Fight For Civil Rights
As the ranking member of the House of Representatives’ Judiciary Committee, William McCulloch took a leading role in the civil rights movement. He introduced Civil Rights legislation months before Kennedy presented his act to congress. This was not only politically imprudent, but some considered it to be political suicide. Representative McCulloch had a small number of African-American constituents, and thus few votes to gain from introducing or supporting civil rights legislation. Regardless of the possible political ramifications, Representative McCulloch fought to repair an unjust system.
The Civil Rights Act of 1964 was a path to justice for a nation that had allowed injustice for so long. It was his political and moral guidance that quelled anti-civil rights sentiments from members of the committee. McCulloch’s influence with the 1964 Civil Rights Act led President Kennedy to declare “Without him it can’t be done.”
Congressman William McCulloch never shirked from responsibility. In fact, he rose to become recognized by President Johnson as “…the most important and powerful political force” in passing the 1964 Civil Rights Act.
Throughout his career, McCulloch was a conservative (demonstrated by low Americans for Democratic Action (ADA) scores) and a strong supporter of civil rights. As ranking Republican on the House Judiciary Committee, he, with Democratic Chairman Emanuel Celler, pushed the Civil Rights Act of 1964 through the House of Representatives. During the Great Society Congress, although he supported Johnson's civil rights programs, he opposed most Great Society legislation. After the Great Society Congress (1965–1966), he began to adopt a few liberal positions, such as favoring strong gun control legislation in 1968 and support for busing. He was not a candidate for reelection in the 1972 election to the Ninety-third Congress. He resumed the practice of law in Piqua, Ohio, and died in Washington, D.C., on February 22, 1980. Interment in Arlington National Cemetery.
In early 2010, McCulloch was proposed by the Ohio Historical Society as a finalist in a statewide vote for inclusion in Statuary Hall at the United States Capitol.
Read more about this topic: William Moore Mc Culloch
Famous quotes containing the words civil rights, fight for, fight, civil and/or rights:
“Civil Rights: What black folks are given in the U.S. on the installment plan, as in civil-rights bills. Not to be confused with human rights, which are the dignity, stature, humanity, respect, and freedom belonging to all people by right of their birth.”
—Dick Gregory (b. 1932)
“A good cause can become bad if we fight for it with means that are indiscriminatingly murderous. A bad cause can become good if enough people fight for it in a spirit of comradeship and self-sacrifice. In the end it is how you fight, as much as why you fight, that makes your cause good or bad.”
—Freeman Dyson (b. 1923)
“Don’t spend your time in drilling soldiers, who may turn out hirelings after all, but give to undrilled peasantry a country to fight for.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Civil servants and priests, soldiers and ballet-dancers, schoolmasters and police constables, Greek museums and Gothic steeples, civil list and services list—the common seed within which all these fabulous beings slumber in embryo is taxation.”
—Karl Marx (1818–1883)
“My dream is that as the years go by and the world knows more and more of America, it ... will turn to America for those moral inspirations that lie at the basis of all freedom ... that America will come into the full light of the day when all shall know that she puts human rights above all other rights, and that her flag is the flag not only of America but of humanity.”
—Woodrow Wilson (1856–1924)