American Experience; 1964; Interview with Hodding Carter III, Newspaper Editor, part 6 of 6

middle 60s and Established you couldn't play the game they were playing about it keeping people selective coverage selective Acceptance of ads and all that Yeah, well you can't force a newspaper, but you can damn well force the Yeah, right, right and even there it took Warren Berger to do the order Have CC turned us down in November There's a landslide Lyndon what happens to landslide Lyndon Landside gets his landslide gets a landslide like you hadn't seen often before He gets not only himself in which was important he gets a huge Democratic majority Almost by the standards of the very height of 36. I mean, it's just you know Turns out that's gonna be a problem later, but I mean cuz discipline begins to wear and fray But nonetheless, he gets this great majority so that it's absolutely certain that he can get through Whatever is left of his desires in the great society. I mean up to a point at any rate

therefore the Boating rights act as a certainty and even the housing act of the year after that two years after that It was a moment in which almost everybody fell and throw to an illusion Which this meant the end of the Republican party as we knew it and we were gonna have to create a new alternative party and that They had we'd prove that an extreme position was untenable In a national election and conservatism and conservatism if not dead would take two generations to dig itself out The hubris involved and all of that was so remarkable as to boggle your mind now But of course we've heard similar things since then Not least with the Reagan era, which was supposed to usher in the end of a democratic time But the thing about it was the only people who didn't believe they were dead or the people who were supposed to be dead and

They went from there to of course take over a national party in a much more substantial way than one nomination and one Didn't happen immediately as it turns out Richard Nixon was a liberal compared with what was going to come But nonetheless they can've created the basis for an awful lot of fashionable talk over time But unlike the old thing after 64 that we were in a new democratic Hegemony that in fact we were building a new Republican hegemony thanks to their absolute refusal to go away a Lesson which keeps being lost on Democrats who keep running away from their own positions for fear of losing something today And therefore not building for tomorrow If you had to said like 1964 was the year that and And look back everything we've been talking about, you know, is there a way to kind of sum it up? It's an interesting thing that when in terms of numbers a year at 64 is sort of at the center of a decade

That 64 was at the center of much that was to come and And the propulsion from the past into the future through the events of 64 So that you recast the nature of the major American parties if not totally then but nonetheless under way You change the entire idea about what it is that non-white Americans are supposed to be Besides spear carriers and cheerleaders for one of the two parties You established that we are in fact more serious than a rhetorical about trying to lift up those who are down at the bottom You established that we are a folks who understand More often than we used to what it is that we claim we're our founding principles and We established that we even yet don't quite get it as to what's going on in the world

And that's going to rise up and bite us for a long time to come it was For my standards I would pay money To go back and just live through that whole era again. I Would make all the same mistakes But I'd know as I knew then that I could never have asked for a better time to be involved in the affairs of my nation and in the newspaper business And they're like When I say involved in the affairs of our nation, I mean as a citizen, but it was an extraordinary time in 64 I delighted in its culmination which was the extra patient of my friends on the Republican side Except of course it wasn't extra patient All right, yes, Meg final time a bit of touch up just to once the sweat Are the genies let out of the bottle

You know, it's really interesting because the reaction to so much of that is informed so much of American politics ever since The whole sense of a trail for a whole bunch of people the cultural stuff was yet to come in a big way, but nonetheless That you keep thinking that there's no such thing as inevitable quote unquote progress On the other hand Despite the extraordinary amount of reaction and despite a much of what has been the success of political party that's opposed to what has happened Most of the basic stuff is intact I have to tell you however that there are several swords that you Dreatened to die on that you once thought were your great prop and one of them is a reliance on the courts And we on the left liberal side grew accustomed to taking the most Undemocratic of all our institutions to enforce our desire for a more democratic society

And the only problem with that the court over the history of this republic has always been more likely to be conservative than liberal And now it's coming back to bite us with the vengeance. So is there some going back? The court is going to do the best it can to take us back and the real question is going to be are people willing To put as much energy and effort Into stopping and reversing that as they took to put us into the place we got to which was a far better place And we were when the sixties began Is this is this the moment when the six is nineteen sixty four when the sixties as we think of it begins Is it a watershed moment well you can make it but I'm afraid I don't meet the thesis quite that well because There was so much that happens so frequently, but there is this It is the election of a person who is expressly About things which are not new, but dynamically

Forward leaning in ways that we were not used to for quite a long time It was certainly a time 64 in which we finally made good legislatively on promises that have been put down ten years earlier through the Supreme Court and before that Supposedly in civil war and reconstruction So that has to be a major thing It is also Truly from that point on a time in which people were brought out of the political woodwork and Convents that they had to go to work because our country was being taken away from And so a lot of folk Suddenly said wait a minute. I haven't paying attention here, but these guys are taking us too fast too far On things that matter to me culturally as well as political So it's it's an interesting contrast the possibilities, but it was a big big year

Is it when the baby boom generation is finally Think about these 18-year-old kids I'm I you know, it's a hell of a note to know you have children who are supposedly baby boomers So I always have some doubts about what I'm supposed to believe about generations But it was certainly a huge thrust of folk who came along While the easy complacencies of the previous period of the immediate post-war time War Decidering and changing and in which the idea of Direct action became much more Popular if not totally absorbed. Well, let me tell you something. I'm not a big believer I think most generations have a very small percentage of people who sort of are above the water line when it comes to changing massive things They are very important

But what really matters is to what degree those who are not participants buy in to that which has been created and here I think they have but the one thing the conservatives turned out to be right about was You can't change the hearts of men with legislation Which is why it's imperative that you keep the legislation on the books because you damn well can make them change Actions and that is a great virtue of that whole period was that you finally said the law Is going to make good on the principle Mm-hmm Couple of yes, I'll kill you for this Amanda Sorry Summerize what what's the JFK agenda that Johnson is taking into the state See I can't I can't do this I'm sorry dear

But I I don't have those specifics in my hand if you told me to go look them up. I didn't You see Johnson Johnson Johnson's problem was he was never going to be He was never going to be dynamic and pretty He was never going to be a golden boy. He was never going to be adopted by the fashionable He was never going to be the guy that you son of hoped your daughter would marry until you found out that he'd already married 25 others without breath benefit of clergy. I mean he Yeah, he's got every the hound dog and an accent which just won't wait If I were lend and I would have been paranoid it was a very and then again, I want to repeat Salander is we're used to being patronized in many ways it helped Because we would pick the pockets of so many folks who thought they were smarter on the other hand It hurt because you something knew that you were essentially held in some low regard

By those who in your heart of hearts You wanted to think you wanted to have them think that you were of some value Getting rid of that racial stuff Was one of the great benefits that the white South got out of this was that that at least there's no longer tag This the indiscriminate way that you think of the South Or to put it in other way orange County, California votes exactly the same way that Henrico County outside of Richmond was Didn't we ask what are what are conservatives upset about in 1964 everything everything? I mean there was nothing not to be upset about I mean first They actually thought they had a shot at Jack Kennedy. I mean, you just seems unthinkable now But the fact that he had limped limped to victory

As a first Catholic had not been enhanced there after by events that is his Second thing is that Johnson whatever else you had thought about him You've none the less thought if you were a certain kind of American that he was not a raving liberal and it turns out Here he is. He's putting out the full agenda Every step of which you understand is an assault on your idea about the government's role about individuals rights and the light If you're a conservative you've been waiting a long time and now all of a sudden you've got another four years to wait Before you have a chance to begin to do any serious damage to what took place first in 33 and our peak You know you think you have got in an alien country So way I feel in North Carolina right now with these right-wingers in charge of every branch of government What happened?

Where did this come from? What can I do? If you're smart you get mad and go out and organize if you're not smart you're sulking have a drink and The conservatives were ready to fight Mrs. Hamer represents everything LVJ Except control except for control. I mean look An awful lot of good people Part of me a lot of people who stand for good causes Understand that they personify the good cause and that they understand the best way to get there and they understand Timing and they understand that they have to lead it and if you're offering an alternative vision of what timing is and of what it ought to be That is in a front in a major way for those who think that they are you're after all sponsor and And a patron and I think he found that to be unpalatable, but he also

Simply wanted to have as unruffled a convention as he could so he'd come out of there and hit those next two months Bang bang bang bang bang and go on to victory and he was afraid that this thing Could disturb it as of course it did in five states or however many there were come 60 come November Right Okay, last two questions. Why why do you think it's important to look back and remember Better question is why is it important to look back and remember virtually every important aspect of our past But one of the main reasons is if you don't Then you don't understand anything at all about the present and more to the point you don't understand that as a great deal of Massive mythology about our past which can still bite us can still bring us down as a democratic republic The 60s are of course the object of major attack from the right as sort of the

architectural building blocks of a disintegrated and degenerate new America and And if you don't make sure people understand what fundamental good things happen because of that period in the lives of many many Americans then of course you're even more vulnerable to the attack that these were times of real backward motion for the nation is to post a forward There's not a kid out there, and I've been often on teaching that is not my profession, but he right It's hardly a kid out there that has a real appreciation of Much of post-World War II American history one. They don't get taught it in high school beyond the most limping so limping sort of thing and the second is it's very dangerous for an awful lot of people to teach anything which is halfway Straight about what happened in that period because it is now such a matter of

Huge polarization as a result. We don't have a lot of kids who know and if you don't understand your country And you don't understand how we got here Then you don't understand what it is that's necessary to fight for as opposed to stand here and essentially say yeah, so You know if it's still possible For people to say what is it the blacks want or if it's still possible to say Haven't we given those people all the money they need? Don't they just waste it to spell possible to say that then you don't understand a damn thing Amanda I'm done you done Let's do what you call room tone room tone for hot and Carter 30 seconds You're in town