Opinion: Right Side of History?

2-11-26

By Natalie Nice
Propaganda often attempts to re-write history. Last week I saw a letter to the editor, noting that the American Democratic Party, historically, has been the party of civil rights. Until not so very long ago, I loosely held this same belief. However, if we take a close candid look at our history, it tells a very different story. Robert Penn Warren said, “History cannot give us a program for the future, but it can give us a fuller understanding of ourselves, and of our common humanity, so that we can better face the future.”
The Democratic Party was founded in 1828. From the very beginning of its inception it was opposed to civil rights — it promoted slavery, began the civil war, opposed reconstruction, installed Jim Crow laws, founded the Ku Klux Klan, perpetrated lynchings, and fought against legislation seeking equality and desegregation.
In contrast, the Republican Party was founded on the Anti-Slavery platform in 1854. It aimed to prevent slavery from expanding out West, with the goal to eventually abolish it, altogether. The Republican Party viewed slavery as an embarrassing moral stain on the country.
In 1857, in Dred Scott V. Sanford the Supreme Court ruled that slaves were property, not citizens. All seven Democrat Justices ruled in favor of slavery, while the two Republican Judges dissented.
The Civil War broke out in 1861 to decide the issue of slavery once and for all. On April 14th 1865, the first Republican president, Abraham Lincoln was shot and killed, six days after the Confederate Army surrendered by John Wilkes Booth, a Democrat. Andrew Johnson, who succeeded Lincoln as President, was also a Democrat. He opposed the passage of the 13th amendment, which abolished slavery, the 14th amendment that provided blacks citizenship, and the 15th amendment, which gave blacks voting rights. The amendments still passed with universal support from Republicans.
Following the Civil War, the Reconstruction Era (1865-1877) began; it helped ensure newly freed slaves retained their rights by placing federal troops in the South. By the year 1900, the Republican Party had elected 22 black men to the United States Congress. The Democrat Party did not elect a black man into Congress until 1935.
However, after the period of reconstruction ended, and federal troops went home, white supremacy abounded again in the South. The Southern Democrats instituted the black codes — laws that limited black’s ability to own property and run businesses, while subverting black citizens’ right to vote through poll taxes and literacy tests.
These unconstitutional restrictions were enforced through terror. The Ku Klux Klan was founded by Nathan Bedford Forrest, a Democrat. In the South, the Klan acted as the military force serving the interests of the Democratic Party. Lynchings were used to terrorize any opposition and impose segregation. Woodrow Wilson, a Democrat, who was elected president in 1912, screened “The Birth of the Nation” as the first movie ever shown at the White House. The movie, originally titled, “The Klansman,” glorified the Klan and inaccurately maligned blacks as idiots and villains.
Like the Black codes, Jim Crow laws were later instituted by Southern Democrats, often referred to as ‘Dixiecrats,’ to force segregation in public institutions and businesses.
In 1954, almost all Southern Congressional Democrats signed the, ‘Southern Manifesto,’ signaling their opposition to the Supreme Court’s ruling in Brown V The Board of Education, which stated racial segregation in public schools was unconstitutional.
Ten years later, the Supreme Court echoed the same sentiments in Loving V Virginia, determining legal restrictions on interracial marriage unconstitutional. Richard Loving, a white man, and Mildred Loving, a woman of black and Native American descent, had married in Washington D.C. where interracial marriage was legal, but were arrested and jailed when they returned to their home in Caroline County, Virginia. The Caroline County prosecutors office, like the state of Virginia at the time, was totally dominated by Democrats; it was Virginia Democrats who had initially banned interracial marriage.
When the Civil Rights Act of 1964 came up for a vote, 80% of Republicans supported it, whereas the only serious opposition came from Democrats, themselves, with less than 70% support. Senate Democrats filibustered the bill for 75 days until Republicans were able to muster a few extra votes to break the gridlock.
After all efforts to keep blacks enslaved, deny them equality, and keep them segregated failed, tactics changed. Lyndon B. Johnson, a Democrat from Texas, who succeeded JFK after his assassination reportedly said, “I’ll have them N— votings for Democrats for 200 years.”
In his ‘Ballot or the Bullet’ speech in 1964, Malcolm X, shrewdly recognized the Democrat’s duplicity during the senate filibuster and warned his supporters to be critical of their sweet promises and advised them to vote discerningly, saying, “What alibi do they use since they control Congress and the Senate?…The Democrats have got the government sewed up, and you’re the ones that sewed it up for them. You put the Democrats first and the Democrats put you last.”