Winning While Losing: Civil Rights, The Conservative Movement and the Presidency from Nixon to Obama

Preface

PREFACE This volume explores the paradoxical nature of civil rights politics in the years following the 1960s civil rights movement in the United States. The book originated in the 2009 Alan B. Larkin Symposium on the American Presidency at Florida Atlantic University (FAU), which focused on the impact of the conservative moment on civil rights and the presidency since 1968. The volume’s core theme of progress in the face of defeat, or defeat in the face of progress, was first proposed by Mary Frances Berry, the former chair of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights. At her keynote address for the symposium, she spoke about how civil rights during the Reagan era followed a pattern of “winning while losing.” The other conference participants, who were exploring the civil rights policies of other presidents , agreed that her idea seemed to capture well, if imperfectly and unevenly, the larger trajectory of civil rights in the era that followed the landmark legislative victories of the mid-1960s. Yet this was an odd moment to be talking about “losing” in the civil rights arena. The planning for the symposium had begun long before Barack Obama emerged as a contender for the Democratic Party’s presidential nomination. His victory in the primary and subsequent election to the presidency came as a surprise to the conference participants, who now found themselves discussing the connection between race and the presidency just weeks after the inauguration of the country’s first black president. It was a remarkable coincidence. Ultimately, Obama’s victory did not affect the historical judgments rendered on the four decades separating his inauguration in 2008 from Martin Luther King’s assassination in 1968. The intervening years saw highly visible achievements in the realm of political rights, as Obama himself demonstrated, but persistent setbacks in the quest for full socio-economic equality, as told in the ever grim statistics about black poverty and incarceration. Such a pattern of winning while losing seemed to define the post-1960s x · Preface era of civil rights politics. This new era was shaped less by liberal activism than by the broader conservative turn in the American electorate, a mood that constrained the ability of civil rights activists to advance their agenda through public policy. If anything, Obama’s victory seemed to accentuate the curious paradox of winning while losing in the realm of civil rights. We are grateful to the Larkin family for the generosity that made the symposium—and this book—possible. Their gift to FAU’s History Department has been a gift to history itself and is a fitting tribute to the late Alan Larkin’s personal fascination with America’s past. We also thank Zella Linn and Patricia Kollander for their efforts to organize and support the symposium, as well as Jane DeHart and Laura Kalman for their helpful suggestions in the planning stages of this work. We also owe an extraordinary debt of gratitude to Meredith Babb of the University Press of Florida and to Helen Laville, Harvard Sitkoff, David J. Garrow, and the other anonymous readers of the manuscript who offered tremendously thoughtful and insightful critiques. Their responses helped us craft a more sophisticated volume that we hope will frame the debate about civil rights politics in the post-1960s era. A few months following our symposium, we were saddened to learn of the passing of one of our authors and presenters, Ronald Walters. He was a leading scholar and activist on issues related to civil rights and American politics. He also mentored editor Derrick White and contributor Robert Smith—students who were deeply affected by Walters’ scholarship and teaching. We mourn his loss as a colleague and as a thoughtful analyst of American politics. Before he died, Walters attended Obama’s inauguration in Washington, D.C., and then spoke to our symposium about the meaning of Obama’s victory for the future of American politics . His remarks, which were recorded by C-SPAN and can be seen online , were edited by his student and colleague Robert Smith and are included in this volume. Kenneth Osgood Colorado School of Mines Derrick E. White Florida Atlantic University ...