Todays lesson:
1865-1964
Out of the 155 years since the Emancipation Proclamation, blacks were Republican for 100 of them. The racism inherent in much of the current republican base allows a failure to understand that blacks are able to think critically and make decisions without white input. We know what republicans have done. Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation. Rutherford Hayes, a republican, ended reconstruction. We had the republican lily white movement to purge blacks from the party. Republicans endorsed separate but equal, every republican administration in the early to mid 1900's broke promises made to blacks, most notably during the Great Mississippi flood, which resulted in massive black casualties, displacement and basically returning southern blacks back to slave status.
But a few stragglers stayed faithful to the Republican party still after years of the party ignoring blacks and breaking promises. Until 1964. That was when a democrat that signed what amounted to our second Emancipation Proclamation when President Lyndon Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act. Members of todays republican party spin a disingenuous tale about republican support for the Civil Rights and voting rights act. They tell about a democratic filibuster and will tell us that more democrats opposed these bills than republicans. These things are true. But they only tell part of the story.
According to Merriam-Webster the definition of disingenuous is, “lacking in candor: giving a false appearance of simple frankness.” In the house, 221 democrats voted for the Voting Rights Act, 112 republicans did. In the senate, 47 democrats voted for the Voting Rights Act, 30 republicans did.
It’s time for the sellouts and Uncle Toms to fall back. Because the house negro does not own the house and once they think they do, they get removed. Racist whites love quoting Booker T. Washington. Some whites use his words to counter arguments made by blacks today regarding continuing white racism. To reflect our modern reality, I have modified Washington’s comments.
“There is another class of white people who make a business of keeping the advantages of whites maintained by gaslighting the public into a belief that white racism is now an illusion and that it is whites who face anti white racism.... Some of these people do not want whites to lose preference, because they do not want to lose their jobs ... There is a certain class of white race-"problem solvers" who don’t want America to get well.”
1964 Republican presidential candidate Barry Goldwater voted against the 1964 Civil Rights Act. By 1964 there were blacks whose families had been republicans for almost 100 years. The Goldwater nomination was a slap in the face of black people. When we got civil rights, republicans decided that extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice, turned their backs on us and began letting southern white racists become part of the party. So just cut the crap. The history of the republican party is one of broken promises to black people. All today’s republican establishment does for blacks is throw out Uncle Toms or Aunties and tell us they are the ones we should listen to. Black republicans that do not deny that racism exists are part of the party, but you will not see them on Fox News. We are not republicans because republicans took a knee on us. Now they want us to come back so they can implement policies that will put a chokehold on us. The republican party is anti-affirmative action, anti-civil rights, anti-voting rights, pro maintenance of the memory of the confederacy but we are supposed to run to the republican party because Abraham Lincoln freed slaves from the same confederacy republicans defend today. The shame is that there are blacks in America who are fooled by the gaslighting.
At this time, meaning right now, there are Americans who have chosen to ignore the last 150 years of history. When trying to discuss race with a “conservative” you are almost guaranteed to hear the lecture on why blacks should be republicans today because the Abraham Lincoln was a republican and he freed the slaves. Forgotten in this revised history was the fact Lincoln did not believe in racial equality. Also forgotten as I have already mentioned, was the 100 years of apartheid and the more than 50 years after the civil rights act into today. This distorted reality has the far right talking crazy. It is Teflon history in high definition. From 1865 until 1964 blacks were republicans. All we got in return was Jim Crow.
References:
Fauntroy, Michael K. (2007), Republicans and the Black vote, Lynne Rienner Publishers .
Henry Louis Gates Jr., Did Lincoln Want to Ship Black People Back to Africa?
www.theroot.com/did-lincoln-want-to-ship-black people-back-to-africa-1790858389
The Negro and the Flood, Walter White, The Nation, Vol. 124, No. 3233, April 15,1927.
The Mississippi River Great Flood of 1927, Malik Simba,
www.blackpast.org/african-american-history/mississippi-river-great-flood-1927/
The Great Mississippi Flood of 1927-Ain’t Got No Place to Go, Laura Coyle, Published Sept. 7, 2016; updated Jan. 11, 2019, nmaahc.si.edu/explore/stories/collection/great-mississippi-river-flood-1927
Robert Moton and the Colored Advisory Commission,
www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/flood-moton-cac/
Robert Moton's Second Report,
www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/flood-moton-second-report/