Barry Goldwater

Lyndon Johnson knew that his endorsement of Civil Rights legislation would endanger his party in the South, but he did it anyway. The national Democratic party turned its back on segregation, and also abandoned segregationist voters in the South. In the election of 1968, Richard Nixon saw the cracks in the Solid South as an opportunity to tap into a group of voters that had heretofore been beyond the reach of the Republican Party.

The United States was undergoing a very turbulent period in 1968. The founder of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference and most influential member of the Civil Rights Movement, Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated on April 4, 1968. His death was followed by black rioting throughout the country. King’s policy of non-violence was being challenged by more radical blacks and by the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee. There were protests, often violent, against the Vietnam War. The drug subculture was causing alarm in many sectors. Nixon, with the aid of Harry Dent and then South Carolina Senator Strom Thurmond, who had switched parties in 1964, ran on a campaign of states' rights and "law and order." Many liberals accused Nixon of pandering to racist Southern whites, especially with regards to his "states' rights" and "law and order" stands.[5]

The independent candidacy of George Wallace, a former Democratic governor of Alabama, partially negated the southern strategy. With a much more explicit attack on black civil rights, Wallace won all of Goldwater's states (except South Carolina), as well as Arkansas and one of North Carolina's electoral votes. However, Nixon picked up Virginia, Tennessee, North Carolina, South Carolina and Florida, while Democratic nominee Hubert Humphrey won only Texas. In 1972, Nixon swept the South, winning over 70 percent of the popular vote in the Deep South states and Florida, and over 60 percent in all the other states of the former Confederacy.

Despite his appeal to southern whites, Nixon parlayed a wide perception as a moderate into wins in other states, taking a solid majority in the electoral college. He was able to appear this way to most Americans, because the strategy often consisted of code words -- "states' rights," "busing" -- and others that meant nothing to most Americans, but were emotionally charged for those in the South.

Goldwater was born in 1909 in Phoenix, in what was then the Arizona Territory. His grandfather, Michel Goldwasser, was a Jewish immigrant from Konin, Poland who founded a department store in Phoenix, Goldwater's Department Store. His paternal grandmother, Sarah Nathan, was from London, England, and married Goldwasser in the Great Synagogue of London.[1] Goldwater's father, Baron Goldwater, converted to the Episcopal Church from Judaism when he married Hattie Josephine Williams in Phoenix. The family name had been changed from Goldwasser to Goldwater at least as early as the 1860 census in Los Angeles, California. These details led the Jewish essayist Harry Golden to famously remark of Goldwater, "I have always thought that if a Jew ever became President, he would turn out to be an Episcopalian."[2]

The family department store made the Goldwaters comfortably wealthy. Goldwater graduated from Staunton Military Academy and attended the University of Arizona for one year, where he joined the Sigma Chi fraternity.

Goldwater took over the family business after his father's death in 1930. In this capacity he was both a supporter of "progressive" business practices and anti-union. The strain of running the family business led to nervous breakdowns in 1937 and 1939.

With the onset of World War II, Goldwater received a reserve commission in the United States Army Air Forces. He became a pilot assigned to the Ferry Command, a newly formed unit that delivered aircraft and supplies to war zones worldwide; he spent most of the war flying between the USA and India, via the Azores and North Africa or South America, Nigeria, and Central Africa. He also flew "the hump" over the Himalayas to deliver supplies to the Republic of China. Remaining in the reserves after the war, he retired with a rank of Major General. By that time, he had flown 165 different types of aircraft. Following World War II, Goldwater was a major proponent of building the United States Air Force Academy, and later served on the Academy's Board of Visitors. The Visitor Center at the Academy is named in his honor.

Goldwater was married to his first wife, Margaret "Peggy" Johnson, from September 22, 1934 until her death on December 11, 1985. The couple had four children: Joanne (born January 1, 1936), Barry (born July 15, 1938), Michael (born March 15, 1940), and Peggy (born July 27, 1944). On February 9, 1992, at age 83, Goldwater married nurse Susan Shaffer Wechsler, 32 years his junior; they were married until his death.

One of his favorite hobbies was amateur radio and he held the call K7UGA. From his home station in Arizona he handled many "phone patches" that permitted U.S. Service personnel to be able to talk to their families back home from Military Affiliate Radio System (MARS) stations located in Vietnam.

Goldwater's son, Barry Goldwater, Jr., served as a United States House of Representatives member from California from 1969 to 1983.