RIP Rev. Jerry Falwell (1933 - 2007)
posted by tamigill @ 3:23 PM
4 comments
Tuesday, May 15, 2007
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4 Comments:
From Wikipedia,
"Falwell ... supported racial segregation for the first few years of his career. In 1965, he gave a sermon at his Thomas Road Baptist Church criticizing Martin Luther King and the Civil Rights Movement, which he sometimes referred to as the "Civil Wrongs Movement". On his Evangelist program The Old-Time Gospel Hour in the mid 1960s, he regularly featured segregationist politicians like Lester Maddox and George Wallace.He often spoke out in favor of the racist position in those days. For example, in 1958, he said:
“If Chief Justice Warren and his associates had known God’s word and had desired to do the Lord’s will, I am quite confident that the 1954 decision [Brown v. Board of Education] would never have been made…. The facilities should be separate. When God has drawn a line of distinction, we should not attempt to cross that line.”
Hi Anonymous,
Thanks for sharing this information, albeit pretty common knowledge as Rev Falwell was such a public figure.
Also common knowledge is the fact that finding a white American-born citizen in the 1930's that was not pro-segregation would be about as likely as finding a needle in a haystack. Based on everything that I have ever read and heard about him, he was no different than other political pundits past and current...they do whatever is best for their constituency or party affiliation. Let's refer to John F Kennedy's wikipedia page as an example. Based on what you read here about JFK, he mostly shied away from the Civil Rights Movement because he didn't want to isolate southern white segregationists who I should point out wereDemocrats. Also, according to Wikipedia, JFK's brother Robert F. Kennedy was the one largely responsible for The Civil Rights Act of 1964, which was signed into law by Lyndon B Johnson.
By the way, you ended your comment just before writing the very next sentence on Jerry Falwell's wikipedia page. "Falwell's views eventually shifted and he opposed segregation in his later years." This is an important point, as it also applies to the majority of whites (esp Democrats) in Falwell's era.
Can I replace
"finding a white American-born citizen in the 1930's that was not pro-segregation would be about as likely as finding a needle in a haystack." with ,
"finding a white SOUTHERN American-born citizen in the 1930's that was not pro-segregation would be about as likely as finding a needle in a haystack."
I would wager to say the large majority of northern born white citizen's were NOT pro-segregation.
Big difference here.
You could replace those two sentences if you like, Anonymous, but I simply do not agree. I don't believe that there is a huge disparity in the overall ideologies of US citizens born in the 1930's whether they were from the north or south. I do believe that politicians, however, did (and still do) whatever is necessary to gain a strategic advantage and/or win votes and subsequently the citizens in these politicians' particular regions of the country become generalized.
If your only point of contention with my reply to your comment is the northern vs southern issue, then there's no point in further back and forth discussion of this topic on this blog. Our individual views of this are obviously at opposite ends of the spectrum.
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