| October 15 |  |
Editor says, what if the Civil Rights Movement had not caught on with the media? muse Eric Oppen and Stan Brin. Please note that the opinions expressed in this post do not necessarily reflect the views of the author(s). This story was published in the June 2012 edition of Changing the Times Magazine.
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In 1962, just a fortnight after the iconic news anchor John F. Kennedy (pictured) announced the tragic death of Walter Cronkite, a transformative event occured that would in time bring to a crashing halt the progress of the Civil Rights Movement.
Gone Crackers 2 Civil Rights Movement enters Stormy Waters after the loss of an anchorAfter watching the footage of an armed confrontation between the Federal and State Troopers at the University of Mississippi in which Cronkite was killed, the media elite had jumped to the conclusion that the country was teetering on the verge of Civil War. And yet as shocking as those images were, they were soon overshadowed by a new set of photographs taken by Major Richard Heyser in San Cristóbal, Pinar del Río Province, in western Cuba. Because the U-2 flight of Heyser had obtained unequiovacal photographic evidence that the Soviet Union was constructing a launch site for medium range ballistic missiles.
As a result, the very future of the Federal Government itself would be determined during the course of October. Should the continental United States suffer catastrophic damage, then the odds favoured a long period of martial law. And if the seat of Government was destroyed, then perhaps states rights might prevail and potentially the desegregation progress of the previous decade reversed in the Deep South.
Entry posted by Todayinah Editor
© Alternate Historian, 2004-.Story Tags
Permalinks: Post, Day. Browse Thread: Politicians Source: Wikipedia Labels: James Meredith, Walter Cronkie, Civil Rights, America, African Americans. Editor says, in this article we develop our theme with input from Stan Brin.
~ I think you mean "desegregation process." Fixed - thanks. Ed And there'd be real conflict on the whole segregation thing...a lot of blacks had moved North and voted there, and a lot of white Northerners were disgusted by what they'd found out about the South. However, without the news media running interference, things would not go as smoothly for the CR people.
~ States Rights was just a smokescreen for segregation. It's demise was inevitable. Everyone knew that.
~ While the South certainly had its social evils, a lot of the worst segregation could be seen in the Midwest, too.
~ That's true--and in the North, though it was less obvious there because there were fewer blacks and they tended not to live in quite such abject poverty as did rural Southern blacks.
~ Racial unrest AND impending nuclear war....there's a dangerous combo.
~ Actually, Chris, I would think that the threat of nuclear war would unite the country pretty darn fast, just the way WWII did.
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