Democrats Add Civil Rights to 1960 Platform

Photograph by Ray Graham / Los Angeles Times Alaska delegate Helen Fischer gives Hedda Hopper a “King Crab” hat. In case anybody wondered, Hopper made sure folks knew she was a Republican!

July 13, 1960: The Democrats announce their platform: Civil Rights -- "The time has come to assure equal access for all Americans to all areas of community life, including voting booths, schoolrooms, jobs, housing and public facilities." On the jump, Kyle Palmer says: "As viewed by representatives from 10 protesting Southern states, including most of those that supported Adlai Stevenson in 1952 and 1956, the civil rights plank was a virtual repudiation of what to them is a far more important and basic issue -- state's rights.” And James Reston of the New York Times takes a satiric look at the Democrats’ keynote speech.

Bruce Russell’s look at the Democratic National Convention

Comments

[Paul M. Mock]

So little in all of this re: the famed Hollywood connection to the convention and campaign. (One photo of Judy Garland thus far!) Not a bleep about Sammy Davis, Jr. being ruthlessly booed by the Southern delegates when he was introduced (with others) to sing the National Anthemn. The NY Times had an article re: this today...yet nothing from the archives of the local paper to even mention it. It shook the convention to it's core momentarily and devastated Davis and angered Nat King Cole among other blacks.

[John C. Marshall]

No Fidler, no Hedda - so how am I to keep up to scratch with what's going on in Tinsel Town? My first always intriguing stop of the day gone - and never called me 'Mother'. If you see what I mean