An Open Letter to the Democratic Party
Lincoln Heritage Institute ^ | 3-18-08 | Lt. Colonel Frances Rice,
“We, African American citizens of the United States, declare and assert:
Whereas in the early 1600’s 20 African men and women were landed in Virginia from a Dutch ship as slaves and from that tiny seed grew the poisoned fruit of plantation slavery which shaped the course of American development,
Whereas reconciliation and healing always begin with an apology and an effort to repay those who have been wronged,
Whereas the Democratic Party has never apologized for their horrific atrocities and racist practices committed against African Americans during the past two hundred years, nor for the residual impact that those atrocities and practices and current soft bigotry of low expectations are having on us today,
Whereas the Democratic Party fought to expand slavery and, after the Civil War, established Jim Crow Laws, Black Codes and other repressive legislation that were designed to disenfranchise African Americans,
Whereas the Ku Klux Klan was the terrorist arm of the Democratic Party, and their primary goal was to intimidate and terrorize African American voters, Republicans who moved South to protect African Americans and any other whites who supported them,
Whereas, according to leading historians (both black and white), the horrific atrocities committed against African Americans during slavery and Reconstruction were financed, sponsored, and promoted by the Democratic Party and their Ku Klux Klan supporters,
Whereas from 1870 to 1930, in an effort to deny African Americans their civil rights and to keep African Americans from voting Republican, thousands of African Americans were shot, beaten, lynched, mutilated, and burned to death by Ku Klux Klan terrorists from the Democratic Party,
Whereas Democratic Presidents Franklin D. Roosevelt and Harry Truman rejected anti-lynching laws and efforts to establish a permanent Civil Rights Commission,
Whereas the Democratic party has used racist demagoguery to deceive African Americans about the history of the Republican Party that:
(a) started as the anti-slavery party in 1854,
(b) fought to free African Americans from slavery,
(c) designed Reconstruction, a ten-year period of unprecedented political power for African Americans,
(d) passed the Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth Amendments to the U. S. Constitution granting African Americans freedom, citizenship, and the right to vote,
(e) passed the Civil Rights Acts of 1866 and 1875 granting African Americans protection from the Black Codes and prohibiting racial discrimination in public accommodations,
(f) passed the Civil Rights Act of 1957 and the Civil Rights Acts of 1964 and 1965 granting African Americans protection from the Jim Crow laws,
(g) established Affirmative Action programs to help African Americans proper with Republican President Richard Nixon’s 1969 Philadelphia Plan that set the first goals and timetables and his 1972 Equal Employment Opportunity Act that made Affirmative Action Programs the law of our nation, and
(h) never sponsored or launched a program, passed laws, or engaged in practices that resulted in the death of millions of African Americans,
Whereas Brown vs. the Board of Education of Topeka (a 1954 decision by Chief Justice Earl Warren who was appointed by Republican President Dwight Eisenhower) was a landmark civil rights case that was designed to overturn the racist practices that were established by the Democratic Party,
Whereas after Democratic President Franklin D. Roosevelt received the vote of African Americans, he banned African American newspapers from the military shortly after taking office because he was convinced the newspapers were communists,
Whereas Democratic President John F. Kennedy voted against the 1957 Civil Rights Law, opposed the 1963 March on Washington by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and was later criticized by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. for ignoring civil rights issues.
Whereas Democratic President John F. Kennedy authorized the FBI (supervised by his brother, Attorney General Robert Kennedy) to investigate Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. on suspicion of being a communist,
Whereas Democratic Senator Robert Byrd of West Virginia, a former member of the Ku Klux Klan, made a 14-hour filibuster speech in the Senate in June 1964 in an unsuccessful effort to block passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Act and was heralded in April 2004 by Democratic Senator Christopher Dodd as a senator who would have been a great leader during the Civil War,
Whereas when the 1964 Civil Rights Act came up for vote, Senator Al Gore, Sr. and the rest of the Southern Democrats voted against the bill,
Whereas in the House of Representatives only 61 percent of the Democrats voted for the 1964 Civil Rights Act as compared to 80 percent of Republicans, and in the Senate only 69 percent of the Democrats voted for the 1964 Civil Rights Act, compared to 82 percent of the Republicans,
Whereas Democratic President Bill Clinton sent troops to Europe to protect the citizens of Bosnia and Kosovo while allowing an estimated 800,000 black Rwandans to be massacred in Africa, vetoed the welfare reform law twice before signing it, and refused to comply with a court order to have shipping companies develop an Affirmative Action Plan,
Whereas Democratic presidential candidate Al Gore created harmful racial division when he falsely claimed that the 2000 presidential election was “stolen” from him and that African Americans in Florida were disenfranchised, even though a second recount of Florida votes by the “Miami Herald” and a consortium of major news organizations confirmed that he lost the election, and a ruling by the U.S. Civil Rights Commission declared that African Americans were not denied the right to vote,
Whereas the Democratic Party’s soft bigotry of low expectations and social promotions have consigned African Americans to economic bondage and created a culture of dependency on government social programs,
Whereas the Democratic Party’s use of deception and fear to block welfare reform, the faith-based initiative and school choice that would help African Americans prosper is consistent with the Democratic Party’s heritage of racism that included sanctioning of slavery and kukluxery, a perversion of moral sentiment among leaders of the Democratic Party whose racist legacy bode ill until this generation of African Americans,
Now, therefore, for the above and other documented atrocities and accumulated wrongs inflicted upon African Americans, we demand a formal written apology and other appropriate remuneration from the leadership of the Democratic party.
From the office of Rev. Wayne Perryman
P.O. Box 256, Mercer Island, WA 98040
www.wayneperryman.com
April 5, 2004
Democratic National Committee
Mr. Terry McAuliffe, Chairman
430 S. Capital St., SE
Washington D.C. 20003
Dear Chairman McAuliffe:
My name is Rev. Wayne Perryman. I am an African American inner-city minister in the Seattle area and the author of the enclosed book, Unfounded Loyalty. All of my life I have voted Democrat. In the past, I worked with several Democratic candidates and served on the committee of the Washington State Black Clergy to Re-elect President Clinton in 1996. As you know, during the past 70 years African Americans have consistently supported the Democratic Party and put five Democratic presidents in the White House.
The purpose of this letter is to humbly and respectfully request that the DNC offer a formal apology to African Americans for the party’s past racist policies and practices toward African Americans, and further request that this apology be issued during the upcoming 2004 convention.
According to the renowned African American history professor, John Hope Franklin, the atrocities committed against African Americans in regions controlled by Democrats and their Klan supporters, “were so varied and so numerous as to defy classification or enumeration.”
Other noted history professors also wrote about these atrocities, including:
Professor James McPherson of Princeton University
Professor David Herbert Donald of Harvard University
Professor Allen W. Trelease of North Carolina University
Professor Howard O. Lindsey of DePaul University.
Both the chronicles of history and Congressional Records show that from 1792 up to the 1960’s the Democratic Party and their members engaged in the following racist practices:
On the issue of slavery, Democrats fought for and gave their lives to expand it while Republicans fought and gave their lives to ban it. Some called it the Civil War, others called it the War Between the States. But to African Americans and President Lincoln it was the war between the Democrats and Republicans concerning the State’s Rights to maintain the institution of slavery. On March 4, 1865 during his second Inaugural Address, Lincoln said, “Both parties deprecated war, but one of them would make war rather than let the nation survive, the other would accept war rather than let it perish….”
Democrats opposed the Freedman’s Bureau and other social programs to help the newly freed slaves.
Democrats passed Fugitive Slave Laws, Jim Crow Laws, Black Codes and other repressive pieces of legislation to deny Blacks their rights as citizens. Democratic Senator Ben Tillman of South Carolina said, “We reorganized the Democratic Party with one plank, and only one plank, namely that this is a white man’s country and white men must govern it.”
Democrats used every means possible to destroy Reconstruction including lynching, whippings, murder, intimidation, assassinations and mutilations. Professor Allen W. Trelease of the University of North Carolina said, “Democrats by a kind of tortured reasoning, sometimes accused Negroes and Republicans of attacking each other so that the crimes would be blamed on the Democrats; investigations revealed that Democrats had committed the acts themselves.”
Democrats murdered Blacks who attempted to vote Republican and banned many from participating in primaries.
Democrats established rigid testing requirements in southern communities to discourage, disqualify and disfranchise black voters.
In 1866, Democrats murdered 40 Blacks in the process of driving out every Black elected official in Louisiana’s State Legislature.
Democrats fought for the Dred Scott Decision and celebrated after the court issued its ruling that Blacks would be classified as property.
Democrats formed several terrorist organizations including the Ku Klux Klan to terrorize Blacks. During the Congressional debates on the Ku Klux Klan Act of 1871, it was revealed that the Klan was the terrorist arm of the Democratic Party.
Democrats praised the court’s decision in Plessy v. Ferguson which legally established segregation.
Democrats opposed and fought against anti-lynching laws.
Democrats sued and fought to have the 1875 Civil Rights Act declared unconstitutional by the United States Supreme Court.
When Democrats regained control of Congress in 1892, they passed the Repeal Act of 1894 to repeal portions of laws that were designed to help African Americans.
Democrats debated and voted against the following:
- Thirteenth Amendment
- Fourteenth Amendment
- Fifteenth Amendment
- The Civil Rights Act of 1866
- Reconstruction Act of 1867
- Enforcement Act of 1870
- The Ku Klux Klan Act of 1871
- he 1875 Civil Rights Act (which later became the 1964 Civil Rights Act)
- The Civil Rights Act of 1957
- The Civil Rights Act of 1960
Southern Democrats debated against and voted against the passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Political experts agree that had the Democrats attempted to pass these same types of laws in 1864 (that certain members of their party decided to support in 1964), the laws of 1964 would not have been necessary. Instead (prior to 1964), they chose to pass Jim Crow Laws and other repressive legislation to deny Blacks their rights as citizens.
Entire black communities were destroyed in democratically controlled states including Wilmington, North Carolina, Rosewood, Florida, and the Greenwood District in Tulsa, Oklahoma, to name a few.
Under Democratic rule, an estimated 200 Black farmers were massacred in Elaine, Arkansas (1919).
In regions controlled by Democrats, hundred of thousands of African Americans were used as free labor by placing them in inhumane prison labor camps. Some called this the new form of slavery.
Under the New Deal, Democratic President Franklin D. Roosevelt refused to assist Black sharecroppers who had difficulty in obtaining relief benefits through the Department of Agriculture and refused to assist Blacks that had problems getting loans to purchase land and build homes. Black newspapers were banned from the military, and lynchings and other forms of racial violence continued during his Administration.
Democrats fought against quality education for African Americans in the 1954 case of Brown v The Board of Education, and prior to this case they had a history of murdering our teachers and burning down Black schools and churches.
Under Democratic rule (according to Associated Press in 2001) African American land ownership in the south decreased from 15 million acres in 1910 to less than two million today. AP reported that the land was lost through fraud, murder and the deliberate destruction of court records.
In 1995, while the Clinton Administration proudly supported a group of White janitors in their “reverse discrimination” lawsuit against Illinois State University, his Administration refused to support a group of Black, Hispanic and female Longshore Workers in their discrimination lawsuit against 100 shipping companies and their unions. The workers won their lawsuits without the support of the Clinton Administration and collectively walked away with several million dollars.
From 1792 to 2004, the Democratic Party (the oldest political Party in America) has never elected a Black man to the United States Senate.
Many African Americans agree with those psychologists who believe that the horrors of institutional racism established in part by the racist legislation of the Democrats, still haunt African Americans today. Despite these factual truths, the Democratic Party has never issued or offered an apology to African Americans in its 212-year history.
Some have argued that the Republicans also owe African Americans an apology for abandoning them when they reached a compromise (with the Democrats) to remove federal troops from the South, in exchange for giving Rutherford B. Hayes the presidency. History notes that the compromise did indeed take place and troops were removed from the South. However experts say that like the problems facing today’s American troops in the Reconstruction of Iraq, it was impossible to have enough federal troops to cover the entire region (13 states) during the Reconstruction of the South.
History reveals that from 1866 to 1877 Democrats and their Klan supporters launched a multitude of terrorist attacks against African Americans while federal troops were stationed in the region. Professor David Donald of Harvard writes: “Congress could require federal troops to supervise the registration of voters, but Negroes were waylaid and butchered on the roads to the registration office….” The troop’s presence had little affect on the reign of terror initiated by Democrats and their Klan supporters.
When it comes to offering apologies, the one factor that may excuse Republicans is the fact that unlike the Democrats, Republicans have always had abolitionists and “Radical” members like Senator Charles Sumner and Thaddeus Stevens to consistently and effectively challenge racist individuals within their party (racist Republicans like President Abraham Lincoln). Professor James McPherson of Princeton said, “The abolitionists became the respected spokesmen of the radical wing of the Republican Party.” From 1792 to 1960, the “radicals” in the Democratic Party weren’t spokespersons for African Americans they were the assassins that brought terror and death to African Americans.
After giving the Democratic Party support for the past 40 years, many African Americans believe that an apology for the role that the Democratic Party played in establishing the institution of racism during the past 168 years is the least that the party can do. The apology should be issued for:
• Fraud
• Murder
• The Formation of Terrorist Organizations
• Economic Deprivation
• Racist Legislation
• Negative Communications
• Promoting Substandard Education
• Terrorist Intimidation
• Landmark Litigation
• Brutal Assassinations
• Racially Flawed Adjudication
I pray that you will earnestly and sincerely consider my request. An apology is one of the only ways that modern day Democrats can distant themselves from the party’s racist past while bringing some closure to the African American community. On May 16, 1997, President Clinton issued a formal apology to African Americans and to those who were victimized by the Tuskegee Experiment; a government sponsored program that allowed Blacks to die from syphilis. Clinton’s apology came after the 25,000 Black members of the National Medical Association requested such. I pray that the DNC will do the same. If not for the living, the Party should do it for the millions of Blacks that lost their lives during this horrible period of history. I’m looking forward to your reply.
Sincerely,
Rev. Wayne Perryman