ABSTRACT
At the height of the civil rights era, after President Lyndon Johnson signed the 1964 Civil Rights Act and while thousands of blacks registered to vote during the 1964 Freedom Summer, the Republican presidential candidate Barry Goldwater campaigned using a particular indictment of the struggle for black freedom: black civil rights, he suggested, are linked to crime. Throughout his campaign speeches, Goldwater traced rising crime rates to black civil disobedience, black demands for equality under the law, and black reliance on the welfare state. Goldwater conflated civil disobedience with “violence in our streets” and black activists with “bullies and marauders,” and in so doing he contended-subtly but undeniably-that black freedom necessitates a strong “law and order” response.
