https://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2012/08/how-george-romney-championed-civil-rights-and-challenged-his-church/261073/
Romney was one of a number of moderate and liberal Republicans who strongly supported the Civil Rights Bill of 1964 and, at the Republican Party convention, worked on behalf of efforts to include an anti-discrimination plank in the party platform. When the party's presidential nominee, Barry Goldwater, opposed the bill, Romney refused to support Goldwater's candidacy for the presidency. When asked whether he would be campaigning on behalf of Goldwater, he said (with his characteristic directness), "You know darn well I'm not."
The irony is that George Romney championed Civil Rights at a time when his church was theologically opposed to the idea of innate equality. Romney could not bring himself to condemn his church publicly (in spite of his private views) for its policy of denying the "priesthood" to black men.
In 1964, the year King won the Nobel Peace Prize, George Romney was the most powerful Mormon in American politics and was gearing up for a presidential run in 1968. The LDS hierarchy took note and worried about his positions on civil rights. Delbert L. Stapley, a high-ranking member of the LDS (who was born the year the Supreme Court ruled that segregation was constitutional and died the year the LDStroubled. "After listening to your talk on Civil Rights, I am very much concerned. Several others have expressed the same concern to me." The letter was "personal" and not an "official Church position" but it still came on letterhead that read, "The Council of the Twelve."
. . .
But just as Romney shrugged off the "curse of Ham" folklore of Stapley and other leaders of the LDS church, Martin Luther King recognized in the elder Romney a valuable political ally in the struggle, regardless of his church's policies. Their alliance seems inconceivable today, even though, since the mid-1960s, so much has changed.
In 1968 I was 14 and like Hillary Clinton in a Goldwater house. George Romney was the moderate wing of the Republican Party's hope to get the nomination. Nixon twisted Romney's views on Vietnam (Romney had used the word 'brainwashed') and his lead disappeared.
In a strange coincidence a grandson of George Romney was my classmate and when he discovered that my ancestor was Heber J Grant (the second longest serving President of the Mormon Church but someone that was never discussed in my household) he would educate me on HJG and I would tell him stories about GR and how he was supporting MLK, something that they evidently didn't share in his household.
A Romney nomination in 68 would have put is in an alternative, and much better, universe.
No Southern strategy but two political parties supporting civil rights.
= new reply since forum marked as read
