wait, so the only way they can legitimately say 'republicans passed the civil right act' is by counting the votes for the act, and ignoring the leadership who forced said act to be put to the vote in the first place. so this ad is saying republicans are better followers than leaders? i don't get it.
If you look at the overall vote totals between Democrats and Republicans, the Republicans look like they were bigger supporters of the Civil Rights Act. However, what that glosses over is that the South was almost straight Democratic at the time, so the southern Democratic advantage dragged down the overall totals. But here is a little detail on how the votes went:
The original House version:
Southern Democrats: 7�87 (7�93%)
Southern Republicans: 0�10 (0�100%)
Northern Democrats: 145�9 (94�6%)
Northern Republicans: 138�24 (85�15%)
To be fair, any white folks who participated in this should be ashamed of themselves too. The fact that blacks would have an additional reason to be ashamed -- that this ad is asking them to operate against their own best interests -- is not racist, just a recognition of the racism.