Barry Goldwater

==Local support for civil rights==
Barry Goldwater was a moderate supporter of racial equality. Goldwater 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. Goldwater saw to it that the [[Arizona Air National Guard]] was racially integrated from its inception in 1946, two years before [[Harry S. Truman|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]]''. Despite this support of Civil Rights, Goldwater remained in objection to some major federal Civil Rights legislation. Civil rights leaders like [[Martin Luther King Jr.]] remarked of him "while not himself a racist, Mr. Goldwater articulates a philosophy which gives aid and comfort to the racists."<ref>Gearson, Michael "Goldwater's Warning to the GOP", The Washington Post www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/michael-gerson-barry-goldwaters-warning-to-the-gop/2014/04/17/9e8993ec-c651-11e3-bf7a-be01a9b69cf1_story.html Published April 17, 2014, Retrieved December 13, 2020</ref><ref>Edwards, Lee "In Barry Goldwater, The Conscience of a Conservative", The Miami Herald, www.miamiherald.com/article1973798.html Published July 2, 2014, Retrieved December 13, 2020</ref>

Goldwater was an early member and largely unrecognized supporter of the [[National Urban League]] Phoenix chapter, going so far as to cover the group's early operating deficits with his personal funds.<ref>Jonathan Bean, Race and Liberty in America (Kentucky: The University Press of Kentucky, 2009), p. 226.</ref><ref name="Edwards">''Edwards''</ref> Though the NAACP denounced Goldwater in the harshest of terms when he ran for president, the Urban League conferred on Goldwater the 1991 Humanitarian Award "for 50 years of loyal service to the Phoenix Urban League." In response to League members who objected, citing Goldwater's vote on the [[Civil Rights Act of 1964]], the League president pointed out that Goldwater had saved the League more than once, saying he preferred to judge a person "on the basis of his daily actions rather than on his voting record."<ref name="Edwards"/>