Yeah, Rosa Parks would have preferred to have Alabamians vote on whether she should be permitted to sit in the front of bus in 1955. She'd have won that one, all right.
Is he insane? Does Governor Christie really think that the same southern states that banned inter-racial marriage would have approved of inter-racial marriage had they put it up to a popular vote? Hell, nearly half of Mississippi Republicans still think inter-racial marriage should be outlawed (that's more than the number who think it should be legal - it's been legal for over 40 years now), and that PPP poll is less than a year old. This is a pretty reprehensible lack of knowledge about history, let alone ignorance of the racism that still exists in our country today.
More from the Washington Post:
“I think people would have been happy to have a referendum on civil rights, rather than fighting and dying in the streets in the South,” Christie said after an event in Central Jersey.Well, for a popular vote on civil rights in the south in the 1960s, it's hard to believe the segregationists wouldn't have been overjoyed at the prospect. Again, a near majority of Mississippi Republicans still want to ban marriages between blacks and whites. And Governor Christie has the nerve to suggest that black leaders would have welcome a popular vote on their civil rights, so gays should too (this was all happening in the context of the gay marriage debate in New Jersey). Unbelievable.
Black leaders pounced. Newark Mayor Cory Booker said baseball great Jackie Robinson would not have had the opportunity to break the sport’s color barrier had the matter been put to a vote, and the mayor himself would not have had the opportunity, years later, to be elected to lead New Jersey’s largest city. Assembly Speaker Sheila Oliver said many felt the sting of Christie’s comment.
Gusciora, who is white, said Christie would have found allies in late Alabama Gov. George Wallace and late Georgia Gov. Lester Maddox, both segregationists.
