Posted on 12/22/2002 11:07:58 PM PST by Kay Soze
What Goes Around Comes Around: Democrats and Reparations
Does the Democratic Party Owe "Reparations" Too?
Efforts by certain self described civil rights activists to procure monetary payments to persons of certain skin colors in reparation for the wrongs of an institution that ended in America over 130 years ago recently turned its teeth on the private sector as its presumptive payee. Bolstered by calls from racial aggravators for legislation forcing companies to disclose their records involving the institution of slavery prior to 1866, the slavery reparations crowd recently began filing lawsuits seeking monetary reparations for slavery from private companies.
FleetBoston Financial Corp, Aetna Insurance, New York Life Insurance, and CSX Railroad are among the main companies named in these lawsuits as having benefited from slave labor and discrimination. Never mind that profiting from slavery occurred not under CSX, FleetBoston or New York Life, but under the long since deceased operators of their defunct predecessors and acquisitions. But that has not gotten in the way of reparations proponents seeking payments for 150-year-old wrongs for which no living person bears responsibility. Discussions of lawsuits coming to Texas are also underway – a Texas firm, Imperial Sugar, has already been the target of a protest over the issue, though lawsuits have not been filed against them yet. Reparations proponents argue that entities outlive persons. This supposedly makes entities game for reparations requests, be they the federal government or the successors to defunct 19th century companies.
The merits of the lawsuits, or lack thereof, aside, another question deserves to be asked or reparations proponents. Let us suppose, hypothetically of course, that the suits are valid and ask the question: Why did reparations proponents choose New York Life and FleetBoston when they could build their case by suing an entity with far more “deserving” credentials? Why go after companies for the actions of their long gone predecessors when they could just as easily target a living, breathing institution, still in existence today, that committed the wrongs alleged of these companies and more?
A prime answer to this modestly proposed search for a reparations suit target is none other than the Democratic Party, a continuously existing entity dating back to the 1830’s that historically participated in slavery and segregation.
Jesse Jackson recently argued that entities that benefited from slavery and of post-1866 discriminatory practices owed reparations. If those are the criteria, the political entity’s background undeniably establishes that much.
A Slavery Platform: 1828-1866
A brief glimpse at the Democratic Party’s history traces its modern origin to the Jacksonian Democrats during the political career of the party’s first president, Andrew Jackson.
Jackson, a wealthy plantation owner, is often called the founder of the modern Democratic Party. He owned over a hundred thirty slaves at his Hermitage Plantation in Tennessee. By the time of his death, Jackson had amassed over 1,000 acres of plantation land and a cotton gin, all manned by slaves and used to grow cash crops for export. In short, the modern Democratic Party’s founder and first president made his fortunes with slave labor.
Turning to the Democratic Party’s political stances, one finds another embrace of slavery. The very first Democrat Platform, drafted in 1840, spells out this position clearly, going so far as to assert that “all efforts…made to induce congress to interfere with questions of slavery” would “diminish the happiness of the people” of the United States. The 1854 Democrat Platform called for “NON-INTERFERENCE BY CONGRESS WITH SLAVERY IN STATE AND TERRITORY.” The 1860 Democrat platform continued this dubious tradition and pledged that the party would abide by the infamous Dred Scott decision of the Supreme Court from two years earlier.
The Segregated Political Parties: 1866-1964
Democrat participation in the wrongs of racism did not cease in 1866 with the abolition of slavery under the Thirteenth Amendment.
Many of the Democratic Party’s institutions participated in blatant acts of discrimination well into the 20th century. The discriminatory practice of segregation emerged at both official party functions and in the laws enacted with the Democratic Party’s backing.
Bigotry reared its ugly head throughout the Democratic National Convention of 1924 in New York, often called the "Klanbake" convention. Shortly after the convention opened a majority of the Democratic delegates and voted against a platform plank condemning the Ku Klux Klan. The vote incited one of the longest convention fights in American history. The pro-Klan delegates, who held a majority at the convention refused to support New York Governor Al Smith for the presidential nomination because Smith favored an anti-Klan plank.
Though they had a majority thereby blocking Smith, two thirds of the delegates were needed to nominate a candidate. Unable to reach this mark, the pro-Klan majority attempted to bolster their side by holding a 20,000 person KKK rally across the river from the convention on July 4, 1924.
The event was dominated by racist speeches, effigies of Smith, and concluded with a cross burning. Shortly afterwards both Smith and William McAdoo, the candidate favored by the pro-Klan delegates, withdrew from the nomination and the convention chose John Davis, who had not been involved in the controversy.
In another notable incident, an account of the 1928 Democratic National Convention in Houston reported that Black alternate-delegates were separated by a large wire cage-like divider from the rest of the participants. This was the segregationist reality in many Democratic Party factions that would form the backbone of FDR’s liberal “New Deal Coalition” only a few years later.
The Democratic Party of Texas gained particular notoriety for its segregationist political activities. So strong was the Texas Democratic Party’s commitment to maintaining its whites-only primary, it took four direct orders from the United States Supreme Court spanning four decades to remove the racist institution. As a one party state at the time, almost all of Texas’ elections during this era were decided in the Democratic Primary. In order to prevent non-white voters from participating in representative government, the Texas Democratic Party adopted and defended policies designed to make primary elections accessible only to Anglo voters.
Texas Democrats legislated the “white primary” rule into a 1923 statute, which read “in no event shall a negro be eligible to participate in a Democratic party primary election held in the State of Texas.” The Supreme Court overturned the rule four years later with Nixon v. Herndon, prompting the Democratic State Executive Committee to respond by passing its own rule. Their resolution asserted “that all white democrats…and none other, be allowed to participate in the primary elections,” effectively reinstating the “white primary.” The Supreme Court again intervened with Nixon v. Condon in 1932, overturning the rule. Only three weeks later, Texas Democrats acted to reinstate the racist practice at their state convention. Their resolution limited “membership in the Democratic party” to “ all white citizens,” again reinstating their racist ban on black participation. The Democrats maintained this rule until 1944, when the court overturned it yet again in Smith v. Allwright. Democrats responded a fourth time by instituting the “Jaybird” slate system, an attempt to circumvent non-white participation in the primary. Terry v. Adams in 1953 again overturned the Texas Democratic Party’s attempts, leaving them to fall back on other Jim Crow tactics such as the poll tax, which was banned by the 24th Amendment in 1964.
The Era of Byrd and Hollings: 1964-2002
Even to this day, vestiges of the racism practiced by certain leading Democratic Party figures remain. Democrat Senator Fritz Hollings has a history of making derogatory racial slurs against Blacks and Hispanics. House Minority Leader Dick Gephardt was reported by Newsmax.com to have attended meetings with and even solicited the endorsement of a St. Louis area “white rights” organization during his first campaign.
Perhaps the most disturbing case is that of Democrat Senator Robert Byrd, the party’s former Senate Majority Leader and so-called “conscience of the Senate” according to his Democrat colleagues. In his younger days, Byrd joined the Ku Klux Klan, became the rank of “Kleagle” until he quit in 1943, and continued his correspondence with Klan leadership for several years afterwards. But racism didn’t stop there with Byrd.
Though it is often downplayed, much of the liberal stalwart’s political career has been centered around racism. Byrd wrote to the notorious white supremacist Senator Theodore Bilbo, another Democrat, in 1946 announcing that he would rather “die a thousand times” than see desegregation in the U.S. military.
In 1964, Byrd filibustered, along side Senator Al Gore, Sr., for 14 hours against the Civil Rights Act.
Byrd was on the floor ranting against the landmark legislation when Republican Leader Everett Dirksen secured enough votes to invoke cloture and pass the bill.
Modern Democrats would likely answer these facts about their party and its embarrassing racist history by claiming themselves to be different than the Democratic Party of 50, 100, or 150 years ago. Times have changed, they would note, and the Democratic Party has come to support civil rights and even, among some of its officials, slavery reparations.
Some would even try to claim that the racists who dominated their party in the past are Republicans now, though their two main remnants in today’s government, Byrd and Hollings, are both still Democrats. Democrat segregationists like Theodore Bilbo, Orval Faubus, Lester Maddox, and George Wallace never joined the GOP either, for that matter.
But let us assume for this hypothetical argument that the Democratic Party of today is a completely different animal than the Democratic Party that practices and promoted both slavery and segregation through the majority of its history. In that case, these same modern Democrats would likely ask what connection, if any at all, does their modern party have to slavery and the terrible acts of discrimination by other people decades and centuries ago?
The answer? One that is certainly stronger than the connection over which FleetBoston was targeted to pay slavery reparations! FleetBoston is being sued because the founder of a remote defunct predecessor to the company, Providence Bank, was a Rhode Island slave trader circa 1793. If that link is enough to make FleetBoston liable for paying reparations to the descendants of slaves, surely the Democratic Party’s ties to Jackson and other slave owners, which are both stronger and more direct, should theoretically make it liable – at least if for the moment we presume validity among the same arguments being used against the corporations.
And that goes without mentioning that the Democrats opposed slavery's abolition in their platforms, ran countless candidates for office who profited off of slave ownership, and institutionalized segregation in many state Democratic Parties for the century that followed slavery's abolition. Even today, they continue to promote the likes of ex-Klansman Robert Byrd to the highest levels of their leadership! Combined with the Democratic Party’s multi-million dollar financial backing from Hollywood liberals and the left wing special interest crowd, the party’s history makes it a prime candidate for a reparations lawsuit and, in being so, one of the greatest examples of self served irony in the history of American politics. But, as with all things of the political left, an unnamed double standard likely exists to conveniently exempt themselves as the lone exception to their own rule. The Houston Review
People of African heritage find it much easier to believe the lies and distortions, rather than confront the truth.
I fear this logic will persist until the republican party is forced to change it's name or disappear altogether.
Now, THAT is pretty. Pretty, pretty, pretty, pretty, pretty, pretty, pretty, pretty, pretty.
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