Free Republic

Progressive critics of electoral activism—those who question the ultimate significance of lamestream bourgeois politics—would do well to remember the 2010 midterms, a Republican victory that solidified the power of the Tea Party within the GOP and heralded a right-wing takeover of state governments that has immiserated millions of Americans. A war is being waged on democracy in America. Brazenly, with a smiling face, the Right is working to shore up the accumulated wealth and power of the 1% against any incursion by the voting hordes. With the Supreme Court’s 2010 Citizens United ruling, the Right—that convergence of billionaire activists, corporations,...

This final installment exposes the hatred Democrats have for all minorities and for conservatives. It wraps up the argument for never letting these people be in charge of our lives. Jim Crow Laws When the Democrats were forced at gun point to free their slaves they passed new laws called Jim Crow laws which added subtlety to their oppression. The result of these laws brought about de facto rather than de jure slavery. From 1876 through 1965 the Democrats did whatever they could to destroy the hopes and dreams of African Americans living in the old Confederacy. They made racial...

The spate of campaign fliers that use images of lynchings, Jim Crow laws and the recent racial unrest in Ferguson, Missouri, to urge blacks to vote in next week’s election somehow failed to grab the attention of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People.The NAACP headquarters in Washington wasn’t prepared to answer questions about the fliers and mailers circulated in black communities in Georgia, Maryland and North Carolina, despite widespread news coverage of it for the past week.“Can you send the photos of the literature and tell me the exact states they have been distributed in so that...

A string of leaks to the media protecting Darren Wilson are part of a very big problem. Here's the sordid history. On those rare occasions when it makes a real effort to grapple with the raw brutality of Jim Crow, the American mainstream media usually returns to a particular set of images that, by their very nature, are jarring and extraordinary: the burning cross, the hangman’s knot, the Klansman on horseback. This isn’t a bad thing; you can’t understand Jim Crow without understanding the significance of the Klan, for example. But it’s not an entirely good one, either. The problem...

If liberals truly cared about the plight of today’s black community, they wouldn’t be “standing in solidarity” with a bunch of outraged looters in Ferguson, Missouri… They would be denouncing the party of the KKK, Jim Crow, and segregation. They would be burning the homes of gang members. They would be fighting for the single black mother who is facing up to three years in prison for deciding to defend her life with a firearm. In short… They would be rampaging against the morally bankrupt hustlers of victimhood and dependency. Or, to put it another way, they would be voting...

You know you’ve hit a sore spot when the left starts screeching. MSNBC host Rachel Maddow’s producer, Steve Benen, just took a whack at the American Civil Rights Union’s new booklet, “The Truth About Jim Crow,” (TTAJC) which National Review writer John Fund wrote about in a recent column. Benen cites a critique from the Atlanta Journal Constitution blogger Jay Bookman: “Jay Bookman took a closer look at the pamphlet Fund’s piece was promoting, highlighting some of its more glaring errors of fact and judgment.” And what errors of fact would those be, Steve? Bookman did not point out a...

Editor's Note: Mr. Blackwell is a member of the Policy Board of the American Civil Rights Union.You know you’ve hit a sore spot when the Left starts screeching.MSNBC host Rachel Maddow’s producer, Steve Benen, just took a whack at the American Civil Rights Union’s new booklet, “The Truth About Jim Crow,” (TTAJC) which National Review Online writer John Fund wrote about in a recent column. Benen cites a critique from the Atlanta Journal Constitution blogger Jay Bookman: “Jay Bookman took a closer look at the pamphlet Fund’s piece was promoting, highlighting some of its more glaring errors of fact and...

There's a weekly trial on the Internet about who may be stealing culture from whom. Earlier this week, the defendants were Iggy Azalea and white gay men. A while back, it was Macklemore and the Harlem Shakers. Now, we have come across a story from the Jim Crow era about cultural mimicry between people of color.In mid-20th century America, the turban was a tool that people of color used for "confounding the color lines," writes Manan Desai, board member of the South Asian American Digital Archive.At the time, ideas of race in America were quite literally black and white. In...

North Carolina’s voter identification law, which has been described as the most sweeping attack on African American electoral rights since the Jim Crow era, is being challenged in a legal hearing that opens on Monday. Civil rights lawyers and activists are gathering in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, for the start of the legal challenge that is expected to last all week. They will be seeking to persuade a federal district judge to impose a preliminary injunction against key aspects of HB 589, the voting law enacted by state Republicans last August. Lawyers for the North Carolina branch of the NAACP and...

Throughout my life, I have been impacted by the work of Martin Luther King and others as they worked to bring equality to people of my race. It is interesting, however, the way in which people interpret the events that have brought us to this point. Most importantly, as the nation marks the fiftieth anniversary of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, there is much about this historic piece of legislation that has been forgotten or deliberately misrepresented. Few contemporary American students may remember that its supposed champion, President Lyndon B. Johnson, left office under the cloud of the increasingly unpopular...

Recently former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice added her voice to those who have long been urging the Republican Party to reach out to black voters. Not only is that long overdue, what is also long overdue is putting some time — and, above all, some serious thought — into how to go about doing it. Too many Republicans seem to think that the way to "reach out" is to offer blacks and other minorities what the Democrats are offering them. Some have even suggested that the channels to use are organizations like the NAACP and black "leaders" like Jesse...

I guess this should be filed in the "Washington Politics" thread ... I'm an African American registered Democrat. I don't mind giving conservative Republicans hell when they deserve it. But unlike many conservative, I don't mind speaking out against my Party when I think they are wrong and encouraging them to do the right thing. Anyway, white liberals are having fits about the article posted below, which was written by me and published on my blog, in Black newspapers across the country, and at the liberal Daily Kos blog. I'm posting the article here because I'd like to have some...

In the debate over Arizona's S.B. 1062, a bill that would have modified the state's Religious Freedom Restoration Act, some opponents of the bill characterized the bill and others like it as "Jim Crow for gays." Those who used this analogy, though, either do not understand RFRA, do not understand Jim Crow, or both. The opponents claimed it would have allowed business owners to deny gays access to public accommodations. A Christian Post analysis of the bill concluded that was not true. In a letter sent to Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer (R) before she vetoed the bill, 11 law professors,...

Back when gay rights advocates were first pushing for gay marriage, they claimed that they only wanted equality and that no one would be compelled to participate in gay marriage events.They lied.As soon as gay marriage went on the books, and in some states where it wasn’t even on the books, religious bakeries and photographers were assaulted with demands that they participate in gay ceremonies, sued if they didn’t and ordered to take part in gay ceremonies or face fines… and even jail time.States have responded by trying to pass measures that will protect religious freedom and freedom of...

[Video] Fox News’ Bob Beckel Calls NRA’s Colion Noir “A Punk” Over His MLK Day Gun Rights Video January 22 2014 by Dan Cannon Share This Post First off, Colion Noir got featured on Fox News’ The Five. Bravo man. You know you’re doing something right when you get the mainstream media’s panties in a wad. If you aren’t aware, Noir made a video on Martin Luther King Jr Day for the NRA News in his role as an NRA News Contributor. The video focused on the fact that MLK saw the need for firearms for self defense and even...

A Civil Rights pioneer has died. Franklin McCain was one of four teenagers who sat down at an all-white lunch counter in Greensboro on February 1, 1960... The freshmen from North Carolina A&T ignited a sit-in movement in the Jim Crow south that led to other key chapters in the Civil Rights era... Initially McCain and the other men were known as the A&T Four, because what they did was viewed as so controversial. In time, the city adopted them as their own, and today they're more commonly known as the Greensboro Four...

The first thing I noticed when arriving at Birmingham’s Bethel Baptist Church of Collegeville today for the “homegoing” service of the Rev. Lamar Weaver, 85, was the hearse from Poole’s Funeral Chapels, Inc. How fitting since it was the Poole brothers, Ernest and John, who helped save Weaver’s life 56 years ago. On March 6, 1957, a day after the Alabama Public Commission ruled that waiting rooms designated for interstate travel must remain segregated, Weaver met the Rev. Fred Shuttlesworth, Birmingham’s formidable civil rights leader and Bethel’s pastor, and his wife, Ruby, at Terminal Station. The Shuttlesworths had bought tickets...

President Barack Obama and his National Security Advisor Susan Rice, who like Obama is Black, are holding a classified meeting on Syria at the White House with members of the Congressional Black Caucus (CBC) , according to reporter April Ryan, the White House reporter for American Urban Radio Networks. While there are times that a meeting with the group that is a repugnant remnant of racial divisions in America might make sense — such as how to get Black unemployment down from the double-digit Depression era levels it has been since Obama took office — it is hard to see...

Harry Anderson, a magician and comic (made famous by his stint as the judge on the old sitcom "Night Court"), used to have a routine where he'd promise to juggle George Washington's ax. I'm quoting from memory here, but he'd say something like: "I have here George Washington's original ax -- the one he used to chop down the cherry tree." He'd wait a beat, and then add: "Of course, a few years ago the blade broke and had to be replaced. And about a decade before that it got a new handle. But in spirit this is George's ax."...

Abigail Fisher Justice Thomas Likens Affirmative Action to Segregation Laws Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas likened the rationale for an affirmative action admissions policy to segregationist arguments of previous decades. The New American 25 June 2013 The rationale of the University of Texas for using race as a factor in determining who will be admitted to the school "echoes" legal arguments made by segregationists in previous decades, wrote Justice Clarence Thomas in his opinion in the U.S Supreme Court decision issued Monday on a constitutional challenge to the university's affirmative action program. In a 7-1 decision, the court reaffirmed...