General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: For anyone old enough to remember, how did Reagan do as CA governor and as president? [View all]struggle4progress
(118,273 posts)Pedro A. Noguera and Robert Cohen
February 11, 2011
... Early in his political career Reagan opposed every major piece of civil rights legislation adopted by Congress, including the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Voting Rights Act of 1965 and the Fair Housing Act of 1968 ... As President, Reagan supported tax breaks for schools that discriminated on the basis of race, opposed the extension of the Voting Rights Act, vetoed the Civil Rights Restoration Act and decimated the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) ...
From 1984 to 1986, the anti-apartheid movement erupted across the country. In many cases, mass protests on college campuses were the most visible part of the movement. For a time, Reagan was as unmoved by the campus protests as he was by the brutality of the South African government. Reagan ascended to the White House embracing white South Africa as a valuable cold war ally, asking CBS news anchor Walter Cronkite, Can we abandon a country that has stood by us in every war weve fought, a country thats strategically essential to the free world? In Reagans first term the White House violated the UN arms embargo on South Africa, vetoed a UN Security Council resolution that would have imposed sanctions on the apartheid regime and approved a $1.1 billion IMF loan to South Africa ...
On September 25, 1986, he vetoed the sanctions bill. But by this time the antiapartheid movements influence was so strong that even the presidents own party was embarrassed by Reagans refusal to stand up to South Africa. Indiana Republican Richard Lugar pleaded with Reagan to get on the right side of history by supporting sanctions. Such Republican dissent helped make possible Congresss overwhelming 7821 vote to override Reagans veto in October 1986. This marked the first time in Reagans White House years that a presidential foreign policy veto had been overturned. The vote attested to how out of touch Reagan was with the struggle for racial justice, a struggle that the Free South Africa movement had helped to popularize in the United States ...
http://www.thenation.com/article/158506/remembering-reagans-record-civil-rights-and-south-african-freedom-struggle#