Civil Rights, Alaska, & Hawaii
In the late 1950s civil rights bills were being introduced in Congress. To overcome the Southern Democrats’ suppression of the pro-Republican African-American vote,then-Republican Hawaii’s prospects for statehood were tied to Alaska’s, which many thought would be more Democratic. Hawaii statehood was expected to result in the addition of two pro-civil-rights senators from a state which would be the first to have majority non-white population. This would endanger the Southern minority segregationist Democrat Senate by providing two more Republican votes to invoke cloture and halt a Senate filibuster. The Congressional vote totals show a proportionally larger support for the 1964 Civil Rights Act by the Republican Party. The House of Representatives’ vote by party was 136 to 35 (80% support) by Republicans, but only 153 to 91 (63% support) by Democrats.
Read more about this topic: Alaska Statehood
Famous quotes containing the words civil and/or hawaii:
“A man’s real and deep feelings are surely those which he acts upon when challenged, not those which, mellow-eyed and soft-voiced, he spouts in easy times.”
—Sarah Patton Boyle, U.S. civil rights activist and author. The Desegregated Heart, part 2, ch. 13 (1962)
“Life is in the mouth; death is in the mouth.”
—Hawaiian saying no. 60, ‘lelo No’Eau, collected, translated, and annotated by Mary Kawena Pukui, Bishop Museum Press, Hawaii (1983)