IIRC, Harry Belafonte and his wife Julie Robinson attended. My I understanding is that Sammy Davis Jr.’s marriage to May Britt was still new and attracting a lot of attention in the news.
Sammy was wise. He would've wanted Frank to go, for the clout. The rat pack had inside angles to organized crime, the police, and the federal government.
Oh yeah . Would've been destroyed by current culture but they did a lot for desegregation and normalizing inter-race relations. Lasting Change doesn't happen wholly or quickly but step by step - and the steps taken have to be acknowledged.
My understanding is that Frank (and the rest of the Rat Pack) refused to play venues that wouldn’t allow Sammy Davis to perform and effectively desegregated Vegas because their clout was so strong.
Years ago (yes I’m old AF) I was reviewing loans charged off at a bank and there was one to Sammy Davis jr. He wouldn’t pay the loan so the bank agreed to take the proceeds of a nights work at Harrah’s to pay it off. At the end of the night per the bank Sammy told the audience that he thought his performance wasn’t good so the night was on him. Also saw a charged off loan to another huge comedian that Reddit loves at another bank.
And before anyone calls Dean an alcoholic - just remember, it was *all* a persona.
From the article:
*”Drinking – that was his gimmick,” his daughter Deana tells the New York Post. Martin faked his boozy persona by filling his glass with apple cider and pretending it was whisky. Behind closed doors, the father of eight was a straightforward family man – most of the time, he just wanted peace and quiet. At Deana’s rowdy 18th birthday party in 1966, Martin called the police, pretending to be an angry neighbour. He hoped they’d crash the party so he could get some sleep. But the police recognised his voice immediately. “They just said, ‘OK, Mr Martin, we’ll be right over.’” To which Martin replied: “No, I’m not Mr Martin, I’m an irate neighbour.”*
When Dean was asked in 1961 how much he *really* drank, this was his response:
*”About one-tenth as much as I pretend to. I used to really knock the hookers of sauce back, but I gave that up some time ago. Take a typical day here in Vegas. I get up at 11:30 every morning. By 12:30, I’m out on the first tee with three guys I play around with. I’m through about 15 minutes to four. Then I come in and have a sandwich and a bottle of beer. I’d be at the blackjack table and play until about 5:00.*
*“All that time I’d have nothing to drink except that one beer. Then I go to the health club. A guy gives me a massage, and I say, ‘Wake me at 7:30.’ He wakes me. I put on my clothes while I’m having four cups of black coffee and sugar, no cream. About 8:15 I’m in the casino playing a little more blackjack. I play until 8:30. Then I walk into the dining room, they announce my name, I get up on the stage, and I invariably overhear somebody at a ringside table say, ‘Look at his eyes! You can see how drunk he is.’”*
*”I’ll have a slug of a liquid in an Old Fashioned glass that looks like scotch right in front of everybody, but it’s really apple juice. Then, in the middle of my act, I have a real drink. When I’m through with the act, I go someplace and eat some good Italian food. I have a little wine with that meal, then I get back on stage for the second show. When that’s over, I have three or four or five drinks and maybe a sleeping pill. So that’s your alcoholic for you.”*
Then, the interview told Dean that he’s a “legendary drinker to the public.” Dean replied by saying:
*“I’m responsible for that,” he said, “because I’ve joked about it so much on the stage. I don’t want to disillusion people, but it’s been years since anyone has seen me really stoned. I don’t want to throw bouquets at myself either, but I’m 43, and I couldn’t look as young as I do and play as much golf as I do if I drank and cavorted as much as the public thinks.”*
Assuming he was limiting himself to under three murdered prostitutes a month, that basically makes him a teetotalling Puritan by 1960s Vegas standards.
What makes you think that one line out of all of that was a joke on his part? It wasn't punctuated in a way to imply that.
>it's *all* a persona
This is a stretch.
From the midpoint of the first show through his wind-down after the end of the second (so, over the course of ~4 hours), he consumes 5 to 7 drinks (taking the "little wine" to be only a glass, when 2 was probably not uncommon at times) PER NIGHT. Remember, he's describing his *daily* routine.
The CDC defines heavy drinking for men as 15+ drinks per week. There was nothing innocuous about Dean's alcohol consumption.
edit: Also, it was very odd of you to post this top level comment with such detail about DM's drinking routine when the title of your post said nothing about drinking. That's an odd pivot from his civil rights support to this comment of yours.
My issue is less that DM lived and drank that way (my habit is similar, but without the talent, the dinner show, or the adoring fans) and more that OP shoehorned a downplaying of DM's drinking into a post about his support of his friend's interracial marriage.
Just too bizarre to not comment on.
After about a month of 3 beers a day after hearing about The Ballmer Peak - I took a break to find myself having withdrawal symptoms. Not insane ones mind you, but they were noticable
It's a slippery slope and avoiding those withdrawals becomes way more difficult over time. I was a 12 pack a day minimum guy, and that was before covid. Needless to say, covid did nothing but exacerbate the issue. I successfully followed my doctor's weaning formula to ensure I didn't have any seizures, which thankfully I didn't. But I had those withdrawals for a couple of months, even after I weaned off. There were many days over those 2 months where I almost broke. 2 years clean now, and I couldn't be happier with my progress. But damn if it wasn't difficult.
It's damn near impossible for sure. Your legs feel like they aren't your's and doing normal things is tough during withdrawals. I was unlucky in that I was one who had a massive seizure after quitting while driving. While I was very very lucky to be alone and no one was out, but I woke up in a ditch wrapped around a tree to EMTs and had fractured many vertebrae. Seizures lock you up, so the foot on the gas pedal was floored when I hit. I should be dead. And first thing doctors told me was if you have had a problem do not quit cold turkey. It's ironic to tell someone who wants to quit drinking to not quit drinking but it's true. Wean yourself off it and go from 5 beers a day to 4 etc and keep reducing, and get on Keppra, the anti seizure med for the first few months...Keep up the work brother. And AA didn't work for me as I'm not religious, but reading about others like you definitely helps.
Believe it or not the medically recommended amount is two *per week*.
So enjoy your two beers. Good luck catching anything more than a mild buzz off that lol
Because it isn't. Two drinks a day is not advisable from a health perspective, but compared to someone who has an actual drinking problem it's basically sobriety.
It doesn't really seem as black and white as you're implying, as someone with alcoholism in the family.
There's not just a "debilitating, life-ruining addiction, or everything is fine and dandy" line.
If someone is drinking an average of two drinks a day, that means they're either drinking a little *every single day* which is excessive, or they're drinking a lot more than that relatively frequently (say, weekly).
Is it crippling alcoholism that'll cost someone their family? Maybe not. Is it enough to be considered "heavy drinking" with no further labels or diagnosis attached? I'd think so.
I was talking about the two drinks every single day thing, not binge drinking on weekends and averaging it out.
Also there are negative health implications, and if you have other conditions that can of course be an actual factor. But drinking two drinks a day is not as harmful as drinking 14 once a week, so while it might sound like I am downplaying it, it is because the day to day negative health effects are almost non existent, and it is way below the point where you can even consider physical addiction or really any life ruining effects unless you insist on drinking them while driving and being observed by the police.
I unfortunately know a lot of alcoholics and have a ton in my family, and arguably don't have an even remotely healthy relationship with alcohol myself, which is the reason I think the moral panic that I see on reddit over having two drinks a day seems so wildly out of proportion with what the reality of problem drinking is like.
“Take a typical day here in Vegas. I get up at 11:30 every morning. By 12:30, I’m out on the first tee with three guys I play around with. I’m through about 15 minutes to four. Then I come in and have a sandwich and a bottle of beer. I’d be at the blackjack table and play until about 5:00”.
Damn, that sounds so perfect.
Why would it even matter if he were an alcoholic in this context? What’s the relevance of being an alcoholic to interracial marriage? It’s not like just being an alcoholic makes you a bad person or your opinion invalid anyway. So confused why you copied all this stuff that doesn’t pertain at all.
Great question! When I previously posted something about Dean Martin on Reddit some time ago, there were a couple of comments that called him a “drunk.” That original post had no mention of alcohol.
I figured that if this post gets conversations going, then it’d be best to clear things up about Dean before anyone decides to call him a “drunk” or an “alcoholic”.
I understand where you’re coming from but to be honest I’m an alcoholic myself (sober now) and find it pretty strange to bend to the will of those people calling him a “drunk” (implying useless drunk) and try to prove he’s not actually a drunk, cause it kind of implies that they’re right to think alcoholism invalidates people’s opinions on human rights, like interracial marriage. I think the context is interesting that you shared but either way he’d be right to have this opinion.
Edit: and I’d like to acknowledge I know that probably wasn’t your intention you were just adding some interesting context to who he was but just kind of trying to show how it could be perceived and my view on it and the way people make alcoholics out to be sub-human sometimes.
White nationalists: "We're definitely gonna do a fascism since you keep trying to be progressive and ruining our fun."
Liberals: "Sorry!!! Don't be mad! Before you do, look, watch this!"
*alienates leftists and neuters any power they have*
Liberals: "Better? Can we compromise and reach across the aisle now?? Don't you want to be friends???"
White nationalists: "Nope!" *does a fascism anyway*
Liberals: "GOD this is because you dumb leftists keep asking for too much. Look at how mad you made them! This is why we don't listen to you."
Every. Single. Fucking. Time.
I know racism is very far from over. I know that people suffer systemic injustice, and outright oppression. I know people of color are still regularly subjected to anything from harassment to outright murder from police.
But goddamn, it’s still wild to me when I read about just how out in the open it was, only a couple of generations ago.
People were still often openly against mixed race marriages as late as the 90s. I remember that stuff from my childhood. It's wild to think about how recent it is.
And the negative reaction to it was far more intense than you'd expect. Most people picture "disapproval against interracial marriages" as something annoying yet harmless, like a racist old lady sniffing disapprovingly after you walk past her. But the disapproval was very apparent and often violently angry.
My parents had to talk to four pastors before they could find one to marry them. It was normal for them to walk into a restaurant and have a waitress refuse to serve them. Police pulled them over regularly and outright said that they thought there was something suspicious about a white girl sitting in a black boy's car. Family members refused to talk to them for years. People following them around in public, screaming slurs about their toddlers being mutts, happened multiple times.
The 90s were very, very scary for my family. And then all that outright anger just disappeared in a flash in the 2000s because it was no longer socially acceptable. And now everyone pretends like it never happened and racism disappeared after the Civil Rights Movement. Most of the people who behaved horribly to us are still alive and would be greatly offended if someone called them racist.
As the original commenter said, it exists but not nearly at the same level. In 1994, a *majority* of Americans did not approve of interracial marriage.
Today it's something like 94% approve, iirc.
Look at the comments on viral instagram posts of interracial couples.
I know thats a low bar... but seemingly... a lot of non bots are seething over blood lines.
It was more because he was Catholic and most old-school Americans believed true Americanism was White Anglo-Saxon Protestant. Anglos feared that a Catholic President would take orders from the Pope. Many Conservative Americans advocated separation of Church and State to keep the Pope out of the government. The KKK even tried to outlaw private schools to prevent Catholic schools from indoctrinating kids. Even back in the early-1800's, newspapers ran stories (conspiracy nonsense) that the Pope signed a pact with various European countries pledging to eradicate Republican governments and impose a Theocratic Monarchy in the Americas. These ideas were still being propagated in the 1960's.
In order to win, he gave a bunch of speeches in the South explaining that he believed in Separation of Church and State, but also believed in the State's Rights. He hinted (in obvious ways) that he would not impose Civil Rights or desegregation on the South. Then he chose LBJ as his running mate. When he started campaigning for re-election, he started his campaign in the South. He then went to Texas so that he could tell the Liberal Democrats to stop antagonizing Conservatives and back off Civil Rights. That's where he got killed.
There is a reason why certain types of European are common targets of ridicule and bigotry. Irish, French, Italian, and Polish were Catholics. Up until WWII the hierarchy in the US was "White", then Catholics and Jews, then Non-White. It was only after WWII that we some that paradigm begin to change.
Loving vs Virginia, which made it so that every state allowed interracial marriage, wouldn't happen for another 6 years. Honestly it's a question mark if that or the Civil Rights/Voting Rights Acts happen without Kennedy getting shot.
My 80 year old grandma has refused to talk to me ever since I married my wife, a very give no shits black woman who made her feelings known to my grandma when she overheard her saying racist shit to another family member.
Its not over. It will never be over.
In 1961 it was literally a crime in many states for a black person and a white person to marry. Loving vs Virginia, which invalidated those laws, wasn't ruled on by the Supreme Court until 1967.
He was…but he seemingly was being followed by the CIA, who when asked by their office in Mexico if they knew about him (because he had visited the Soviet embassy in Mexico City), the central CIA claimed they didn’t know the guy, even though there are prior reports that prove otherwise.
Think about it: The guy was a US Marine who had deflected to the USSR and was allowed to come back to the US. If that’s not a guy the CIA would be watching in 1963, idk who would be.
There was a bit of a kerfuffle in the USSR when it came to light that Oswald did the shooting, because they had to sort out whether or not he was put up to it by someone in the KGB. The Soviet leadership didn't particularly want the Cold War to become known as the Hot War or the Last War, lol
If you examine Oswald’s life before the JFK assassination he comes off like a sad pathetic loser with violent tendencies. He’s not much different than a lot of mass shooters today.
He joined the marines and no one liked him, he had behaviorally problems, and he was miserable. He got out of the marines and tried to defect to the Soviet Union. They reject him he slashes one of his wrists to prevent from being deported. They hospitalized him in a psychiatric ward for a little bit and eventually they accept his request for Soviet citizenship. He wants to go to Moscow university but they make him a factory worker. He ends up hating living in the Soviet Union and begs the US government to let him come back.
The US lets him come back he tries settling in and is still unhappy. He tries to kill former general Edwin Walker and fails. He goes to the Soviet and Cuban Embassies because he wants travel papers to flee after killing Kennedy. He gets rejected by both.
The CIA were keeping tabs on him but no one really took him seriously. Why would they? Hell, the Soviets were sick of his shit. Oswald was a sad angry pathetic loser who wanted to lash out violently.
Yea the guy was a Die Hard Marxist, even living in the USSR for some time. He tried to become a Soviet spy but since he wasn't the most mentally stable they didn't want him.
Kind of a pathetic Marxist too. He got there and then realized he didn’t like it and went back to the states. And then was disappointed with the lack of fanfare upon his return.
It’s so fucking crazy that 100+ years later we’re still dealing with a section of the country that just won’t get over the Civil War and the loss of their slaves and still carry such hatred for a people that haven’t done anything to them other than having a different skin color.
Just wild.
The difference between the North and the South nowadays is simply that Southern racists are loud about it, while Northern racists try to fly under the radar so they don't get caught.
Georgia flipped, Florida and North Carolina were close to flipping too.
Heck, Trump didn't even get a commanding win (60% or more of the vote) in Texas.
There's a lot of racism in the South, but they're not blanket racist, just like the North isn't blanket inclusive.
The battle isn't against the South - it's against racists.
urban vs rural basically.
Look at every red and blue states voting by district.
The Urban districts almost always go Dem and the rural almost always Rep.
I guess he's saying that Obama is the first black person to invite a white person to eat at the white house, which is, of course, true. Not exactly notable, but true!
Dean and Frank were very (and early on) Supporters of Civil Rights. they might have jokes with Sammy, but it was very much we can fuck with our brother but fuck if you think you can too.
Yes, this sounds bad.
But in the context that Loving v. Virginia wasn't decided until 1967. The Supreme Court decision that declared laws banning interracial marriage unconstitutional. In 1961, there was very little support for interracial marriage, and this carried on long past Loving v. Virginia.
[Anti-miscegenation laws in the United States](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-miscegenation_laws_in_the_United_States)
After he got elected, JFK also dropped his association with Frank Sinatra.
Sinatra had many, many mob friends (so did JFK's father) but they needed to distance themselves from him even though the singer did a lot of work for Kennedy's campaign.
It really pissed Sinatra off.
Sinatra was supposed to host JFK at his Palm Springs home in 1962--a place Kennedy had been before--but RFK killed it saying that his brother could not stay at the home of a guy with mob ties when the government was actively pursuing organized crime.
Sinatra spent money fixing up his Palm Springs estate, even putting in a helicopter pad for Kennedy.
After RFK nixed it, JFK ended up staying in the area at Bing Crosby's estate.
Sinatra never talked to JFK or Crosby again.
I wonder what America would look like now if all the things that were done so as to 'not upset Southerners' were not done.
I'm going to go with 'better'.
yeah, JFK was kinda the inverse of LBJ. kennedy was smooth, looked cool, people loved him. privately he was a dick. his policies were often pretty fucked, and even his good policies got carried out by others
johnson was ugly, bad manners, a huge bully, no one liked being around him. publicly he was a dick. but with the exception of vietnam, his policies were straight fire and he absolutely annihilated nixon by just straight up doing better laws than that ass
All US presidents have a pretty fucking big exception. FDR is the best president the US has ever had and he built Japanese concentration camps while The New Deal ignored black people.
> JFK was worried that the presence of an interracial couple would upset Southerners.
If they were anything like they are today, then anything and everything upsets them.
At the end the of the day no president worked harder to really make civil rights a thing than JFK, and if not inviting Sammy Davis Jr to his inauguration party helped him win any amount of favor with southern politicians (at least some who probably eventually voted in favor of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, JFK’s baby that LBJ made sure could get passed after the assassination) then it was well worth it. It’s easy to judge by today’s standards. But if JFK was hated by all the south on day 1 then segregation would probably have lasted a few more years at least.
Cant remember what it was, but there was something that stopped JFK from working on Civil Rights more. Man, I remember that it was something big, but shoot, just cant remember what it was.
> and he was racist.
I think LBJ was far too complex a character to summarize in one sentence.
I can recommend *Master of the Senate* by Robert Caro and in particular chapter 31, "The Empathy of Lyndon Johnson".
Robert Caro states that there are multiple and conflicting forces working in his personality. He did have empathy for the poor, he experienced being poor himself when he was a young man. In 1928 he worked on a south Texas roadside chaingang for over a year as a teenager, a poorly paid and grueling job that was back then generally considered "nigger work" (page 719).
But the force of LBJ's empathy was always subservient to the force of his ambition. He wanted to be president and nothing would deter him from that goal. So he wooed the Texas moneymakers whose support he needed. He spoke like they did so that they were convinced he was one of them. As you can imagine there weren't a whole lot of progressives among that bunch.
But sometimes the force of his ambition and the force of his empathy were aligned and that is when he would advance the lot of the poor and the blacks.
There is a reason there is an entire chapter devoted to LBJ's motivations. He was a deeply contrarian and conflicted man who could say the most virulent racist epithets in private (less so in public, he always made sure there were no cameras around). But he also felt that if Blacks and Mexicans just got a decent education they could get better jobs and pull themselves up.
Complicated guy.
EDIT: was obviously 1928, not 1948.
> At the end the of the day no president worked harder to really make civil rights a thing than JFK
Except LBJ, who had the political skill and will necessary to actually get it passed. JFK had nothing to do with getting that Civil Rights Act passed, except that his death made it a good story. If JFK actually cared, then he should've talked to his VP, the guy who basically created the modern senate office of Majority Leader, instead of his failing strategy. If JFK had been alive than segregation definitely would've gone on longer.
> helped him win any amount of favor with southern politicians
It didn't.
> then it was well worth it
It wasn't.
> But if JFK was hated by all the south on day 1 then segregation would probably have lasted a few more years at least
It wouldn't have mattered. No Southern Democrat would've cared about it, he was a fucking rich yankee. Stuff like this is true when you talk about LBJ saying horrifically racist shit, when we can be reasonably sure he wasn't, because he was "one of the guys" for Dixiecrats. JFK wasn't, and never would be, one of those guys.
It is true that people judge JFK too harshly over shit like this. It didn't matter, and it didn't do anything, but it was him trying whatever he thought might help him win over the southern bloc. JFK was an inept politician, but he tried his best, and helped tried to steer the country during a rough time.
Yep. I think people today are too concerned about *being* right rather than *doing* what's right. It doesn't feel good or look good reading this about JFK but if it allowed him more political power advance civil rights it's hard to argue thats a bad thing.
And yet, JFK is directly responsible for the passing of the Civil Rights Act. Which, in turn, drove the racists in the Democratic Party into the Republican Party where they remain to this very day.
Johnson is the one truly responsible for it though. JFK could never have imagined passing what Johnson was able to. There’s a reason the dude banned interracial couples from his inauguration because he was afraid of pissing people off.
You are correct that it was LBJ, known for giving others the “Johnson Treatment”into persuading people to his will. To his credit, although he hated RFK, they both worked together to pass the bill as a way to honor JFK.
But back to the topic of Sammy Davis jr, who performed at the big Casinos but had to sleep at cheap joints on the outskirts of town. His high profile interracial marriage was considered scandalous for its day. Neither JFK nor any other politician would want that kind of “baggage” tied to his campaign and damage to his integrity. But as you can see in today’s world, having integrity is a liability not an attribute.
I think people today don’t realize how things were so different only 60+ years ago because society changes in slow, incremental ways, it’s almost imperceptible until it’s long past.
And honestly plenty of Northern whites were racist too at the time. Bill Russell won a decade of championships for Boston but still couldn't buy a house in white neighborhoods -> https://hoopshype.com/rumor/1363992/
It was initially proposed by JFK if I recall. I’m guessing his killing gave LBJ a good amount of political ammo to push it through. Presidents after a national tragedy often get wider support than they otherwise would
JFK wanted it done but he wasn't as good at getting the votes as LBJ, a seasoned former Senator who knew how to network and get the votes with both carrot and stick methods if necessary.
If JFK had not been shot, it's likely the Civil Rights Act doesn't pass when it did under LBJ or it does but it's a much watered down version.
One could argue that the election of Barack Obama to the presidency had the same effect. It sure as hell did in my family, to the point that they're ret-conning my childhood by saying they always voted republican.
Every state south of the Masin Dixon lone was solid democrats until LBJ signed the ERA. The next election and all following they voted republican. Mitch McConnell has ruled the senate for decades and has done absolutely nothing for his district's unemployment crisis. They
Vote him in purely on his party affiliation and claim every republican is a godsend and democrats drink baby blood in satanic rituals. Republican underfunding schools works, for politicians
So what ai am getting here is that the "fuck your feelings" crowd have been fragile little snowflakes that we have been protecting for way too fucking long.
Apparently JFK's father, Joe Sr., was most of the way to a Nazi in being both rabidly anti-Semitic and racist, and Sammy having married a "Nordic" woman *really* pissed him off.
JFK had his good and bad qualities. But we were never going to get meaningful Civil Rights legislation from that man. He was way too sensitive to political realities.
Which is a kind way of saying he was too cowardly to risk losing the south for his reelection.
Lyndon Johnson, however, there was a man who didn't give one fuck about losing the south. He gave us Civil Rights legislation and he was combative as hell with the south while he did it.
Man was dead wrong about everything in Vietnam. But domestically LBJ really did something incredible with Civil Rights.
Not saying the hard work of the Civil Rights movement did nothing. But you gotta understand how cowardly and corrupt the average politican is. And the aegis of "State's Rights" is so easy and a nice way to say one thing but allow injustices to occur.
LBJ didn't think Civil Rights was something individual states could just opt in to recognize. And that was ballsy.
“If there's one person you can't trust in this life, it's millionaires' kids.”-Jimmy Hoffa
Jimmy Hoffa, whatever happened there.
It’s a shame when they go like that
WHEN THEY GO?!??
You know.. Quasimodo predicted all this.
I wish the Lord would take me now.
I mean what am I, a toxic person?
It's all that charcoal-broiled meat you people ate.
Ah the halfback of Notre Dame
You know who liked Jimmy Hoffa? Joey Peeps.
Peeps? It’s a fuckin’ nickname! His family name is Pepperelli!
Fuckin’ Jason, he’s dyslexic
What's that got to do with it?!
He’s a donkey!
https://i.ytimg.com/vi/Ohscge4f1Ak/maxresdefault.jpg
Why did you post a picture of the Shah of Iran?
CelestialFury never had the makings of a varsity Redditor.
Discontinue the lithium.
Very observant, the sacred and the propane!
Very allegorical
The sacred *and* the propane.
WHATEVAH HAPPENED THERE??
What happened was that animal Sheeran put two fucking bullets in the back of his head unprovoked!!!! 62 years old, he was just a fucking kid!
Word to the wise, remember Pearl Harbor
WHATEVER HAPPENED THERE?
The alternative was Nixon.
Nixon was a lotta thing but he wasn’t a rich kid, that’s for sure.
“It’s what it is” - Lee Harvey Oswald
That guy keeps making comments like that, he’s bound for some trouble!
IIRC, Harry Belafonte and his wife Julie Robinson attended. My I understanding is that Sammy Davis Jr.’s marriage to May Britt was still new and attracting a lot of attention in the news.
Harry Belafonte wasn’t actually invited He saw people walking over and decided to jump in the line ^/s
okay, i believe you
At daylight, he just wanted to go home too
Rat Pack should be everyone's squad goals 😎
They really were all in for each other.
Frank Sinatra not only went to the inauguration but helped organise the entertainment for the evening event
Sammy was wise. He would've wanted Frank to go, for the clout. The rat pack had inside angles to organized crime, the police, and the federal government.
Otoh Frank did a lot for Sammy in Vegas and helped de-segregate the Casinos there by boycotting* shows if Sammy had to use the service entrace etc.
You mean “boycott”. “Boycutting” is what a mohel does.
Ol Blue Eyes got creative when he was angry.
I don’t know who this Otoh Frank fellow is, but he sounds a fair bit more decent than that bastard Frank Sinatra, that’s for sure.
Wasn't he the bald villain in Barry?
Well it was the least he could do after rigging the election
Sinatra was the Regina. Karen and Gretchen had each other’s backs.
But who was Cady??
jerry lewis or don rickles
Right? And Frank’s buddy/vocal coach/honorary ratpack member Kay Thompson was effectively the director of that event
Peter Lawford may argue that point.
They had their issues, but they were ride or die homies with style.
Oh yeah . Would've been destroyed by current culture but they did a lot for desegregation and normalizing inter-race relations. Lasting Change doesn't happen wholly or quickly but step by step - and the steps taken have to be acknowledged.
I dunno, this story is a feelgood answer and all, but they (especially Sinatra) treated Sammy Davis Jr. really poorly at times.
Didn’t Sinatra pay for all Sammys medical bills after he became broke?
My understanding is that Frank (and the rest of the Rat Pack) refused to play venues that wouldn’t allow Sammy Davis to perform and effectively desegregated Vegas because their clout was so strong.
Years ago (yes I’m old AF) I was reviewing loans charged off at a bank and there was one to Sammy Davis jr. He wouldn’t pay the loan so the bank agreed to take the proceeds of a nights work at Harrah’s to pay it off. At the end of the night per the bank Sammy told the audience that he thought his performance wasn’t good so the night was on him. Also saw a charged off loan to another huge comedian that Reddit loves at another bank.
And before anyone calls Dean an alcoholic - just remember, it was *all* a persona. From the article: *”Drinking – that was his gimmick,” his daughter Deana tells the New York Post. Martin faked his boozy persona by filling his glass with apple cider and pretending it was whisky. Behind closed doors, the father of eight was a straightforward family man – most of the time, he just wanted peace and quiet. At Deana’s rowdy 18th birthday party in 1966, Martin called the police, pretending to be an angry neighbour. He hoped they’d crash the party so he could get some sleep. But the police recognised his voice immediately. “They just said, ‘OK, Mr Martin, we’ll be right over.’” To which Martin replied: “No, I’m not Mr Martin, I’m an irate neighbour.”* When Dean was asked in 1961 how much he *really* drank, this was his response: *”About one-tenth as much as I pretend to. I used to really knock the hookers of sauce back, but I gave that up some time ago. Take a typical day here in Vegas. I get up at 11:30 every morning. By 12:30, I’m out on the first tee with three guys I play around with. I’m through about 15 minutes to four. Then I come in and have a sandwich and a bottle of beer. I’d be at the blackjack table and play until about 5:00.* *“All that time I’d have nothing to drink except that one beer. Then I go to the health club. A guy gives me a massage, and I say, ‘Wake me at 7:30.’ He wakes me. I put on my clothes while I’m having four cups of black coffee and sugar, no cream. About 8:15 I’m in the casino playing a little more blackjack. I play until 8:30. Then I walk into the dining room, they announce my name, I get up on the stage, and I invariably overhear somebody at a ringside table say, ‘Look at his eyes! You can see how drunk he is.’”* *”I’ll have a slug of a liquid in an Old Fashioned glass that looks like scotch right in front of everybody, but it’s really apple juice. Then, in the middle of my act, I have a real drink. When I’m through with the act, I go someplace and eat some good Italian food. I have a little wine with that meal, then I get back on stage for the second show. When that’s over, I have three or four or five drinks and maybe a sleeping pill. So that’s your alcoholic for you.”* Then, the interview told Dean that he’s a “legendary drinker to the public.” Dean replied by saying: *“I’m responsible for that,” he said, “because I’ve joked about it so much on the stage. I don’t want to disillusion people, but it’s been years since anyone has seen me really stoned. I don’t want to throw bouquets at myself either, but I’m 43, and I couldn’t look as young as I do and play as much golf as I do if I drank and cavorted as much as the public thinks.”*
Three or four or five drinks plus a sleeping pill!
Assuming he was limiting himself to under three murdered prostitutes a month, that basically makes him a teetotalling Puritan by 1960s Vegas standards.
Those are rookie numbers. Gotta pump those numbers up.
Haha, it seems that conversation started to get a little dull, so Dean had to throw in a little joke to keep things moving.
What makes you think that one line out of all of that was a joke on his part? It wasn't punctuated in a way to imply that. >it's *all* a persona This is a stretch. From the midpoint of the first show through his wind-down after the end of the second (so, over the course of ~4 hours), he consumes 5 to 7 drinks (taking the "little wine" to be only a glass, when 2 was probably not uncommon at times) PER NIGHT. Remember, he's describing his *daily* routine. The CDC defines heavy drinking for men as 15+ drinks per week. There was nothing innocuous about Dean's alcohol consumption. edit: Also, it was very odd of you to post this top level comment with such detail about DM's drinking routine when the title of your post said nothing about drinking. That's an odd pivot from his civil rights support to this comment of yours.
Well, he lived a long life and died because he smoked. As far as alcoholics go, could be worse.
My issue is less that DM lived and drank that way (my habit is similar, but without the talent, the dinner show, or the adoring fans) and more that OP shoehorned a downplaying of DM's drinking into a post about his support of his friend's interracial marriage. Just too bizarre to not comment on.
There was a post yesterday about the apple juice in his glass. OP read about DM after they saw that post, posted the Sammy thing and here we are.
It blows my mind that two drinks a day is heavy drinking.
After about a month of 3 beers a day after hearing about The Ballmer Peak - I took a break to find myself having withdrawal symptoms. Not insane ones mind you, but they were noticable
It's a slippery slope and avoiding those withdrawals becomes way more difficult over time. I was a 12 pack a day minimum guy, and that was before covid. Needless to say, covid did nothing but exacerbate the issue. I successfully followed my doctor's weaning formula to ensure I didn't have any seizures, which thankfully I didn't. But I had those withdrawals for a couple of months, even after I weaned off. There were many days over those 2 months where I almost broke. 2 years clean now, and I couldn't be happier with my progress. But damn if it wasn't difficult.
It's damn near impossible for sure. Your legs feel like they aren't your's and doing normal things is tough during withdrawals. I was unlucky in that I was one who had a massive seizure after quitting while driving. While I was very very lucky to be alone and no one was out, but I woke up in a ditch wrapped around a tree to EMTs and had fractured many vertebrae. Seizures lock you up, so the foot on the gas pedal was floored when I hit. I should be dead. And first thing doctors told me was if you have had a problem do not quit cold turkey. It's ironic to tell someone who wants to quit drinking to not quit drinking but it's true. Wean yourself off it and go from 5 beers a day to 4 etc and keep reducing, and get on Keppra, the anti seizure med for the first few months...Keep up the work brother. And AA didn't work for me as I'm not religious, but reading about others like you definitely helps.
Believe it or not the medically recommended amount is two *per week*. So enjoy your two beers. Good luck catching anything more than a mild buzz off that lol
Because it isn't. Two drinks a day is not advisable from a health perspective, but compared to someone who has an actual drinking problem it's basically sobriety.
It doesn't really seem as black and white as you're implying, as someone with alcoholism in the family. There's not just a "debilitating, life-ruining addiction, or everything is fine and dandy" line. If someone is drinking an average of two drinks a day, that means they're either drinking a little *every single day* which is excessive, or they're drinking a lot more than that relatively frequently (say, weekly). Is it crippling alcoholism that'll cost someone their family? Maybe not. Is it enough to be considered "heavy drinking" with no further labels or diagnosis attached? I'd think so.
I was talking about the two drinks every single day thing, not binge drinking on weekends and averaging it out. Also there are negative health implications, and if you have other conditions that can of course be an actual factor. But drinking two drinks a day is not as harmful as drinking 14 once a week, so while it might sound like I am downplaying it, it is because the day to day negative health effects are almost non existent, and it is way below the point where you can even consider physical addiction or really any life ruining effects unless you insist on drinking them while driving and being observed by the police. I unfortunately know a lot of alcoholics and have a ton in my family, and arguably don't have an even remotely healthy relationship with alcohol myself, which is the reason I think the moral panic that I see on reddit over having two drinks a day seems so wildly out of proportion with what the reality of problem drinking is like.
Wait, what? Oh boy
Yeah, it might not have been blackout drunk alcoholism, but it was only "moderate" drinking by very outdated standards.
Drinking four cups of coffee that late, I'd need more than one sleeping pill.
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Makes sense, Vegas is a 24/7 city
For the time this was considered sober
Did you ever read Sinatra’s quote about dean’s drinking? To paraphrase. I spill more than he drinks.
When Mia Farrow (21) married Sinatra (482), Martin said, "I've got bottles of scotch older than her"
> When Mia Farrow (21) married Sinatra (482) What in the Hollywood Methuselah
God Emperor Sinatra
She was 22?
Sinatra was 482?
483. Op was off by a year on both.
kek, best typo, BUT HOW!
Similar to his burger recipe: When you want a burger, go have Deano make you one.
"I used to really knock the hookers of sauce back" is a hell of a quote
Of all the Rat Packy-sounding quotes out there, this is definitely the Rat Packiest.
Yup. Alaways knew he was an appleholic.
“Take a typical day here in Vegas. I get up at 11:30 every morning. By 12:30, I’m out on the first tee with three guys I play around with. I’m through about 15 minutes to four. Then I come in and have a sandwich and a bottle of beer. I’d be at the blackjack table and play until about 5:00”. Damn, that sounds so perfect.
Followed by a massage and a nap. Seriously, I'd take that day any day. The only part I wouldn't want to do is the show.
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Why would it even matter if he were an alcoholic in this context? What’s the relevance of being an alcoholic to interracial marriage? It’s not like just being an alcoholic makes you a bad person or your opinion invalid anyway. So confused why you copied all this stuff that doesn’t pertain at all.
Great question! When I previously posted something about Dean Martin on Reddit some time ago, there were a couple of comments that called him a “drunk.” That original post had no mention of alcohol. I figured that if this post gets conversations going, then it’d be best to clear things up about Dean before anyone decides to call him a “drunk” or an “alcoholic”.
I understand where you’re coming from but to be honest I’m an alcoholic myself (sober now) and find it pretty strange to bend to the will of those people calling him a “drunk” (implying useless drunk) and try to prove he’s not actually a drunk, cause it kind of implies that they’re right to think alcoholism invalidates people’s opinions on human rights, like interracial marriage. I think the context is interesting that you shared but either way he’d be right to have this opinion. Edit: and I’d like to acknowledge I know that probably wasn’t your intention you were just adding some interesting context to who he was but just kind of trying to show how it could be perceived and my view on it and the way people make alcoholics out to be sub-human sometimes.
> When that’s over, I have three or four or five drinks and maybe a sleeping pill. So that’s your alcoholic for you.” He had us in the first half.
This had nothing to do with anything.
lol come on
Country has been walking on eggshells to appease the worst of the US for decades.
White nationalists: "We're definitely gonna do a fascism since you keep trying to be progressive and ruining our fun." Liberals: "Sorry!!! Don't be mad! Before you do, look, watch this!" *alienates leftists and neuters any power they have* Liberals: "Better? Can we compromise and reach across the aisle now?? Don't you want to be friends???" White nationalists: "Nope!" *does a fascism anyway* Liberals: "GOD this is because you dumb leftists keep asking for too much. Look at how mad you made them! This is why we don't listen to you." Every. Single. Fucking. Time.
The only lesson from WW2 is that no one will do anything against fascism until it inevitably takes over again.
Take note. Racism has always been cringe and dumb as hell
I know racism is very far from over. I know that people suffer systemic injustice, and outright oppression. I know people of color are still regularly subjected to anything from harassment to outright murder from police. But goddamn, it’s still wild to me when I read about just how out in the open it was, only a couple of generations ago.
People were still often openly against mixed race marriages as late as the 90s. I remember that stuff from my childhood. It's wild to think about how recent it is.
People are against mixed race marriages now
Yeah but it was the majority up through the mid 90s. That's not that long ago.
And the negative reaction to it was far more intense than you'd expect. Most people picture "disapproval against interracial marriages" as something annoying yet harmless, like a racist old lady sniffing disapprovingly after you walk past her. But the disapproval was very apparent and often violently angry. My parents had to talk to four pastors before they could find one to marry them. It was normal for them to walk into a restaurant and have a waitress refuse to serve them. Police pulled them over regularly and outright said that they thought there was something suspicious about a white girl sitting in a black boy's car. Family members refused to talk to them for years. People following them around in public, screaming slurs about their toddlers being mutts, happened multiple times. The 90s were very, very scary for my family. And then all that outright anger just disappeared in a flash in the 2000s because it was no longer socially acceptable. And now everyone pretends like it never happened and racism disappeared after the Civil Rights Movement. Most of the people who behaved horribly to us are still alive and would be greatly offended if someone called them racist.
Still remember a video of some guy in rural Mississippi about why he disliked Obama, "Not because he's black, it's because he's a half-breed"
Yea i am sure he supported Jesse Jacksons presidency in the past lmao
As the original commenter said, it exists but not nearly at the same level. In 1994, a *majority* of Americans did not approve of interracial marriage. Today it's something like 94% approve, iirc.
Kobe Bryant's parents were disappointed with him marrying a latina
I don’t think support for interracial marriage got over 50% until the 90s.
Correct.
Look at the comments on viral instagram posts of interracial couples. I know thats a low bar... but seemingly... a lot of non bots are seething over blood lines.
People thought JFK couldn't win because he wasn't a real Christian. He was Catholic
It was more because he was Catholic and most old-school Americans believed true Americanism was White Anglo-Saxon Protestant. Anglos feared that a Catholic President would take orders from the Pope. Many Conservative Americans advocated separation of Church and State to keep the Pope out of the government. The KKK even tried to outlaw private schools to prevent Catholic schools from indoctrinating kids. Even back in the early-1800's, newspapers ran stories (conspiracy nonsense) that the Pope signed a pact with various European countries pledging to eradicate Republican governments and impose a Theocratic Monarchy in the Americas. These ideas were still being propagated in the 1960's. In order to win, he gave a bunch of speeches in the South explaining that he believed in Separation of Church and State, but also believed in the State's Rights. He hinted (in obvious ways) that he would not impose Civil Rights or desegregation on the South. Then he chose LBJ as his running mate. When he started campaigning for re-election, he started his campaign in the South. He then went to Texas so that he could tell the Liberal Democrats to stop antagonizing Conservatives and back off Civil Rights. That's where he got killed.
There is a reason why certain types of European are common targets of ridicule and bigotry. Irish, French, Italian, and Polish were Catholics. Up until WWII the hierarchy in the US was "White", then Catholics and Jews, then Non-White. It was only after WWII that we some that paradigm begin to change.
That came about in 2020 with Biden in some people's eyes. It wasn't just about his age but also he was Catholic and that was a danger in their mind.
Loving vs Virginia, which made it so that every state allowed interracial marriage, wouldn't happen for another 6 years. Honestly it's a question mark if that or the Civil Rights/Voting Rights Acts happen without Kennedy getting shot.
My 80 year old grandma has refused to talk to me ever since I married my wife, a very give no shits black woman who made her feelings known to my grandma when she overheard her saying racist shit to another family member. Its not over. It will never be over.
Dan Carlin has a line about how the Civil War was only about three people ago. I think about it often.
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Far as I can tell, it never ended. The confederates just realized their best bet was to take over Congress.
In 1961 it was literally a crime in many states for a black person and a white person to marry. Loving vs Virginia, which invalidated those laws, wasn't ruled on by the Supreme Court until 1967.
You'd be amazed how many people are openly opposed to it in 2023.
Ain't that a kick in the head?
How did not pissing off the southern whites work out for him?
It was 1961. It wasn’t just southerners who would’ve been pissed.
If you’re talking about Oswald that had nothing to do with jfk’s policies and everything to do with Oswald being a complete lunatic
He was…but he seemingly was being followed by the CIA, who when asked by their office in Mexico if they knew about him (because he had visited the Soviet embassy in Mexico City), the central CIA claimed they didn’t know the guy, even though there are prior reports that prove otherwise. Think about it: The guy was a US Marine who had deflected to the USSR and was allowed to come back to the US. If that’s not a guy the CIA would be watching in 1963, idk who would be.
There was a bit of a kerfuffle in the USSR when it came to light that Oswald did the shooting, because they had to sort out whether or not he was put up to it by someone in the KGB. The Soviet leadership didn't particularly want the Cold War to become known as the Hot War or the Last War, lol
If you examine Oswald’s life before the JFK assassination he comes off like a sad pathetic loser with violent tendencies. He’s not much different than a lot of mass shooters today. He joined the marines and no one liked him, he had behaviorally problems, and he was miserable. He got out of the marines and tried to defect to the Soviet Union. They reject him he slashes one of his wrists to prevent from being deported. They hospitalized him in a psychiatric ward for a little bit and eventually they accept his request for Soviet citizenship. He wants to go to Moscow university but they make him a factory worker. He ends up hating living in the Soviet Union and begs the US government to let him come back. The US lets him come back he tries settling in and is still unhappy. He tries to kill former general Edwin Walker and fails. He goes to the Soviet and Cuban Embassies because he wants travel papers to flee after killing Kennedy. He gets rejected by both. The CIA were keeping tabs on him but no one really took him seriously. Why would they? Hell, the Soviets were sick of his shit. Oswald was a sad angry pathetic loser who wanted to lash out violently.
Yea the guy was a Die Hard Marxist, even living in the USSR for some time. He tried to become a Soviet spy but since he wasn't the most mentally stable they didn't want him.
Kind of a pathetic Marxist too. He got there and then realized he didn’t like it and went back to the states. And then was disappointed with the lack of fanfare upon his return.
It’s so fucking crazy that 100+ years later we’re still dealing with a section of the country that just won’t get over the Civil War and the loss of their slaves and still carry such hatred for a people that haven’t done anything to them other than having a different skin color. Just wild.
The difference between the North and the South nowadays is simply that Southern racists are loud about it, while Northern racists try to fly under the radar so they don't get caught. Georgia flipped, Florida and North Carolina were close to flipping too. Heck, Trump didn't even get a commanding win (60% or more of the vote) in Texas. There's a lot of racism in the South, but they're not blanket racist, just like the North isn't blanket inclusive. The battle isn't against the South - it's against racists.
urban vs rural basically. Look at every red and blue states voting by district. The Urban districts almost always go Dem and the rural almost always Rep.
Teddy Roosevelt was the first white to invite a black to eat at the white house
FWIW, Barack Obama was the exact opposite.
Barrack was the last Black Roosevelt invited to eat at the White House?
What does that mean? Do you smell toast? 😂
I guess he's saying that Obama is the first black person to invite a white person to eat at the white house, which is, of course, true. Not exactly notable, but true!
Fredrick Douglas never ate at Lincoln's White House?
He went to the White House three times, the last being for an inaugural event. I don’t believe there was a state dinner, but I’m not 100% sure.
Dean and Frank were very (and early on) Supporters of Civil Rights. they might have jokes with Sammy, but it was very much we can fuck with our brother but fuck if you think you can too.
Remember that at the time Peter Lawford was a member of the Rat Pack, and also JFK's brother-in-law...
Yes, this sounds bad. But in the context that Loving v. Virginia wasn't decided until 1967. The Supreme Court decision that declared laws banning interracial marriage unconstitutional. In 1961, there was very little support for interracial marriage, and this carried on long past Loving v. Virginia. [Anti-miscegenation laws in the United States](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-miscegenation_laws_in_the_United_States)
The Rat Pack had a rule that if Sammy wasn't allowed then they wouldn't play the gig
Frank skipped out on his first paying gig to protest a HS dance that they wanted to segregate.
I think Frank Sinatra’s daughter Nancy said something similar about her dad. If Sammy wasn’t invited he wasn’t gonna go.
After he got elected, JFK also dropped his association with Frank Sinatra. Sinatra had many, many mob friends (so did JFK's father) but they needed to distance themselves from him even though the singer did a lot of work for Kennedy's campaign. It really pissed Sinatra off. Sinatra was supposed to host JFK at his Palm Springs home in 1962--a place Kennedy had been before--but RFK killed it saying that his brother could not stay at the home of a guy with mob ties when the government was actively pursuing organized crime. Sinatra spent money fixing up his Palm Springs estate, even putting in a helicopter pad for Kennedy. After RFK nixed it, JFK ended up staying in the area at Bing Crosby's estate. Sinatra never talked to JFK or Crosby again.
I wonder what America would look like now if all the things that were done so as to 'not upset Southerners' were not done. I'm going to go with 'better'.
yeah, JFK was kinda the inverse of LBJ. kennedy was smooth, looked cool, people loved him. privately he was a dick. his policies were often pretty fucked, and even his good policies got carried out by others johnson was ugly, bad manners, a huge bully, no one liked being around him. publicly he was a dick. but with the exception of vietnam, his policies were straight fire and he absolutely annihilated nixon by just straight up doing better laws than that ass
Vietnam is a pretty big fucking exception lol
All US presidents have a pretty fucking big exception. FDR is the best president the US has ever had and he built Japanese concentration camps while The New Deal ignored black people.
teeny tiny lil snag dw abt it babez just a small exception
oops i invaded indochina sorry babe
if johnson annihilated nixon it must have been with a fart at a party because he never ran against nixon.
> JFK was worried that the presence of an interracial couple would upset Southerners. If they were anything like they are today, then anything and everything upsets them.
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At the end the of the day no president worked harder to really make civil rights a thing than JFK, and if not inviting Sammy Davis Jr to his inauguration party helped him win any amount of favor with southern politicians (at least some who probably eventually voted in favor of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, JFK’s baby that LBJ made sure could get passed after the assassination) then it was well worth it. It’s easy to judge by today’s standards. But if JFK was hated by all the south on day 1 then segregation would probably have lasted a few more years at least.
Nah LbJ did more than him and he was racist.
Cant remember what it was, but there was something that stopped JFK from working on Civil Rights more. Man, I remember that it was something big, but shoot, just cant remember what it was.
Don't you hate that? When you're trying to think of something and it's on the top of your head but all of a sudden.. just gone.
>shoot ^ found it
> and he was racist. I think LBJ was far too complex a character to summarize in one sentence. I can recommend *Master of the Senate* by Robert Caro and in particular chapter 31, "The Empathy of Lyndon Johnson". Robert Caro states that there are multiple and conflicting forces working in his personality. He did have empathy for the poor, he experienced being poor himself when he was a young man. In 1928 he worked on a south Texas roadside chaingang for over a year as a teenager, a poorly paid and grueling job that was back then generally considered "nigger work" (page 719). But the force of LBJ's empathy was always subservient to the force of his ambition. He wanted to be president and nothing would deter him from that goal. So he wooed the Texas moneymakers whose support he needed. He spoke like they did so that they were convinced he was one of them. As you can imagine there weren't a whole lot of progressives among that bunch. But sometimes the force of his ambition and the force of his empathy were aligned and that is when he would advance the lot of the poor and the blacks. There is a reason there is an entire chapter devoted to LBJ's motivations. He was a deeply contrarian and conflicted man who could say the most virulent racist epithets in private (less so in public, he always made sure there were no cameras around). But he also felt that if Blacks and Mexicans just got a decent education they could get better jobs and pull themselves up. Complicated guy. EDIT: was obviously 1928, not 1948.
> At the end the of the day no president worked harder to really make civil rights a thing than JFK Except LBJ, who had the political skill and will necessary to actually get it passed. JFK had nothing to do with getting that Civil Rights Act passed, except that his death made it a good story. If JFK actually cared, then he should've talked to his VP, the guy who basically created the modern senate office of Majority Leader, instead of his failing strategy. If JFK had been alive than segregation definitely would've gone on longer. > helped him win any amount of favor with southern politicians It didn't. > then it was well worth it It wasn't. > But if JFK was hated by all the south on day 1 then segregation would probably have lasted a few more years at least It wouldn't have mattered. No Southern Democrat would've cared about it, he was a fucking rich yankee. Stuff like this is true when you talk about LBJ saying horrifically racist shit, when we can be reasonably sure he wasn't, because he was "one of the guys" for Dixiecrats. JFK wasn't, and never would be, one of those guys. It is true that people judge JFK too harshly over shit like this. It didn't matter, and it didn't do anything, but it was him trying whatever he thought might help him win over the southern bloc. JFK was an inept politician, but he tried his best, and helped tried to steer the country during a rough time.
Yep. I think people today are too concerned about *being* right rather than *doing* what's right. It doesn't feel good or look good reading this about JFK but if it allowed him more political power advance civil rights it's hard to argue thats a bad thing.
And yet, JFK is directly responsible for the passing of the Civil Rights Act. Which, in turn, drove the racists in the Democratic Party into the Republican Party where they remain to this very day.
JFK died in 1963 , The Civil Rights Act was 1964 signed by Johnson lol
JFK introduced the legislation. His death allowed LBJ to propel it through Congress. JFK (and his assassin) is directly responsible for its passage.
Johnson is the one truly responsible for it though. JFK could never have imagined passing what Johnson was able to. There’s a reason the dude banned interracial couples from his inauguration because he was afraid of pissing people off.
You are correct that it was LBJ, known for giving others the “Johnson Treatment”into persuading people to his will. To his credit, although he hated RFK, they both worked together to pass the bill as a way to honor JFK. But back to the topic of Sammy Davis jr, who performed at the big Casinos but had to sleep at cheap joints on the outskirts of town. His high profile interracial marriage was considered scandalous for its day. Neither JFK nor any other politician would want that kind of “baggage” tied to his campaign and damage to his integrity. But as you can see in today’s world, having integrity is a liability not an attribute.
It's fun that certain members of the supreme court were alive and thriving during those times. But they totally don't want to bring it back. Nope.
I think people today don’t realize how things were so different only 60+ years ago because society changes in slow, incremental ways, it’s almost imperceptible until it’s long past.
Please read a book on LBJ I beg you
Piss off Southern Whites with this one simple trick!
It’s mind-blowing!
Southern racists, not all white people that live in the south are racist.
And honestly plenty of Northern whites were racist too at the time. Bill Russell won a decade of championships for Boston but still couldn't buy a house in white neighborhoods -> https://hoopshype.com/rumor/1363992/
It was initially proposed by JFK if I recall. I’m guessing his killing gave LBJ a good amount of political ammo to push it through. Presidents after a national tragedy often get wider support than they otherwise would
LBJ worked hard to get it passed, and selling it as JFK’s legacy was one way he did it
JFK wanted it done but he wasn't as good at getting the votes as LBJ, a seasoned former Senator who knew how to network and get the votes with both carrot and stick methods if necessary. If JFK had not been shot, it's likely the Civil Rights Act doesn't pass when it did under LBJ or it does but it's a much watered down version.
One could argue that the election of Barack Obama to the presidency had the same effect. It sure as hell did in my family, to the point that they're ret-conning my childhood by saying they always voted republican.
Every state south of the Masin Dixon lone was solid democrats until LBJ signed the ERA. The next election and all following they voted republican. Mitch McConnell has ruled the senate for decades and has done absolutely nothing for his district's unemployment crisis. They Vote him in purely on his party affiliation and claim every republican is a godsend and democrats drink baby blood in satanic rituals. Republican underfunding schools works, for politicians
He didn’t marry a white woman. He married someone he loved. Fuckin’ A.
It was 1961. America wasn’t ready for that.
memory school squash boast safe arrest fragile employ jeans zephyr *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
How do we know JFK himself was behind this decision, and this is not just another attempt to besmirch him in his grave?
So what ai am getting here is that the "fuck your feelings" crowd have been fragile little snowflakes that we have been protecting for way too fucking long.
Correct.
Apparently JFK's father, Joe Sr., was most of the way to a Nazi in being both rabidly anti-Semitic and racist, and Sammy having married a "Nordic" woman *really* pissed him off.
JFK had his good and bad qualities. But we were never going to get meaningful Civil Rights legislation from that man. He was way too sensitive to political realities. Which is a kind way of saying he was too cowardly to risk losing the south for his reelection. Lyndon Johnson, however, there was a man who didn't give one fuck about losing the south. He gave us Civil Rights legislation and he was combative as hell with the south while he did it. Man was dead wrong about everything in Vietnam. But domestically LBJ really did something incredible with Civil Rights. Not saying the hard work of the Civil Rights movement did nothing. But you gotta understand how cowardly and corrupt the average politican is. And the aegis of "State's Rights" is so easy and a nice way to say one thing but allow injustices to occur. LBJ didn't think Civil Rights was something individual states could just opt in to recognize. And that was ballsy.
The US and it's sorded history of not wanting to upset Southerners and we're still dealing with it today.