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The Republican presidential candidate in 1964, Senator Barry Goldwater, was a notorious racist who’d publicly denounced the Civil Rights Act. Goldwater’s politics were so extreme that MLK compared him to Hitler. Goldwater stated if he were elected he’d prioritize “individual rights,” the individual rights of his supporters, many of whom were white supremacists.
With Goldwater on the ballot, racial tensions ran high. Black civil rights activists in San Francisco decided to raise the stakes. Donning KKK hoods and holding signs reading “Grand Imperial Wizards For Goldwater,” they showed up at the Republican National Convention.
This archival photo from the Library of Congress shows their protest. A similar image was published in the 1964 July issue of Jet Magazine. Besides these photos, there is little information about this protest.
We might never know why the protestors chose this method of nonviolent protest, but perhaps they were showing that under a Goldwater presidency, white supremacy would not only become even more public, but legal.
The evidence of centuries of nonviolent protest by our ancestors has been lost, hidden, or intentionally left undocumented so that we wouldn’t have these examples for inspiration. How can we radically protest, fully document, and preserve the evidence for future generations? We cannot allow our stories to be erased.