On Friday’s Morning Joe, co-host Joe Scarborough and fellow MS NOW host Al Sharpton got an opportunity to engage in their favorite hobbies of using a lot of words to say little of substance and fearmongering about the Trump administration turning back the lock “to pre-1950 America.”
Scarborough began by telling Sharpton how wonderful he thinks he is, “Your organization, which has just been to the forefront of civil rights for so long, obviously, you come back together again with this remarkable event, this remarkable gathering, but at a very difficult time. Talk about the great challenges facing America right now and facing the civil rights movement.”
Sharpton began by lamenting, “Well, what we're facing is that when we talk about the 60s in almost revered terms, we do not discuss the fact that a lot of what was achieved in the 60s—the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Voting Rights Act of 1965, the Open Housing Act of ‘68—are all being dismantled or attempts seriously to dismantle them.”
MS NOW host Al Sharpton previewed day three of his National Action Network Convention by alleging "They are really trying to bring us back to pre-1950 America." Meanwhile, Joe Scarborough agreed, "there was always an assumption that the arc of civilization would continue bending… pic.twitter.com/A5FRCpIunY
— Alex Christy (@alexchristy17) April 10, 2026
He also claimed, “I think that our conference this year has focused a lot on let's get past all of the noise and deal with the substance of what is happening, because a lot of young people, even in National Action Network, were born feeling that these things were just automatic and they would remain there and don't understand that people a generation before me had to fight to get those things made to be law.”
Finally, Sharpton got to the real scare tactics:
We now are going to have to fight to maintain them as law. And whoever we choose to support for president or senator or whatever, that ought to be. The measuring stick. Are you going to restore and maintain voting rights? The equal opportunities in terms of the Civil Rights Act, open housing, freedom for women? I think that we do not understand that where Donald Trump, with all of his comedic kind of positioning by some, is not a joke. They are really trying to bring us back to pre-1950 America.
Scarborough then turned to historian Doris Kearns Goodwin, who would be appearing at the NAN Convention later in the day, and agreed, “You know, Doris, there was always an assumption that the arc of civilization would continue bending toward justice. I mean, look at my life. I was born in 1963 in Atlanta, Georgia. I started school on the outskirts of Meridian, Mississippi, integrated in 1969 as first grade. I thought that was normal.”
He added, “I thought that was normal. And by the way, that was about 30, 40 miles away from where three civil rights workers were killed just a few years earlier. And I moved through my school and college at University of Alabama and law school at Florida. Just thinking again, ‘Well, yeah, that was then. The bad old days. This is now. Barack Obama's elected president of the United States.’ And again, it continues to reinforce the idea that that arc is going to just keep bending upward toward justice. That changed a decade ago, didn't it?”
Goodwin would go on to give a history lesson about the 60s, but Scarborough and Sharpton’s dystopian vision is clearly at odds with reality. There is movement to take away voting rights. There is no movement to bring back segregation. The idea that the country is on the verge of returning to a pre-Civil Rights Movement state is insulting to everybody’s intelligence.
Here is a transcript for the April 10 show:
MS NOW Morning Joe
4/10/2026
7:01 AM ET
JOE SCARBOROUGH: So, Rev, why don't we start there? Your organization, which has just been to the forefront of civil rights for so long, obviously, you come back together again with this remarkable event, this remarkable gathering, but at a very difficult time. Talk about the great challenges facing America right now and facing the civil rights movement.
AL SHARPTON: Well, what we're facing is that when we talk about the 60s in almost revered terms, we do not discuss the fact that a lot of what was achieved in the 60s— the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Voting Rights Act of 1965, the Open Housing Act of ‘68—are all being dismantled or attempts seriously to dismantle them.
And I think that our conference this year has focused a lot on let's get past all of the noise and deal with the substance of what is happening, because a lot of young people, even in National Action Network, were born feeling that these things were just automatic and they would remain there and don't understand that people a generation before me had to fight to get those things made to be law.
We now are going to have to fight to maintain them as law. And whoever we choose to support for president or senator or whatever, that ought to be. The measuring stick. Are you going to restore and maintain voting rights? The equal opportunities in terms of the Civil Rights Act, open housing, freedom for women? I think that we do not understand that where Donald Trump, with all of his comedic kind of positioning by some, is not a joke. They are really trying to bring us back to pre-1950 America.
SCARBOROUGH: You know, Doris, there was always an assumption that the arc of civilization would continue bending toward justice. I mean, look at my life. I was born in 1963 in Atlanta, Georgia. I started school on the outskirts of Meridian, Mississippi, integrated in 1969 as first grade.
I thought that was normal. And by the way, that was about 30, 40 miles away from where three civil rights workers were killed just a few years earlier. And I moved through my school and college at University of Alabama and law school at Florida. Just thinking again, “Well, yeah, that was then. The bad old days. This is now. Barack Obama's elected president of the United States.” And again, it continues to reinforce the idea that that arc is going to just keep bending upward toward justice. That changed a decade ago, didn't it?
