0:02 hello and welcome to our lecture on the
0:04 conservative backlash today we'll be
0:05 looking at the conservative backlash of
0:08 the late 60s and early 70s
0:10 we'll define the southern strategy the
0:12 republican party will begin using from
0:14 this point forward we'll look at what
0:15 events eroded trust in america's
0:17 political institutions those are
0:19 basically different parts of the
0:21 government and which groups comprised
0:23 the new right so we're gonna have a
0:26 different kind of coalition of people
0:27 who are conservative on the right of the
0:30 political spectrum coming to the fore in
0:32 the late 60s and 70s so let's take a
0:33 look at those groups
0:36 now by 1968 most americans wanted to
0:38 find a way out of the war in vietnam but
0:41 they also disliked anti-war protesters
0:43 the conservative backlash began in
0:45 response to the increasing demands of
0:48 black indigenous and people of color
0:49 conservatives resented what they
0:51 considered black americans in gratitude
0:53 at the civil rights measures already
0:55 enacted by the federal government and
0:57 many conservatives saw the warren
0:59 court's expansion of individual rights
1:01 which we talked about as an intrusive
1:03 federal government extending its control
1:05 over matters previously left to local
1:07 communities to decide
1:09 around the nation on the local level
1:11 acts of police brutality shocked
1:13 communities and led to reform and the
1:15 formations of internal affairs
1:16 departments which are pretty standard today
1:17 today
1:19 in which police investigated police misconduct
1:20 misconduct
1:22 but rising crime rates worried
1:24 conservatives more than police brutality
1:26 and they associated crime with urban
1:28 black people
1:29 conservatives criticized the war on
1:32 poverty for spending taxpayer dollars on
1:34 quote-unquote unworthy even criminal citizens
1:35 citizens
1:37 and working-class whites resented the
1:40 affluent university student protesters
1:42 as well as the black and latino poor
1:43 targeted by some of these great society programs
1:45 programs
1:47 additionally many catholic and some
1:48 protestant christians were troubled by
1:51 the legalization of contraceptives even
1:54 if only for married couples at first
1:56 and incensed by the ban on requiring
1:58 protestant school prayer and on
2:01 requirements for even private schools to
2:02 integrate racially if they wanted to
2:04 receive tax dollars
2:06 protestant fundamentalists fought back
2:09 through increased political involvement
2:12 they initiated a grassroots religious
2:14 conservative movement which rejected
2:16 many of the challenges to american
2:19 society made by those 1960s movements we
2:21 discussed before the exam
2:22 now it's important to remember that all
2:24 of those movements in the 1960s
2:26 including the civil rights movements
2:29 were the minority of the population and
2:31 while they managed to change society
2:34 drastically they were never the majority
2:36 so this backlash is going to be made up
2:38 of the majority of americans who aren't
2:41 real comfortable or outright dislike
2:43 these changes
2:45 republican leaders from barry goldwater
2:47 to richard nixon to ronald reagan gave
2:49 voice to this resentment felt by the
2:52 majority of americans and they began to
2:54 break that new deal coalition of voters
2:56 we had talked about in the 1930s and since
2:57 since
2:59 white moderates and black voters had
3:01 supported the democrats in 1964 after
3:04 the democrats embraced civil rights
3:07 this left the gop that is the republican
3:09 party with two options they could either
3:11 support civil rights to try to win some
3:13 of those voters back or they could stand
3:15 against civil rights and federal
3:17 authority to try to win white
3:18 southerners who are now pretty upset
3:21 with and abandoning the democratic party
3:23 republicans decided to embrace those
3:26 white voters who opposed civil rights in
3:28 their southern strategy which began
3:31 during goldwater's 1964 campaign and you
3:33 can see the newspaper article on the
3:34 slide there talking about this
3:36 particular type of republican that's now
3:38 kind of taking over that party a
3:41 goldwater republican
3:42 this is especially true of the
3:44 republican party in the south so these
3:46 republicans opposed the civil rights
3:48 movement they demanded a very small
3:50 federal government certainly not with
3:52 the power to enforce civil rights but
3:54 they do want a big military they want to
3:55 expand the military and they supported
3:59 direct military action against communism
4:01 while not a klansman himself goldwater
4:03 was publicly endorsed by the ku klux klan
4:05 klan
4:07 and while goldwater lost in a landslide
4:10 in 1964 after that dayz ad that we
4:12 watched in an earlier lecture the gop
4:15 had won the south for the first time ever
4:16 ever
4:18 nixon then used the southern strategy to
4:21 secure the presidency in 1968
4:22 the party embraced its fiercely
4:25 conservative anti-civil rights voters in
4:26 the south and west
4:28 goldwater was good friends with former
4:30 u.s senator prescott bush whose son
4:32 texas senator george h.w bush was a
4:34 goldwater supporter
4:36 future president ronald reagan appeared
4:38 in a goldwater campaign ad so we can see
4:40 kind of the future of the party moving
4:41 in this direction
4:43 and both of these men would use the
4:45 southern strategy to win election in the
4:47 coming decades
4:50 now 1968 was called the year of the gun
4:53 and it set the stage for a conservative backlash
4:54 backlash
4:56 the tet offensive in vietnam had
4:58 occurred that january which we discussed
5:00 in the vietnam lecture then on april 4th
5:02 a gunman named james earl ray
5:04 assassinated dr martin luther king jr in
5:06 memphis where he had gone to support a
5:08 strike by sanitation workers
5:10 let's take a look at how the nation
Chrome Extension