Following the Sept. 10, 2025, shooting death of Turning Point USA CEO and co-founder Charlie Kirk, people on social media shared an alleged statement he made about the passage of the Civil Rights Act.
The landmark federal law banned discrimination in public places, provided for the integration of schools and other public spaces and made employment discrimination illegal.
Some social media posts (archived here and here) attributed the following quote to Kirk: "We made a huge mistake when we passed the Civil Rights Act in the 1960s." Other posts shared across social media (archived here, here, here and here) similarly claimed Kirk had called the legislation a "huge mistake."
Snopes also received reader emails and website searches about the authenticity of the alleged quote.
We found that the quote about the passage of the Civil Rights Act being a "huge mistake" was correctly attributed to Kirk.
Journalist William Turton first reported on Kirk's comments in a January 2024 article for Wired (archived). According to Turton's report, Kirk made the statement while speaking at America Fest, a political convention organized by Turning Point USA, in December 2023.
Turton attended the event in person while working as a reporter for Wired. He provided an audio recording to Snopes, which verified that Kirk said:
I have a very, very radical view on this, but I can defend it, and I've thought about it. We made a huge mistake when we passed the Civil Rights Act in the mid-1960s.
Kirk made the comment while responding to a question from a student who said he was the subject of a Title IX investigation at their university after posting a derogatory message about transgender people on social media.
Kirk responded to the Wired article about his characterization of the Civil Rights Act during an episode of his podcast, "The Charlie Kirk Show." A clip of his response can be found on Rumble, where he reads aloud excerpts from an email sent by the Wired reporter:
"We note in our piece that Kirk describes King as, quote, 'A bad guy.'" That's true. "And Kirk described a 'very, very radical view' that the country made a mistake when it passed the Civil Rights Act." Also true. "As we note in the piece, Kirk has previously described [King] as a hero and a civil rights icon." That's true, I used to be wrong. "What inspired Kirk to shift his view on MLK? Why does Kirk think MLK is a bad guy?"
During the same Turning Point USA event, Kirk also called Martin Luther King Jr. "awful," as we reported here.
Kirk made similar remarks about the Civil Rights Act outside of the Turning Point USA event. For example, in April 2024, Media Matters for America published (archived) a video and accompanying transcript in which Kirk said the Civil Rights Act "created a beast, and that beast has now turned into an anti-white weapon."
That footage appeared in a video on Kirk's channel on Rumble (at 8:06).
In another video shared by Knowa De Baraso, a young political influencer, on X (archived) in August 2024, Kirk confirmed to De Baraso he said the Civil Rights Act was a "mistake."
For further reading, Snopes has also investigated claims that Kirk said Jewish money was ruining U.S. culture and that empathy was a "made-up, new age term."