everyone, you know, i think that they can they can soldier on and that coalition can grow. maybe some of the white working class vote can be brought back. it s interesting because this connects to the discussion we re having about the 1960s and about the civil rights act and then that leads to the sort of backlash in the south among the old white ethnics in the north, nixon southern strategy and all that. the president of the naacp will weigh in joining us live from washington. no-charge scheduled . check. and here s the kicker. 0% apr for 60 months. and who got it? this guy. and who got it? this guy. and who got it? this guy. that s right. [ male announcer ] it s the car you won t stop talking about. ever. hurry in to the volkswagen best. thing. ever. event. and get 0% apr for 60 months, now until september 3rd. that s the power of german engineering.
quote, hates white people. cited by the portland press herald. lepage has denied making the remark. there s plenty of irony here if lepage did make the comment, though. although after he s the governor of the nation s whitest state. maine, where 97% of the population is white. that state has now given barack obama 60% of its votes in the last two national elections. this at least partly refutes, but the way white americans perceives america s first black president has been complicated. an alarms share of the opposition to president obama has been rooted in explicit appeals to racial resentment. this president, i think, has exposed himself as a guy over and over and over again who has a deep-seeded hatred for white people or the white culture. i don t know what it is.
that you had civil rights leaders, and we had institutions that s the other point we miss. you know, we had institutions, naacp, core, national urban league, that had done a brilliant job of organizing. you had a. phillip randolph. the march, while there was fear on the part of white political leadership, i think the confidence of the civil rights leadership was, look, we ve done this before. we re just doing this on a larger scale. and it did take a lot of courage for that many african-americans to come to washington, d.c. in 1963, but we have to remember that it was a political event. it wasn t politicized. there wasn t any fear on the part of the civil rights leadership of offending john f. kennedy. it was the notion that we re coming to affirm our rights. i think we have to remember the march in that context. that it was a political moment that wasn t politicized because had you courageous leadership who understood that the only place they could come to secure those rights was th
so black leaders. what s interesting to look at that picture now is here s a. phillip randolph, who had started this in 1941. and roy wilkins, whitney young and others. who s off way over to the side? martin luther king. in fact, i think we have the speaking program from august 28, 1963. i think we can put this up. there you go. number 16 in order, somebody named reverend dr. martin luther king jr. robert, that was we re going to get to king a little later. we intentionally not talked about him for now for this precise point, that until he stood on the steps of lincoln monument and made that speech, he was not going to be the star of the day. in fact, i think the washington post the day after, like in their 16 reports the day after the march, didn t really didn t do a story on martin luther king s speech. that wasn t supposed to be what people were there to hear. a lot of people missed it.
the reason it makes him palatable across the spectrum is every side can look at that speech and see what they want to see. if you re conservative, vehemently opposed to affirmative action and you can say it was his declaration of i want a color blind society. he s become a warm and fuzzy guy, a grandfatherly figure, which is weird. who was 39 when he was killed. yeah, i go back to the word militant. i mean, he was an extremely militant guy, which was really weird because the black militants, some of are advocating violence, had a problem with king. but king was always, like so many other civil rights leaders, in your face on this issue of racial and economic justice. and they demonstrated profound courage. so, those marches, you know, the bridge and going into the south and then when he went into chicago and that sort of thing.