The issue we see today and that you saw 50 years ago and that ironically happened just over 50 years before that, is something that many of us have tried to point out regarding a large but loyal segment of the population who support liberal/progressive ideals (whenever we actually had the legal ability to even vote and even then, when we couldn't but pushed for reform anyway - in every era of this nation).
As a note about the "50 years before that" - During the Suffragan movement, you had black women like Ida B. Wells-Barnett, who was an activist in the anti-lynching movement and eventually got involved in the push for voting rights for women, But not so ironically, the following excerpt (from Northern Illinois University) basically summarizes what happened -
Perhaps one of Wells-Barnett's most important stands occurred at the March 3, 1913, National American Woman Suffrage Association (NAWSA) parade in the nation's capital. NAWSA was the national umbrella organization for state suffrage affiliates. Its history dated to 1890 when the National Woman Suffrage Association and the American Woman Suffrage Association merged their forces and resources. The primary goal was to enfranchise women. But, NAWSA did not always embrace all women.
The southern white women encouraged to seek membership in NAWSA adhered to the same white supremacy ideology that their men championed. Dependence on southerners for the passage of full suffrage rights for women muffled any opposition that NAWSA might have harbored to the usurpation of the social, economic, and political rights that blacks gained during the Reconstruction years. NAWSA refused to publicly denounce racial segregation, adopted a policy of expediency, and accepted Jim Crow within its own ranks. This left the door open for state affiliates to discriminate against black women. But Illinois suffragists had always embraced African-American women like Wells-Barnett and encouraged their participation in the state movement. The Women's State Central Committee, for example, utilized Wells-Barnett's lecturing skills and enlisted her aid in canvassing the state to encourage women to organize and develop political knowledge.
Despite the progressive attitude of white female Illinois suffragists, they refused to support her in the historic suffrage march in Washington. Carrying banners representing almost every state in the Union, thousands of parade marchers underscored the demand for universal female enfranchisement. Wells-Barnett was one of sixty-five enthusiastic delegates from Illinois and one of many black women who participated in the march. But the African-American women were instructed to gather as one unit at the end of the procession because the NAWSA forbade the integration of state affiliates in the march. Wells-Barnett refused to comply with the NAWSA demand and instead lined up with her state contingent. Grace Wilbur Trout, president of the Illinois Equal Suffrage Association and chairperson of the group, initially sanctioned the integrated group. But after meeting with a NAWSA official, she told the delegation that Wells-Barnett could not march with the state contingent. Further, if they failed to follow the instructions set forth by the NAWSA, the entire delegation would be denied participation in the march.
Angry at the blatant disregard for her rights as a woman and as an Illinois resident, Wells-Barnett refused to comply. It was time to confront racism within the suffrage movement. Southern women, she argued, had evaded the issues of race, and the NAWSA and its state affiliates had allowed it. She wanted the Illinois group to show the nation that it was progressive enough to stand against NAWSA's hypocrisy of oppressing women because of their race while embracing the idea of equality for all women at the ballot box. Her pleas, however, fell on deaf ears. So did the pleas of two white colleagues, Belle Squire and Virginia Brooks.
http://www.lib.niu.edu/1996/iht319630.html
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