Open Letter from African Americans to the Democratic Party

Email from the author | 6/3/04 | Frances Rice

[JulieRNR21]

An Open Letter to the Democratic Party

By 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.

[JulieRNR21]

Thanks for those links........Julie

[JulieRNR21]

Frances gave me permission to post it.

The true history of the Democrats & African Americans needs to be told.

[subterfuge]

Rack it!!

[A CA Guy]

Did I miss something, or did this appear in any publication somewhere?

How would the public or even Democrats even know about this letter?

[First_Salute]

Bump.

[Joe Brower]

Aye. But send them the link so they can see everyone's comments. I'm sure it will please them.

Stay safe up there in Marxachusetts! $;-)

[JLAGRAYFOX]

You are in for a surprise this November! GW Bush will get 15% of the Black vote, 40% of the Jewish vote and 45% of the Hispanic vote. And.....in getting those numbers the election outcome will be: GW Bush: 57%, John Kerry: 40%, Ralph Nader: 3%! Bank on it!

[ought-six]

"It's hilarious when I hear a black person complaining that the Democrats are taking the black vote for granted. No voting block in the history of planet earth has so consistently demonstrated the rightfulness of being taken for granted."

It's one of the greatest mysteries of the modern age. I've never understood why blacks so slavishly (sorry, but that's the most appropriate term in this instance) follow the Democratic parade, when the Democratic Party has from its very inception treated blacks as chumps.

[JulieRNR21]

It has been read by the author before various groups in Florida & DC. Also it was printed in a local Sarasota newspaper owned by Black Republicans.

And it has been widely distributed in emails.

I offered to post it on FR to help educate more people on the true history of the Democrats & the Black Community.

[swheats]

A real Black History lesson. Ya don't hear any of this during Black History 'week'.

Thanks for posting and kudos to the author for a job well done.

[arthurus]

Unfortunately it starts off wrong. The first boatload were not slaves. They were indentured servants who worked themselves out of their servitude or died before they lasted that long. Slavery or indenture are not much different in the period of the indenture but that one ends. Slavery does not and is inherited.

[bad company]

Twenty dollars says that GWB gets more of the black vote than Reagan did.

[Skooz]

You are in for a surprise this November!

I sincerely hope so.

[lilylangtree]

Wonder what the Congressional Black Caucus has to say since they're just love demoncRATS? For that matter, what does ole Jesse "Shakedown" Jackson, Al Sharpton and Louis Farrakhan have to say since they're black American demoncRATS?

[JulieRNR21]

You are in for a surprise this November! GW Bush will get 15% of the Black vote, 40% of the Jewish vote and 45% of the Hispanic vote. And.....in getting those numbers the election outcome will be: GW Bush: 57%, John Kerry: 40%, Ralph Nader: 3%! Bank on it!

Love your optimism...I pray your predictions come true!

I'm saving your post to read on November 3, 2004.

[snopercod]

Notice how the words "terrorist" and "terrorism" are creeping into every aspect of life - even retroactively?

[JulieRNR21]

Have already sent them a link.....BTW That's a good description of my temporary location.

[Eagle of Liberty]

I say we give em the remuneration, call it even and move on.

[Jaded]

I can't wait to hear the reply either but I won't hold my breath. While we are anxiously waiting for the well measured response of the left, we should turn off all devices that make any noise whatsoever lest we miss the sound of the DNC's reply.