Idaho Senators Take On Jim Crow
Revised December 10, 2022 In the mid-20 th century, two Idaho senators challenged racial segregation in the United States, while representing a state whose population, in 1950, was nearly 100% white. In 1948, Glen Taylor, who had gone to the Senate in 1944 as a Democrat, was arrested for violating a Jim Crow ordinance in Birmingham, Alabama, where he was campaigning for the vice presidency on the Progressive Party ticket he shared with presidential candidate, Henry A. Wallace. Nine years later, the newly-elected Frank Church, who had defeated Taylor in the 1956 Democratic Party primary, did more than support the Civil Rights Act of 1957 , he was instrumental in securing its passage in the U.S. Senate. Glen Hearst Taylor and Frank Forrester Church were “two amazingly different individuals” who held the common belief that systemic racism in the United States was a moral wrong. But more importantly, both men also shared a personal commitment to doing something to right the wrong...