An Unending Fight to Hold on to What We Had Won
“An unending fight to hold on to what we had already won. Throughout that decade, we had to fight off anti‑school desegregation amendments, anti‑affirmative action amendments, budget cutbacks and other devices designed to emasculate the laws we helped place on the books.”
The speaker was Clarence Mitchell, Jr. — the legislative chairman of the organization then known as the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights or LCCR, and director of the NAACP’s Washington bureau — widely recognized on Capitol Hill as the civil rights movement’s spokesman on all legislative matters. The time he was referring to was the early 1970s, a time of changing political climates and waning national support for civil rights.
But these words could also describe the time in which we find ourselves now.
Passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Act had opened the way for additional civil rights legislation. With the national mood still supportive of civil rights reform and an administration favorably disposed, Congress passed two other laws within the next four years — the Voting Rights Act of 1965 and the Fair Housing Act of 1968.
Notwithstanding these impressive gains, the slow rate of progress was frustrating for many. One channel for the expression of these frustrations was the emergence of movements toward “Black Power” and separatism. Confronted with the challenge of separatism, the LCCR, which until then had operated without formal structure or rules, decided in 1967 to require its members to commit themselves to certain guiding principles.
The statement of purpose it adopted affirmed the LCCR’s dedication “to an integrated, democratic, plural society” whose goals “can and must be achieved through peaceful, democratic means and within the American political system.” It went on to broaden the definition of civil rights to mean “not only the establishment and enforcement of rights in law but also the realization of social and economic conditions in which alone the fulfillment of these rights is possible.”
At about the same time, a different strategy was in play. A Republican candidate for president was appealing to white working and middle class individuals for support, calling them the “non-shouters” and the “non-demonstrators.” For Richard Nixon, “the greatest civil rights victims of the late 1960s were not the African Americans who continued to face personal and structural barriers to equal citizenship, but the millions of law-abiding whites forced to endure unrest in the nation’s communities.”
The Nixon campaign employed a plan steeped in this rhetoric, dubbed “the southern strategy,” to increase the turnout of white voters in the south by appealing to their concerns and fears about racial integration. Following his presidential win, the Nixon White House would go on to turn this rhetoric into policy through, among other things, the “war on drugs.” Years later, former Nixon aide and Watergate co-conspirator John Ehrlichman would describe the strategy as follows:
The Nixon campaign in 1968, and the Nixon White House after that, had two enemies: the antiwar left and black people … We knew we couldn’t make it illegal to be either against the war or black, but by getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and blacks with heroin, and then criminalizing both heavily, we could disrupt those communities. We could arrest their leaders, raid their homes, break up their meetings, and vilify them night after night on the evening news.
Though many attacks on civil rights were launched during the Nixon years, the LCCR was largely successful in fending off many of these threats and even made some impressive gains in legislation and civil rights enforcement. The coalition was bolstered by new organizations that joined the legacy organizations that were among the founders of LCCR. New groups advocating for the rights of women joined long-established women’s organizations, like the YWCA, historically Black sororities, and the various Councils of Negro, Catholic, and Jewish Women. Hispanic American organizations also took up membership. Organizations representing the growing Asian American population took their place alongside the Japanese American Citizens League, which had been in the coalition from the very beginning. The coalition’s membership would continue to grow over the decades to include organizations representing persons with disabilities, older Americans, and LGBTQ people, among others.
Among the measures the coalition helped enact during this period was Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972, to protect women from sex-based discrimination in any educational program or activity receiving federal financial assistance. The Voting Rights Act of 1965 was extended for another five years. Passage of the 26th Amendment to the Constitution extended the right to vote to 18-year-olds. And high among LCCR victories during the Nixon years was the defeat of two Supreme Court nominations — that of Clement Haynsworth in 1969 and G. Harold Carswell in 1970. The Senate’s back-to-back rejection of two appointees with anti-civil rights and anti-labor records helped brighten a dark time and brought LCCR considerable national attention. The LCCR was generally credited with spearheading the successful campaigns against the two nominations.
But there was no question that the effort to secure vigorous enactment of civil rights laws remained a day-to-day struggle. In many cases, as Clarence Mitchell noted, this struggle involved budget cutbacks, including those imposed by a president who wanted to act unilaterally on budgeting through a process called “impoundment.” For Nixon, “impoundment was a blunt political bludgeon to destroy programs that he opposed and go after liberals on Capitol Hill. With impoundment, Nixon went after all sorts of liberal initiatives involving the environment, health care, and education by refusing to spend the money that had been made available for these programs.”
In the end, Nixon’s executive abuses led to a serious impeachment threat and ultimately resignation following revelations regarding Watergate. Post-Watergate, Congress would pass several reforms, including a budget reform bill that would end the practice of refusing to spend congressionally appropriated funds through impoundment.
Today, in an era that commentators have called “Nixon 2.0,” the country once again has a president eager to abuse presidential power, to impound appropriated funds for programs he doesn’t like, and to use other devices (such as executive orders) designed to, in the words of Clarence Mitchell, “emasculate the laws we helped place on the books.”
With a president who reiterated in his March 4 joint address to Congress that he will prioritize self-serving politics over the well-being of the American people, and an administration doubling down on harmful policies and determined to upend civil rights policies that ensure a fair and thriving country, the stakes for the American people and our democracy could not be higher.
Thus far, multiple lawsuits have been filed to challenge, among other things, the illegal power grab of the so-called “Department of Government Efficiency” led by Trump crony Elon Musk; attacks on civil rights posed by Trump’s anti-DEIA executive orders; threats to immigrants; and threats to the federal workforce and independent agencies. However, Congress must also step up, as it did with an earlier “imperial” presidency, where the White House has failed, and stand firm against these abuses of power. For our part, The Leadership Conference will be working on the most critical areas for congressional engagement during this unprecedented time, made even clearer following the March 4 presidential address to a joint Congress.
It may be an “unending fight,” but our 75-year-old coalition is more than up to the task.
Read more about The Leadership Conference’s history and legacy in our 75th Anniversary series: “This Is a Time for Action”: On This MLK Day, We Honor Our 75-Year-Old Coalition’s Legacy, Courage, and Resilience; At 75, Our Work Continues; Chaos, Confusion, & Abuse of Power: Trump’s First Week Back in Office; Progress Against the Odds; Passing the Torch of National Leadership.