were most anxious about housing integration. U.S. News & World Report found some whites who felt African Americans were looking for superiority rather than equality in America. Tangential to this feeling was the opinion that Blacks had not earned the right to be equal in America. A banker from Weston, Connecticut described the situation plainly: “Negroes should improve themselves before they make so many demands for their rights.”⁶⁰ Ultimately, U.S. News & World Report highlighted how divisive the issue of civil rights had become by the summer of 1963, but it also suggested that Rockefeller’s liberal stance on civil rights could work against him in any region of the country.

Even if Rockefeller did not challenge his party publicly, he was under intense pressure because of his record in support of legislative responses to inequality. While Goldwater’s poll numbers remained high, Rockefeller’s political analyst, Free, warned him not to do anything that might confirm people’s belief that he was a liberal. It was uncertain what Rockefeller would or could do as the year progressed as his liberal reputation became more of a detriment. Rockefeller tried to avoid alienating himself from his party, but on the issue of civil rights, he was firmly on the left with liberal Democrats. There was little Rockefeller could do to endear himself to Republicans who considered his position on civil rights extreme. A letter writer by the name of W. W. Edwards of San Francisco, California made this position clear in a missive received by Rockefeller’s office on October 28, 1963. Edwards chastised Rockefeller for costing himself the nomination by trying to one-up Kennedy’s “bid for the votes of ignorant negroes.” He conceded that African Americans, whom he also referred to as baboons, had some just complaints but stated that they were an “unfortunate race” undeserving of “full participation in government.” Edwards said that if Rockefeller had “imitated the wisdom and prudence of Senator Goldwater, there [was] hardly a doubt but that you, instead of him, would be at the top of polls now being taken all over the country.”⁶¹ Rockefeller’s vocal advocacy for African Americans and insistence that the nation should go the way of New York was enough to draw fervent opposition. For a man like Edwards, Rockefeller had bound his political ambitions with African American demands for equality—and this was reason enough to reject Rockefeller.

November 1963 ended with intense shock and sorrow when President Kennedy was assassinated while riding in a motorcade driving into downtown Dallas, Texas. Like much of the nation, US politics was upended and left in a state of uncertainty less than a year before the general election. With a southerner leading the Democratic ticket, commentators questioned whether Goldwater would remain equally popular in the South. Republican leaders who had acquiesced to Goldwater’s growing popularity because they thought he would lure southern voters away from Kennedy were bound to wonder what would result from a Goldwater-Johnson contest. President Johnson adopted Kennedy’s agenda, but would the slain president’s civil rights legislation pass? Amid the confusion, a few realities remained constant. Goldwater’s base was as committed as ever. The majority of Goldwater’s supporters rallied behind him because he most closely reflected their ideological perspective, not because of his ability to beat Kennedy or Johnson. Rockefeller, who formally announced his campaign on November 7, faced some constants as well. If he maintained an uncompromising position on the passage of civil rights legislation, Rockefeller would remain out of step with a significant portion of the Republican Party. For Rockefeller, it was clear that the party needed to protect the civil rights of African Americans in all parts of the country, but even his fellow moderates were reluctant to challenge conservatives who opposed federal intervention to usher in this change.⁶²

Lincoln Day Dinners in the mid-twentieth century were the time to commemorate the signing of the Emancipation Proclamation and the Republican Party’s commitment to Black freedom, which belied its troubled relationship with African Americans. What those speeches and dinners did not discuss was the Republican Party’s failure to protect Black equality amid the nineteenth century’s brutal racial and ethnic prejudice and the twentieth century’s racial violence and segregation. Republicans like Rockefeller attributed the party’s support of civil rights to its history as the party that freed the enslaved, but the party’s relationship with African Americans remained just as troubled in the 1960s as it had been in the 1860s. Regardless of the Republican Party’s inconsistent racial record, Rockefeller began his career in electoral politics endeavoring to ensure that the Party of Lincoln met the increased expectations of African Americans in the civil rights era. Rather than embrace the role of advocate of the civil rights movement as Rockefeller had hoped, the GOP committed itself to the dream of reviving the party in the South, even if that meant providing aid and comfort to segregationists. Rockefeller was by no means the only Republican supporting enhanced federal civil rights legislation in 1963, but the number of Republican politicians who supported civil rights must be counted alongside their peers who chose to remain silent as overt racists streamed into the party.

“The Republican Party is the ship, all else is the sea.” Elmer Carter believed Rockefeller could not reaffirm the Republican Party’s commitment to civil rights without invoking the name of African American abolitionist and eminent Republican Frederick Douglass.⁶³ Ironically, what Elmer Carter did not say, and perhaps did not know, was that Douglass, who continues to be the personification of the Republican Party’s commitment to African American freedom, said those words in a speech in favor of blocking the candidacy of a fellow African American Republican, John Mercer Langston, in 1888. Langston, though not as well known as Douglass today, was similarly prominent and held numerous positions of leadership, including serving as the first dean of Howard University’s law school and ambassador to Haiti, two positions Douglass had also held. Douglass was speaking on behalf of former US senator and Confederate general William Mahone, a powerful Republican Party boss who controlled the final Republican stronghold in Virginia and did not want to relinquish power to a Black man who sought the congressional seat of the heavily Black Fourth Congressional District. Despite the efforts of Mahone and Douglass, who had a long-contentious relationship with his fellow Black Republican, Langston went on to run as an independent and won the seat.⁶⁴ The particulars of this history are suggestive of the complexities of the Republican Party’s identity as the Party of Lincoln and its inclusion of figures such as Douglass. The GOP’s relationship with African Americans was always complicated, but like much of what is commemorated in public memory, the intricacies and contradictions often get softened or omitted in favor of a simpler narrative better suited for rousing rhetoric.

At its inception, the Republican Party, although conflicted on race, was the principal opposition to the pro-slavery Democratic Party. Upon its founding in 1854, the party espoused a commitment to free labor, land, and men and an opposition to slavery; however, it did not take an activist stance on the abolition of slavery. Republicans like Lincoln maintained that African Americans were human beings and were entitled to some rights bestowed by the Declaration of Independence, but these party members did not call for social or political equality for Blacks. Lincoln, for example, supported colonization as a solution for slavery rather than working to create an egalitarian multiracial society. Douglass became a loyal Republican after the passage of the Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth Amendments. He remained in the party holding various appointed positions between 1870 and 1895, long after the party curtailed its efforts to protect African Americans. In 1876, Republicans and Democrats struck a deal to ensure Republican Rutherford B. Hayes the presidency despite losing the popular vote to Democrat Samuel J. Tilden. Republicans, in return, agreed to remove federal troops from the South, ensuring the end of Reconstruction. During all of this, Douglass was careful not to condemn the party because as he said in 1871, “this party has within it the only element of friendship for the colored man’s rights.” Historian Merline Pitre argues that Douglass remained loyal to the Republican Party because he sincerely believed that it was the best practical instrument for protecting the rights of African Americans.⁶⁵ While all else may have been the sea, the ship that was the Republican Party offered little protection for Blacks, in favor of late nineteenth-century partisan politics and business interests.

Two months into his official presidential campaign, Rockefeller found himself at another Lincoln Day Dinner in February 1964. Unlike his speeches the year before, civil rights was no longer his focus. This time, he was in Medford, Oregon on the campaign trail a month before the first primary in New Hampshire. The Lincoln Club of Jackson County heard a speech that emphasized the need for a mainstream Republican Party that could right the wrongs of an ineffectual Democratic administration. Unlike the previous year’s speeches that were treatises on the Republican record on civil rights and the legacy of Lincoln, Rockefeller focused on a wide variety of topics. Rockefeller reminded the audience that the Democratic administration had still failed to bring action on civil rights legislation, but this was buried within a laundry list of criticisms ranging from the mishandling of foreign policy in Zanzibar to France recognizing Red China. There were remnants of the previous year’s Lincoln Day commemoration, but the tone and emphasis had shifted. Rockefeller called on the party to rededicate itself so as to offer all Americans “a program for progress consistent with our heritage and based upon the realities of the present,” but his speech was more ambiguous than the year before.⁶⁶ Outspoken support of civil rights and the New York Republican Party’s progressive civil rights record was no longer safe for Rockefeller, even if he did so with the purpose of praising a sanitized history of the Republican Party’s commitment to equality. With the rise of Goldwater in tandem with growing hopes that the Republican Party could embrace the interests of the South and West to escape its minority party status, there was less room for Rockefeller to maneuver as the standard-bearer for Republican support for civil rights.

The GOP’s identity as the party of emancipation was inconsistent from its inception, but by the early 1960s, racially progressive Republicans discussed the party’s origins as if it was unquestionably devoted to African American freedom. Meanwhile, in 1963, Republicans across the political spectrum considered it betrayal to reveal that some party members were open to redrafting the Republican Party as the “white man’s party.” Even Rockefeller, the most outspoken advocate of civil rights, withheld most of the warnings he received from southern Republicans who said the party was forfeiting its commitment to racial equality in favor of electoral strength. In many Republicans’ minds, Rockefeller had already said too much; to say more would have further jeopardized his presidential hopes. As a result, it was more certain that the Republican Party would relinquish any leadership position in the effort to secure civil rights. Without a unified effort by moderate Republicans to protest the racial conservatism that rose in the Republican ranks, the party’s rightward shift would happen amid silence.