Barry Goldwater

My wife and I were watching a PBS documentary, 1964.  I remember 1964 in a few fragments.  A vacation in Arizona to Grand Canyon and Meteor Crater.  LBj's very drunken victory speech.

They made a big deal of how conservatives were on the wrong of history because Goldwater opposed the Civil Rights Act of 1964.  I remembered vaguely that it was a principled opposition to an overly powerful national government. 

The Wikipedia article was pretty startling:

"Goldwater was a supporter of racial equality. He integrated his family's business upon taking over control in the 1930s. A lifetime member of the NAACP, Goldwater helped found the group's Arizona chapter. He saw to it that the Arizona Air National Guard was racially integrated from its inception in 1946, two years before President Truman ordered the military as a whole be integrated (a process that was not completed until 1954). Goldwater worked with Phoenix civil rights leaders to successfully integrate public schools a year prior to Brown v. Board of Education."

Unless Wikipedia has been taken over by right-wingers (not likely) it presents a far more interesting story about Goldwater.