The Giving Review: The 1964 Civil Rights, ’65 Voting Rights, and ’69 Tax Reform Acts

Opponents of policy reform that would seek to return nonprofit tax law to the legislative intent of the 1969 Tax Reform Act (TRA), specifically including its provisions against the partisan political activities of private foundations, sometimes argue or imply that those provisions were borne of or motivated by a racist reaction to the civil-rights movement’s successes, including its legislative ones, in the ’60s.

House

The House of Representatives passed H.R. 13270, the TRA, in August 1969, by a 395-30 vote margin. Among those 395 supporters, 184 had also cast ordinary yea votes for the 1964 Civil Rights Act (CRA) and 232 had done so for the 1965 Voting Rights Act (VRA), according to calculations done with AI help.

Among the 240 Representatives who cast ordinary yea-or-nay votes on all three bills, 173—72%—voted for all three, as shown in the chart below. Thirty-three voted for the TRA after voting against both the CRA and VRA. Sixteen opposed the CRA but supported the VRA and TRA. Eleven opposed all three. The remaining seven were distributed among three less-common combinations.

Of the 173 House members supporting all three measures, 105 were Democrats and 68 Republicans. Of the 33 who opposed both civil-rights bills but supported the TRA, 26 were Democrats and seven Republicans.

Senate

The Senate passed H.R. 13270 in December 1969, by 69-22. Fifty-one Democrats and 18 Republicans voted for it; two Democrats and 20 Republicans voted against it.

Of the 69 TRA supporters, 40 had also supported the CRA and 41 the VRA. Among the 60 Senators who cast yea-or-nay votes on all three bills, 37—62%—supported all three, as shown in the same chart. Nine supported the TRA after opposing both civil-rights acts. Eight did the reverse, supporting both civil-rights acts and opposing the TRA. Four opposed all three. Two fell into other combinations.

Of the 37 senators who supported all three, 26 were Democrats, and 11 were Republicans. All nine Senators who opposed both civil rights laws and the TRA were Democrats. All eight who supported both civil rights laws and opposed the TRA were Republicans.

A regional divide

Separating members who represented the 11 former Confederate states—Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, and Virginia—from those representing other states shows a noticeable divide.

In the House, 186 of the 240 Representatives voting on all three measures represented states outside the former Confederacy. Of those 186, 169—91%—voted for all three bills, while only two opposed both civil rights acts and later supported the TRA, as shown in the chart below. Among the 54 representatives from former Confederate states, only four supported all three; 31 opposed both the CRA and VRA and then supported the TRA.

Of the 45 Senators in the three-vote comparison who represented states outside the former Confederacy, 36 supported all three laws, and none opposed both civil rights laws while supporting the TRA. Of the 15 from former Confederate states, only one—Ralph Yarborough of Texas—supported all three. Nine opposed both civil rights acts and supported the TRA; four opposed all three; and one opposed the CRA but supported the VRA and TRA.

(The analysis uses each chamber’s passage vote on the three measures, rather than subsequent votes to agree to amendments or conference reports.)

What the voting record can, and cannot, show

So, a substantial bloc of legislators who opposed the landmark civil-rights statutes did support the TRA a few years later, which could perhaps be consistent with the proposition that racial politics were part of the political context in which some legislators approached the ’69 measure.

But the same evidence also makes it difficult to treat that bloc as a sufficient description of the coalition that enacted the TRA. In both chambers, the largest group of legislators voting on all three measures consisted of members who supported all three. Outside the former Confederate states, that pattern was especially pronounced: 169 of 186 House members and 36 of 45 Senators in the three-vote samples supported the CRA, VRA, and TRA.

The congressional coalition behind the TRA was much broader than a simple racial-backlash explanation suggests. Many of the legislators who helped enact it had also helped enact the decade’s landmark civil-rights laws.