In regards to Republican or Democrat, I wasn't making my "statement of curiousity in regards to the 40 acres and a mule" in that context...
....just that it was the first time I can think of where someone (Republican or Democrat) promised them something for free.
BTW, no one knows for sure that if the freed black community had been give free land that they would have become a self sufficient middle class today.... this is all based on assumptions towards a future that was unknown back then.
Men like Nathan Bedford Forrest were still standing in the way also.
Republicans never sealed the promise of freedom for the black community until 1965 but it was the Kennedy's (Jack and Bobby) that started sending the Government down to finish the job, even though most Democrats voted against the 1965 Act. The black community moved to the Democratic column primarily because of the Kennedy's.
There's some truth to this.... the Kennedys did reach out to MLK, but....
The Republican party was FOUNDED for the express purpose of destroying slavery. Which it did.
It was Republicans who pushed through the 13th, 14th, and 15th amendments to free, naturalize, and enfranchise blacks.
Republicans spent the next 100 years, off and on, pushing for civil rights and anti-lynching laws, only to be thwarted by Democrats at every turn.
It was a Republican president, Eisenhower, who sent the 82nd Airborne to desegregate the schools.
It was a Republican president, Nixon, who introduced affirmative action as a corrective measure, to undo the purge of blacks from government offices that happened on Democrat Woodrow Wilson's watch.
The Civil Rights legislation of the 60s got a higher percentage of Republican than Democrat votes.
Just like the environmental movement, the civil rights movement was originally a Republican initiative, which was later hijacked by Democrats -- who then rewrote history to dishonestly claim full credit for these movements.
BTW... I noted above, that, "The Republican party was FOUNDED for the express purpose of destroying slavery" -- that's still true today. In the 19th century, we fought plantation slavery. In the 20th century, we fought socialist slavery (and that battle not quite over yet). In the 21st century, we will be fighting debt slavery.
And just as always, the damnned Democrats are, and ever shall be, on the WRONG SIDE... until the very last minute.