Ronald Reagan on Civil Rights

President of the U.S., 1981-1989; Republican Governor (CA)

Supported Bob Jones Univ.’s miscegeny policy, inadvertently

The president was so cut off from the counsel of black Americans that he sometimes did not even realize when he was offending them. One example occurred when Reagan sided with Bob Jones University in a lawsuit to obtain federal tax exemptions that had been denied by the IRS. The IRS denied tax exemptions to segregated private schools. Many of them were schools such as Bob Jones University, which enrolled a handful of minority students but prohibited interracial dating and marriage. It was the basis of this discrimination that the IRS denied the tax exemption.

Reagan would later say that the case had never been presented to him as a civil rights issue. More astonishingly, he did not even know that many Christian schools practiced segregation.

Source: The Role of a Lifetime, by Lou Cannon, p.521-22 Jul 2, 1991

Promised to appoint a female Justice; O’Connor was the first

Reagan changed the Supreme Court. He appointed the first woman to the high court, Sandra Day O’Connor, fulfilling a pledge he had made during a low point of his 1980 presidential campaign. Reagan’s strategists came up with the idea of putting a woman on the Supreme Court. Source: The Role of a Lifetime, by Lou Cannon, p. 804 Jul 2, 1991

Opposed Voting Rights Act of 1965 as “humiliating to South”

Reagan never supported the use of federal power to provide blacks with civil rights. He opposed the landmark Voting Rights Act of 1965. Reagan said in 1980 that the Voting Rights Act had been “humiliating to the South.” While he made political points with white southerners on this issue, he was sensitive to any suggestion that his stands on civil rights issues were politically or racially motivated, and he typically reacted to such criticisms as attacks on his personal integrity. Source: The Role of a Lifetime, by Lou Cannon, p. 520 Jul 2, 1991

Supports constitutional amendment to allow prayer in schools

When our Founding Fathers passed the First Amendment, they never intended to construct a wall between government and religious belief. The Supreme Court opens its proceedings with a religious invocation. Congress opens sessions with a prayer. I believe the schoolchildren of the United States are entitled to the same privileges. I sent the Congress a constitutional amendment to restore prayer to public schools. I am calling on the Congress to act speedily and to let our children pray. Source: Speech in Orlando Florida Mar 8, 1983

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Page last updated: 3/27/2008