Yes.....the guys with the night sticks, the german shephards, the lynchings, the bombs, jim crow, the kkk, they weren't democrats? Right....? bill clinton, the serial sexual predator...his political mentor and good friend...j william fulbright wasn't a segregationsist.....right?
Setting the Record Straight on Jim Crow National Review Online
TheTruthAboutJimCrow.org, it sets the record straight on a hidden racial past that many Democrats would rather see swept under the carpet. While Richard Nixon’s “Southern Strategy” is constantly referenced in the media as a tool to attract white voters, less well remembered are Woodrow Wilson’s segregation of the entire federal civil service; FDR’s appointment of a member of the KKK to the Supreme Court;
John F. Kennedy’s apathy toward civil-rights legislation; and the rise of Robert Byrd, a former member of the KKK, to the post of Democratic leader in the Senate in the 1980s.
Is it fair to remind people of the awful historical antecedents that can lurk within a political party? The study quotes author Bruce Bartlett as asking, “If the Republican party is to bear responsibility for Joe McCarthy through all time, why doesn’t the Democratic party have to bear responsibility for a century of racist leaders?” The majority of the ACRU study focuses on the horror of Jim Crow, which at its core was a system of state-enforced laws that relegated blacks to inferior status. When police enforcement wasn’t enough, lynchings were used to keep Jim Crow in place. At least 3,500 blacks were lynched during the Jim Crow years, and people were murdered right up through the mid 1960s.
But the political enforcement of Jim Crow was entirely in Democratic hands. The Ku Klux Klan functioned as the paramilitary wing of the Democratic party, and it was used to drive Republicans out of the South after the Civil War.
Before he took up the cause of civil rights as president, Lyndon Johnson acting as Senate majority leader blocked the GOP’s 1956 civil-rights bill, and gutted Eisenhower’s 1957 Civil Rights Act. Democratic senators filibustered the GOP’s 1960 Civil Rights Act.
Oboy! Who needs history books when you got "The truth about Jim Crow dot org"?
First things first: Klan --
>> neither "Democrats" nor Nathan Bedford Forrest founded any incarnation of the KKK. That was done (the first time) by some young Confederate veteran soldiers -- as a social club, in 1865 (Christmas Day), out of small-town boredom. A lark. All the Greek terms and alliteration of "kleagles" and "klaverns" exemplifies that. When they dressed up in sheets and rode through town, at that time not as any kind of terrorist act but a simple college-kid prank, they were surprised to find strong visible reaction and took on the sheets as a kind of uniform.
... these six young veterans who started the Klan? No known political affiliation. Just college-age veteran soldiers. In 1865 there wasn't much in the South in the way of politics-as-usual anyway-- the entire focus, for what had been as long as anyone could remember the ruling class (i.e. whites), was either picking up one's shattered life, rising up in armed resistance, or both. So the idea of normal political debate in that time and place as in two or more alternative political philosophies-- didn't even exist. And I specify whites because no one else had power.
Here lie the seeds of the Democratic 99-year (white) dominance of the South; it's just been vanquished and humiliated by the first President of the newfangled "Republican Party"; associating with that party is going to be literally unthinkable for generations. Lincoln's party represents the "aggressor". In a kind of supreme irony the South saw itself as enslaved by the North. But we digress with background here -- the point is the Klan was neither founded by a political party; it wasn't even founded as a terrorist group. Revisionism's a *****.
...
By the end of the 1870s the Klan was dead. As were the other paramilitary groups that had sprung up synonymously with them.
So why do we know of the Klan so prominently today and not the White League? Because in 1915 (a time which had degraded to the absolute nadir of racial strife in this country, a tenor the school history books somehow forget to point out), a preacher-turned-salesman and inveterate club-starter/joiner in Georgia named William Simmons revived it, capitalizing on the impact of the racist film "Birth of a Nation" which glorified the KKK, which was at the time an romanticized artifact of decades past. Simmons, working off the film, introduced the whole burning crosses schtick, in fact using the imagery to (re)start the organization on Stone Mountain. By 1920 he had hired PR agents to proselytize the Klan and grow it -- after all, there was money to be made in memberships.
... William Simmons? Again, no known political affiliation. He insisted the Klan was a "fraternal" organization -- although clearly a polarizing one
... Simmons' PR people used the isolationism angle to build up huge memberships around the country, far outside the South, and this is the point where they get into politics. Not with a particular party -- Democrats in the South, Republicans in the midwest and west. Whatever worked at the time. In Oregon they got a Democrat into the governor's chair and a Republican as mayor of Portland, Republican Senators and Governors in Colorado and Indiana. Republican city council in Anaheim. And obviously, Democrats in the South. Because the KKK at least understood what a political party is and what it isn't.
Matter of fact when a Governor in Oklahoma (Walton) tried to drive the Klan out after the infamous Tulsa race riots, the KKK got him removed. When a Presidential candidate from Alabama (Underwood) denounced the Klan, they denounced him and muscled him out of contention. Walton and Underwood were both Democrats. <<
Oh sorry, does this not fit your revisionista bubble?
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way more here)
== Next up: Jim Crow ==
As already laid out and alluded to above, the South was a one-party state for 99 years until Strom Thurmond did the unthinkable and went Republican, eventually bringing the South with him. Which is on one level understandable since the Southern conservatives had been feuding with their sole option, the Democratic Party, ever since the DP took on the Populist movement in the late 19th century and brought "Liberalism" in (Liberals have never been popular in the conservative South, and still aren't). Southerners disrupted Democratic conventions and bolted to run their own candidates in 1948... 1968... 1972... and as far back as 1860*, while the Klan disrupted conventions in 1924 and 1928 (noted above).
Pop quiz: in the election of 1860 that preceded the Civil War, how many electoral votes did the Republican, Lincoln, win in the South? Zero. How many did the Democrat, Steven Douglas win?
Also zero.
The South had completely disrupted the party convention and ran its own candidates -- TWO of them, Breckinridge and Bell -- who won ALL of the Southern vote. The schism was going on even then.
Add to this George Wallace, who petitioned Barry Goldwater for a spot as his running mate in 1964 and, when turned down, had to be talked out of running on his own, by Goldwater. Oh btw Goldwater had Klan support too, though he didn't seek it.
Bottom line in this history: for 99 years after the Civil War,
everybody in the South was a Democrat, if they were registered to vote at all. If you ran for office you either (a) ran as a Democrat, or (b) lost the election. That means whether you were a racist or not, you were a Democrat. Because identifying with the "party of Lincoln" was unthinkable. Lincoln, remember, represented "Big" federal government, and had vanquished and humiliated them. The DP represented "states rights" --- you know, the same buzzword later used by George Wallace and Ronald Reagan.
And the whole time the enormous schism between the South (which was always conservative) and the rest of the DP, which morphed into Populist-cum-Liberal with the turn of the century, resulted in two vastly different faces for the same party -- a Democrat in Massachusetts had little or nothing in common with a Democrat in Alabama. And the reason for that is political parties do not operate to represent an ideology -- they operate to win elections, however they can. And if that means morphing with the times, then morph they do. Both the DP and the RP did in fact just that.
Cultural ideologies, on the other hand, tend to stay more fixed. Same South, different Party.
Now on to the CRA history whitewash .... here's the actual vote.
The original House version:
- Southern Democrats: 7–87 (7–93%)
- Southern Republicans: 0–10 (0–100%)
- >>> ALL SOUTHERNERS: 7-97 (6.7%--93.3%)
- Northern Democrats: 145–9 (94 – 6%)
- Northern Republicans: 138–24 (85 – 15%)
- >>> ALL NORTHERNERS: 283-33 (89.6%--11.4%)
The Senate version:
- Southern Democrats: 1–20 (5–95%)
- Southern Republicans: 0–1 (0–100%)
- Northern Democrats: 45–1 (98–2%)
- Northern Republicans: 27–5 (84–16%)
- ALL SOUTHERNERS: 1--21 (4.5%--95.5%)
- ALL NORTHERNERS: 72--6 (92.3%--7.7%)
Yes, there is a party pattern in that each line shows more support from the D side than the R side. But again, 94 versus 85 on one side is not significant.
But
96 on one side versus 92 on the other side?? You just hit the motherlode. The numbers don't lie; your pattern is clearly there but it's
regional, not "political-party". And
regional, once again for you slow readers, means
cultural.
You take the numbers from the North -- both Dems and Repubs are for it.
You take the numbers from the South -- both Dems and Repubs are agin' it.
It's truly bipartisan in both directions. (!)
And to think people ***** about "gridlock".
And FWIW it was right after this that whiner Strom Thurmond took his balls and went to the unthinkable and joined the RP. Followed by Lott, Helms, Duke and a cast of thousands. Again --- same South, different party.
And yet you wanna play history games with your political party action figures and "the truth about Jim Crow dot org". That's so cute.
Ah, the life of the partisan political hack. No responsibilities.... just punt for points.
Must be nice.
/offtopic
