The Republican decision to exploit the race issue and abandon the option of becoming a party of reform manifested itself in the 1961 speech in Atlanta by Barry Goldwater to a gathering of Southern Republicans. “We’re not going to get the Negro vote as a bloc in 1964 and 1968, so we ought to go hunting where the ducks are,” he declared. Goldwater then spelled it out, saying that school integration was “the responsibility of the states. I would not like to see my party assume it is the role of the federal government to enforce integration in the schools.”
