The JBS is Anti-Civil Rights (An Overview)
Since its inception the John Birch Society has been rooted in anti-civil rights rhetoric. Dating as far back as the 1960’s, JBS claimed the Civil Rights movement was intended to create a “Soviet Negro Republic.” (Intelligence Report, Spring 2013).
JBS believed individuals had the right to avoid civil rights laws, and this led to strong opposition against the Civil Rights Act of 1964. The group saw the act as a violation of the Tenth Amendment.
The group denies any wrongdoing or participation in racist ideologies, but civil rights opposition was deeply embedded in JBS. According to Birchers, former civil rights leader Martin Luther King attended a “Communist Training School.”
After their failure to defeat the Civil Rights Act, the society created “What’s Wrong With Civil Rights?”, a propaganda advertisement in newspapers against all civil rights actions.
“Civil Rights is a perfect example of Communist strategy and Communist tactics at work — so far successfully— in making an anti-Communist people help to fasten the tiny but almost infinite chains of a central Communist tyranny around their bodies and their lives,” the manifesto states.
