<P> Nevertheless, Nixon largely continued the New Deal and Great Society programs he inherited; conservative reaction would come with the election of Ronald Reagan in 1980 . </P> <P> Cold War liberalism emerged at a time when most African Americans, especially in the South, were politically and economically disenfranchised . Beginning with To Secure These Rights, an official report issued by the Truman White House in 1947, self - proclaimed liberals increasingly embraced the civil rights movement . In 1948, President Truman desegregated the armed forces and the Democrats inserted a strong civil rights "plank" (provision) in the Democratic party platform . Black activists, most prominently Martin Luther King, escalated the bearer agitation throughout the South, especially in Birmingham, Alabama, where brutal police tactics outraged national television audiences . The civil rights movement climaxed in the "March on Washington" in August 1963, where King gave his dramatic "I Have a Dream" speech . The activism put civil rights at the very top of the liberal political agenda and facilitated passage of the decisive Civil Rights Act of 1964, which permanently ended segregation in the United States, and the Voting Rights Act of 1965, which guaranteed blacks the right to vote, with strong enforcement provisions throughout the South handled by the federal Department of Justice . </P> <P> During the mid-1960s, relations between white liberals and the civil rights movement became increasingly strained; civil rights leaders accused liberal politicians of temporizing and procrastinating . Although President Kennedy sent federal troops to compel the University of Mississippi to admit African American James Meredith in 1962, and civil rights leader Martin Luther King, Jr. toned down the March on Washington (1963) at Kennedy's behest, the failure to seat the delegates of the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party at the 1964 Democratic National Convention indicated a growing rift . President Johnson could not understand why the rather impressive civil rights laws passed under his leadership had failed to immunize Northern and Western cities from rioting . At the same time, the civil rights movement itself was becoming fractured . By 1966, a Black Power movement had emerged; Black Power advocates accused white liberals of trying to control the civil rights agenda . Proponents of Black Power wanted African - Americans to follow an "ethnic model" for obtaining power, not unlike that of Democratic political machines in large cities . This put them on a collision course with urban machine politicians . And, on its most extreme edges, the Black Power movement contained racial separatists who wanted to give up on integration altogether--a program that could not be endorsed by American liberals of any race . The mere existence of such individuals (who always got more media attention than their actual numbers might have warranted) contributed to "white backlash" against liberals and civil rights activists . </P> <P> Liberals were latecomers to the movement for equal rights for women . Generally, they agreed with Eleanor Roosevelt, that women needed special protections, especially regarding hours of work, night work, and physically heavy work . The Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) had first been proposed in the 1920s by Alice Paul, and appealed primarily to middle - class career women . At the Democratic National Convention in 1960, a proposal to endorse the ERA was rejected after it met explicit opposition from liberal groups including labor unions, AFL - CIO, American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), Americans for Democratic Action (ADA), American Federation of Teachers, American Nurses Association, the Women's Division of the Methodist Church, and the National Councils of Jewish, Catholic, and Negro Women . </P>

New deal contemporary liberalism did which of the following