Polls Showed Many Americans Opposed to Civil Rights Protests in the 1960s. But That Changed.
Don't let opponents of the current racial justice protests fool you by citing public opinion polls — such polls often showed the majority of American opposed to the Civil Rights Movement in the 1960s. Public opinion is not immovable through protest.
Congress of Racial Equality and members of the All Souls Church, Unitarian in Washington, D.C. march in memory of the 16th Street Baptist Church bombing victims in Birmingham, Alabama, in 1963. Thomas O’Halloran / Library of Congress
If you find yourself playing pundit and citing current polling as proof that today’s civil rights protests against police violence and calls to “defund the police” will inevitably fail, do yourself a favor: pause and look back at polling from the last successful civil rights uprising in American history.
Many fondly remember the successes of the mid-twentieth-century Civil Rights Movement — but the adversity and headwinds the movement faced are often elided in our history books. That can end up leaving the impression that most of the American public must have supported the peaceful protests led by Dr Martin Luther King, Jr and other civil rights heroes.
But that wasn’t the case. Here are some data points from back then:
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