The Rise of the “Liberal Majority” in 1960s America

The Claims of Minority and the Responses of Majority Concerning the Civil Rights Movement

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to examine how the so-called “Liberal” position arose concerning the issue of ethnic minorities in 1960s America. Some earlier research has seen “Liberal” as only the opposition to “Conservative”, and explained that the “Liberal” position in America was established in the presidential election of 1964 in which the main issue was civil rights policy. According to such research, as the civil rights movement became radical in the late 1960s, the “Liberal” began to collapse. But in this paper, to grasp the “Liberal” more appropriately, I focus on the relation and difference between “majority” and “minority” inside the “Liberal”, and examine how “Liberals in the majority” responded to claims of minority. From this perspective, I will make it clear the radicalization of civil rights movement was not the beginning of the collapse of the “Liberal” but rather the critical momentum for the establishment of “Liberals in the majority”, as it were a “Liberal Majority”.