The NAACP, for one, was unwilling to sacrifice integration for more housing and supported the 1949 integration amendment, despite its cynical sponsorship. So did a few congressional radicals, led by Vito Marcantonio of New York, who argued on the House floor that “you have no right to use housing against civil rights. . . . Housing is advanced in the interest of the general welfare and in the interest of strength[en]ing democracy. When you separate civil rights from housing you weaken that general welfare.”
