Why the democrats dominate the African-American votes

Not only did the Republican Party fight to abolish Slavery, but the Republican Party led the fight for Civil Rights. It was Dimocrats (mainly Southern Dimocrats) that voted against it!

The reason that the Black Community abandoned the Party that has done so much for them is simple. A large portion of the Black Community have their hand out, and those individuals know that the Dimocrats will put something in their open hand. In other words- it's a payoff!!

Bump for later!

I am still trying to figure why my neighbor who hate s all the PC crap homosexual agenda crap etc etc still votes democrat. Can't talk to the boob. He was born a democrat and will die one

"He was born a democrat and will die one"

That explains it. It's a birth defect!!

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Special Report

AFRICAN-AMERICANS & ELECTION 2000

By David Barton

Vice Chairman, Republican Party of Texas

In 1911, President Woodrow Wilson wisely observed:

“A nation which does not remember what it was yesterday, does not know what it is today, nor what it is

trying to do. We are trying to do a futile thing if we do not know where we came from or what we have

been about.i

This is still true today, especially concerning African-American history. Since February is celebrated

nationally as Black History Month, and since four specific historical inaccuracies related to blacks and

politics were prominent throughout Election 2000, this newsletter will review the history of African-

American involvement in the political process.

Democrats, Republicans, & Blacks

One of the more surprising statistics of Presidential Election 2000 was the cohesiveness of the African-

American vote: blacks supported Democrats with a percentage higher than any other voting block. For

example, among traditional Democratic constituencies, union members voted for Democrats by a margin of

62 to 34 percent, and homosexuals by a margin of 70 to 25 percent, but African-Americans voted for

Democrats by a margin of 90 to 9 percent.ii Judging by such results, one could easily assume that blacks

have a long tradition of support for Democrats. Such, however, is not the case.

Historically speaking, political rights were largely unknown for blacks in America until after the Civil War.

Slavery had been introduced into America by the Dutch in 1619 and subsequently enforced upon the

Colonies by British authorities prior to the American Revolution. The American Revolution marked the

first change in the political rights of African-Americans, and many black patriots fought for and achieved

their freedom while fighting for the Colonies during the American Revolution.

Although the attitude toward the century-and-a-half institution of slavery began to change during the

Revolution (with over half the States abolishing slavery), emancipation still was not available to most

blacks in Southern States, even though Free Blacks (as opposed to Slave Blacks) in Southern States did

begin to taste some political freedoms not available to them before the Revolution. For example, in

Southern States, many Free Blacks gained the right to vote, saw educational opportunities opened to them,

and were largely treated the same as whites under the criminal codesiii – franchises not available to Slave

Blacks.

The opposition to slavery that first emerged during the American Revolution continued to grow following

the Revolution. The pulpit grew louder in its denunciation of slavery, led especially by Quakers,

Presbyterians, Congregationalists, Unitarians, and Methodists, as well as by prominent political leaders like

John Quincy Adams and Daniel Webster. In fact, many Founding Fathers who advocated the abolition of

slavery in the 1770s and 1780s were still pursuing that goal half-a-century later.

One such Founder was Rufus King, a signer of the Constitution from Massachusetts. In 1785, King

persuaded the Continental Congress to prohibit slavery in all American-held territories, and in 1789, as a

member of the first federal Congress, he obtained passage of a measure to prohibit slavery in federally-held

territories. Due to these efforts, Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Michigan, and Iowa were all

admitted as free rather than slave States.iv

However, in 1819, the Missouri Compromise was introduced in Congress to alter those 1789 prohibitions.

Under that plan, States would be admitted to the Union in pairs – six slave States with six free States. King,

still a member of Congress, vigorously opposed the modification of his original plan and fought the

admission of any federal territories as slave States.v Other Founders still alive at that time expressed similar

opposition to the Missouri plan.

For example, Elias Boudinot – a president of Congress during the Revolution and, in 1789 as a member of

Congress, a supporter of the ban on slavery in federal territories and all new States – warned that if the

Missouri Compromise passed, “there is an end to the happiness of the United States.”vi A frail John Adams

worried that lifting the slavery prohibition would destroy America;vii and an elderly Jefferson, then living in

political retirement, was appalled at the proposal, declaring:

I had for a long time ceased to read newspapers or pay any attention to public affairs, confident they were

in good hands. . . . But this momentous question, like a fire-bell in the night, awakened and filled me with

terror. I considered it at once as the knell [announcement of death] of the Unionviii. . . . In the gloomiest

moment of the Revolutionary War, I never had any apprehensions equal to what I feel from this source.ix

Notwithstanding this opposition, and because so many of the other Founders who opposed slavery had by

then died (e.g., Benjamin Franklin, Benjamin Rush, William Livingston, John Hancock, Samuel Adams,

James Wilson, etc.), the Missouri Compromise passed.

The issue of slavery became a bright line of demarcation in America, with the abolition movement being

countered with equally staunch opposition from the supporters of slavery. Not surprisingly, political

movements formed reflecting the opposing views, with measures like the Fugitive Slave Law (allowing

slaves who escaped to free States to be brought back into slavery), the Lecompton Constitution (written by

pro-slavery forces in Kansas), and the Dred Scott decision (declaring that blacks were property and that

Congress could not restrict the spread of slavery) galvanizing the differences between the movements.

Following a vote in Congress to extend slavery into the Northwestern Territory in May, 1854, twenty

House Members coalesced themselves into a group they titled “The Republican Party.”x Its declared

purpose was to support the original anti-slavery principles of the federal government. The first Republican

Platform (1856) therefore declared:

Resolved. That with our Republican fathers, we hold it to be a self-evident truth that all men are endowed

with the inalienable right of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. . . . That, as our Republican fathers,

when they had abolished slavery in all our national territory, ordained that no person shall be deprived of

life, liberty, or property, without due process of law, it becomes our duty to maintain this provision of the

Constitution against all attempts to violate it for the purpose of establishing slavery.xi

(Significantly, every one of the nine planks in the original 1856 Republican Platform condemned slavery or

focused on securing equal civil rights for all.)

Offering Col. John C. Fremont as its first candidate for President, the anti-slavery Republican Fremont lost

to pro-slavery Democrat James Buchanan. Two years later, in 1858, Republican Abraham Lincoln faced

Democrat Stephen Douglas in a race for U.S. Senate in Illinois. That campaign became famous for the

Lincoln-Douglas debates, with Democrat Stephen Douglas defending slavery and Republican Abraham

Lincoln opposing it. Although Lincoln lost that senatorial election, two years later in 1860, he won the

presidency against Douglas, and for the first time Republicans became the prominent party in Congress.

Under Lincoln’s leadership, the Republican vision of equality moved forward with the Emancipation

Proclamation of 1863, followed by subsequent civil rights bills passed by the Republicans in Congress.

The Republican Platform of 1864 on which Lincoln was re-elected continued its original opposition to

slavery, even advocating a constitutional amendment to abolish that evil:

Resolved, that as slavery was the cause and now constitutes the strength of this rebellion, and as it must be

always and everywhere hostile to the principles of republican government, justice and the national safety

demand its utter and complete extirpation from the soil of the Republic, and that we uphold and maintain

the acts and proclamations by which the government, in its own defense, has aimed a death-blow at this

gigantic evil. We are in favor, furthermore, of such an amendment to the Constitution, to be made by the

people in conformity with its provisions, as shall terminate and forever prohibit the existence of slavery

within the limits of the jurisdiction of the United States.xii

That proposed amendment became reality when, as the Civil War was drawing to a close in 1865, the

Republicans enacted the 13th Amendment abolishing slavery. However, because Southern Democrats

sought to evade the civil rights guarantees intended by the 13th Amendment, Republicans subsequently

passed the 14th and 15th Amendments guaranteeing civil rights and securing voting rights for all former

slaves.

African-Americans promptly joined themselves to the Republican Party that had secured their freedom, for

not only had Republicans fought for the rights of blacks against Democrats but Republicans also offered

blacks political opportunities never before available to them. In fact, so strong was the black affiliation with

Republicans, that in many of the Southern States following the Civil War, the State Congresses were

dominated not only by Republicans but by black Republicans. And numbers of black Republicans were

elected to Congress. For example:

In 1869, Hiram Rhodes Revels (1827-1901) from Mississippi became the first black in Congress, holding

the position of U.S. Senator, being elected as a Republican to fill the Senate seat previously held by

Confederate President Jefferson Davis. Revels later served as the Secretary of State of Mississippi. He was

an ordained minister, serving both as a pastor and as a chaplain during the Civil War.xiii

In 1869, Republican Joseph H. Rainey (1832-1887) from South Carolina became the first black member of

the U.S. House of Representatives.xiv

In 1870, Jefferson Franklin Long (1836-1901) from Georgia was elected to Congress and was also a

delegate to the Republican National Convention of 1880.xv

In 1871, John Mercer Langston (1829-1897) of Virginia was appointed by Republican President U. S.

Grant as a member of the Board of Health of D.C., and in 1876, he was appointed by Republican President

Rutherford B. Hayes as U.S. Minister and Consul-General to Haiti. Langston also was a delegate to the

Republican National Conventions of 1876 and 1890, and was elected to Congress in 1890.xvi

In 1873, Robert Smalls (1839-1915) of South Carolina was elected to Congress, having previously served

as a Republican member of the South Carolina House and Senate.xvii

In 1871, Robert Brown Elliott (1842-1884) was elected to the U.S. House after having served as Speaker of

the House in South Carolina. Shortly after his election, Elliot faced off in a debate over a civil rights bill

against three pro-slavery Democrats: Alexander Hamilton Stephens of Georgia (the Vice-President of the

Confederacy elected as a Democrat to Congress after the Civil War), James Beck of Kentucky (elected in

1867), and John Thomas Harris of Virginia (elected in 1871).xviii Following an attack by those three

Democrats against the civil rights bill, the Republican Elliot rose and responded:

Mr. Speaker . . . it is a matter of regret to me that it is necessary at this day that I should rise in the presence

of an American Congress to advocate a bill which simply asserts rights and equal privileges for all classes

of American citizens. I regret, sir, that the dark hue of my skin may lend a color to the imputation that I am

controlled by motives personal to myself in my advocacy of this great measure of natural justice. Sir, the

motive that impels me is restricted by no such narrow boundary but is as broad as the Constitution.xix

Elliot then went on to recount how African-Americans had fought for America during the Revolution,

during the War of 1812, and during the recent Civil War. He then concluded with this stiff rebuke against

the Democrat Stephens:

He [Stephens] offers his government, which he has done his utmost to destroy, a very poor return for its

magnanimous treatment, to come here to seek to continue, by the assertion of doctrines obnoxious to the

true principles of our government, the burdens and oppressions which rest upon five millions of his

countrymen [slaves] who never failed to lift their earnest prayers for the success of this government when

the gentleman [Stephens] was asking to break up the Union of these States and to blot the American

Republic from the galaxy of nations.xx

The fact that, Elliot, a black, was such an accomplished and effective orator incensed the Democrats. As the

American Methodist Episcopal Church Review reported:

Mr. Beck of Kentucky, and other Democratic members of the House who had felt the force of Mr. Elliott’s

rhetoric to their discomfiture, could not deny the merit of his speeches, so they denied his authorship of

them. . . . The charge of non-authorship was made by Democrats upon the general principle that the Negro,

of himself, could accomplish nothing of literary excellence.xxi

The Review also described Elliot’s work among recently-freed slaves:

From county to county he traveled, teaching them the first lessons in self-government. They sat as children

at his feet and learned from his lips the principles and deeds of the Republican party which had liberated

them and their children from cruel bondage and which was now to give them that silent but potent motive

power: the ballot – the safeguard and bulwark of American freedom. . . . Thus early he won for himself

their confidence, and for the Republican party [their] love and devotion.xxii

There were many other notable black Republicans, including John Roy Lynch (1847-1939) of Mississippi.

In 1873, Lynch was elected to Congress and was also a delegate to the Republican National Conventions of

1872, 1884, 1888, 1892, and 1900. In fact, Lynch presided over the 1884 National Republican Convention

in Chicago. (Interestingly, African-American Sen. Edward Brooke presided over the National Republican

Convention in 1968, as did African-American Congressman J.C. Watts, Jr. in 2000. While three African-

Americans have presided over Republican National Conventions, only one African-American, Yvonne

Brathwaite Burke in 1972, has made it as high as Vice-Chair – not even Co-Chair – of a Democratic

National Convention.) In 1889, Republican President Benjamin Harrison appointed Lynch as Auditor of the

Treasury for the Navy Department, and in 1901, Republican President William McKinley appointed him

Army Paymaster.xxiii

In 1875, Blanche Kelso Bruce (1841-1898) of Mississippi was elected to the U.S. Senate – the first black to

serve a full term in the Senate. In 1881, he was appointed by Republican President James A. Garfield as

Registrar of the U.S. Treasury.xxiv

In 1875, Charles Edmund Nash (1844-1913) of Louisiana was elected to Congress – the first African-

American to represent Louisiana in Congress.xxv

In 1889, Henry Plummer Cheatham (1857-1935) of North Carolina was elected to Congress and also was a

delegate to the Republican National Conventions of 1892 and 1900.xxvi

In 1890, Thomas Ezekiel Miller (1849-1938) of South Carolina was elected to Congress, having previously

served in the State House and Senate.xxvii

In 1893, George Washington Murray (1853-1926) of South Carolina was elected to Congress and also was

a delegate to several Republican National Conventions.xxviii

In 1966, Republican Edward William Brooke III (1919- ) of Massachusetts became the first black to be

elected to the U.S. Senate after the 17th Amendment (providing for the direct election of Senators rather

than their appointment by State legislatures), thus making him the first black ever elected to the Senate by

popular vote.xxix

There are many more black Republican officeholders worthy of mention, one of whom is the Hon.

Pinckney Benton Stuart Pinchback who, in 1872, served as Governor of Louisiana, becoming the first black

Governor of any State.xxx Additionally, the first black presidential electors were Republicans and included

Robert Meacham, B.F. Randolph, Stephen Swails, and Alonzo Ransier. In fact, black Republican James H.

Harris was part of the committee which in 1868 informed U.S. Grant of his nomination for President.xxxi

There are many other examples of how blacks achieved numerous political firsts within the Republican

Party; and so great were the gains of blacks in the Republican Party that in 1866, the Ku Klux Klan was

formed to battle both Republicans and blacks with the declared purpose of breaking down the Republican

government and paving the way for Democrats to regain control in the elections.xxxii As a result, blacks

were terrorized by murders and public floggings (relief was granted only if blacks promised not to vote for

Republican tickets, and violations of this oath were punished by death), and Republican officials were

attacked both at home and at the office. In fact, in 1866, Democrats, in conjunction with the mayor and the

city police, attacked a Republican Convention of blacks and whites in New Orleans where they killed 40

and wounded 150.xxxiii

In historical retrospect, the story of the Republican Party is largely of their opposition to slavery and racism

while that of the Democratic Party is largely of their support for it. Similarly, African Americans made

their most significant political and civil rights progress while affiliated with the Republican Party.

In fact, in the history of Congress, 105 black Americans have been elected – 101 to the House and 4 to the

Senate; and of the 4 blacks elected to the Senate, 3 have been Republicans (the lone Democrat was Carol

Mosley-Braun, elected in 1992 and defeated in 1998). And even today in 2001, there are 39 black Members

of Congress: one Republican and thirty-eight Democrats. The black Republican (one of 271 combined

Republicans in the House and the Senate) was elected by his Republican peers to a position of Republican

leadership in this Congress; but of the thirty-eight black Democrats (from among the 262 combined

Democrats in the House and the Senate), none was elected by his Democratic peers to any leadership

position.xxxiv

Al Gore, George Bush, and the Three-Fifths Clause

Judicial appointments were an issue during Presidential Campaign 2000. Bush promised to appoint “strict

constructionists” who would support the wording of the Constitution rather than rewrite it, while Gore

promised to appoint judges who viewed the Constitution as a living, organic document, reflecting the

philosophy set forth by Supreme Court Chief-Justice Charles Evans Hughes who declared, “We are under a

Constitution, but the Constitution is what the judges say it is.”xxxv

Gore, trying to capitalize on the differences in their philosophies, and exploiting America’s historical

illiteracy, repeatedly warned black voters:

When my opponent, Governor Bush, says he’ll appoint strict constructionists to the Supreme Count, I often

think of the strictly constructed meaning that was applied when the Constitution was written – how some

people (slaves) were considered three-fifths of a human being.xxxvi

According to Gore, Bush apparently would appoint racist Justices to the Supreme Court. This is based on

Gore’s belief that the three-fifths clause of the Constitution was a pro-slavery provision – a provision

declaring blacks to be only three-fifths of a person. Significantly, however, the three-fifths clause was not a

pro-slavery clause, and it did not relate to human worth; rather, it was an anti-slavery apportionment

provision designed to limit pro-slavery Southern representation in Congress.

The Constitution allowed one Representative to Congress for each 30,000 inhabitants in a State. Since

slaves accounted for more than half the population in some Southern States, slave-owners in the South

therefore wanted to count slaves as if they were free inhabitants, thus potentially doubling the number of

their pro-slavery representatives to Congress. The abolitionists from the North strenuously objected to

counting the slaves, knowing that the fewer the pro-slavery representatives in Congress, the sooner slavery

could be eradicated.

Interestingly, the anti-slavery Founding Fathers, in debating this representation question, actually used

many of the South’s own arguments against them. One such example was that of William Paterson of New

Jersey, a signer of the Constitution later appointed to the U.S. Supreme Court by President George

Washington. Adopting the Southern arguments that slaves were property, Paterson argued that since

“Negro slaves. . . . are no free agents, have no personal liberty, no faculty of acquiring property, but on the

contrary, are themselves property, and like other property, entirely at the will of the master,” then those

slaves should not be used to calculate representation to Congress because, according to “the true principles

of representation,” legislative assemblies were the result of citizens sending representatives as their

“substitutes.”xxxvii Since slaves could not attend a meeting of citizens or send a substitute in their stead, they

therefore should not be used to allow slave-owners to gain more representatives to Congress.

Further exploiting the absurdity of the Southern reasoning, other anti-slavery Founders argued that if slaves

were nothing more than property but still were to be counted for the purpose of congressional

representation, then livestock in the North should also be included as the basis of calculating Northern

representation. For example, according to the records of the Constitutional Convention:

Mr. [Elbridge] Gerry [signer of the Declaration from Massachusetts] thought property not the rule of

representation. Why then should the blacks, who were property in the South, be in the rule of representation

more than the cattle and horses of the North?xxxviii

James Wilson of Pennsylvania, a signer both of the Declaration and the Constitution, agreed:

Are they [slaves] admitted as citizens? Then why are they not admitted on an equality with white citizens?

Are they [slaves] admitted as property? Then why is not other property admitted into computation?xxxix

The anti-slavery leaders fully wanted Free Blacks to be counted, but not slaves, since counting slaves

would increase the influence of slave-owners. Furthermore, Benjamin Rush of Pennsylvania, a signer of the

Declaration of Independence and a co-founder with Benjamin Franklin of America’s first abolition society,

argued that if only Free Blacks were counted, it would have the “excellent effect of inducing the colonies to

discourage slavery and to encourage the increase of their free inhabitants.”xl

When the issue finally came to a vote at the Constitutional Convention, slave-owners proposed that slaves

be counted as full persons for purposes of representation. The motion lost, with only the most strident

slave-owning States supporting the measure.xli With it clear that slaves would not be used as the means of

doubling Southern representation, Benjamin Harrison, a slave-owner in Virginia, proposed a compromise,

suggesting that two slaves be counted as one freeman.xlii The slave States, however, rejected this proposal,

wanting all slaves fully counted.xliii The final compromise was that only sixty percent – that is, three-fifths –

of slaves would be counted to calculate the number of Southern representatives to Congress.xliv

Yet, even though this measure reduced the number of slave-holding representatives to Congress, it was still

seen as unfair by many in the North. In fact, the Massachusetts legislature passed a resolution objecting to

the three-fifths clause because, in slave-holding States, “a planter possessing fifty slaves may be considered

as having thirty votes, while a farmer of Massachusetts, having equal or greater property, is confined to a

single vote.”xlv Clearly, the three-fifths clause was only a ratio used to calculate the amount of

representation and had nothing to do with the worth of any individual.

Based, therefore, on the self-evident historical records, two prominent professors summarize the meaning

of the three-fifths clause:

[T]he Constitution allowed Southern States to count three-fifths of their slaves toward the population that

would determine numbers of representatives in the federal legislature. This clause is often singled out today

as a sign of black dehumanization: they are only three-fifths human. But the provision applied to slaves, not

blacks. That meant that free blacks – and there were many, North as well as South – counted the same as

whites. More important, the fact that slaves were counted at all was a concession to slave owners.

Southerners would have been glad to count their slaves as whole persons. It was the Northerners who did

not want them counted, for why should the South be rewarded with more representatives, the more slaves

they held? Thomas West, Professor of Politicsxlvi

It was slavery’s opponents who succeeded in restricting the political power of the South by allowing them

to count only three-fifths of their slave population in determining the number of congressional

representatives. The three-fifths of a vote provision applied only to slaves, not to free blacks in either the

North or South. Walter Williams, African-American Professorxlvii

Many of today’s leaders, both black and white, tend to misrepresent the meaning of the three-fifths clause.

Al Gore’s invoking the three-fifths clause against George Bush is proof of this fact, and even Jesse Jackson

makes the same uninformed claim. In the Shadow Convention of Los Angeles in August, 2000, Jackson

complained: “There was a lot of talk a few weeks ago [at the Republican National Convention in

Philadelphia] about the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia. In that Constitution. . . . African-

Americans were considered three-fifths of a human being.”xlviii

Those who make this claim would profit from a study of Frederick Douglass, the great black leader and

abolitionist. Douglass said that after his escape from slavery, he initially believed (like Gore and Jackson)

that the Constitution was pro-slavery. As he explained:

Brought directly, when I escaped from slavery, into contact with a class of abolitionists regarding the

Constitution as a slaveholding instrument . . . it is not strange that I assumed the Constitution to be just

what their interpretation made it.xlix

However, when Douglass became a writer and a spokesman for the abolition movement, he found that

accuracy and truth were important, and so, as he explained:

My new circumstances compelled me to re-think the whole subject, and to study, with some care. . . . By

such a course of thought and reading, I was conducted to the conclusion that the Constitution of the United

Statesl . . . not only contained no guarantees in favor of slavery, but, on the contrary, was in its letter and

spirit an anti-slavery instrument.li

How could Douglass say this? Had he not read the three-fifths clause? Yes, he had; and based on his own

study of the facts, Douglass learned to praise the three-fifths clause as an anti-slavery provision. Gore,

Jackson, and others could learn an accurate view of history and the Constitution from the example of great

black leaders like Frederick Douglass!

A

L GORE, GEORGE BUSH, AND THE CIVIL RIGHTS AND VOTING RIGHTS ACTS OF THE

1960S

When blacks were interviewed following Election 2000, many explained that they had supported Gore for

fear that if Bush were elected President, he would take away the right of blacks to vote – a charge

circulated by Gore supporters. The basis for this charge is the fact that the Voting Rights Act of 1965 will

be up for renewal under the next President, and – according to current folklore – Republicans are racists

who oppose civil rights; why – as the argument goes – they even opposed the Civil Rights and Voting

Rights Acts of the 1960s and certainly would continue to oppose them today! Actually, historical facts

prove just the opposite.

The first civil rights act was that of 1866, passed by Republicans in Congress, making it illegal to deprive a

person of civil rights because of race, color, or previous servitude. Subsequent civil rights laws were passed

by Republicans in 1870, 1871, and 1875 to allow the national government in Washington, D.C. to protect

black Americans from white-dominated Democrat Southern State governments. However, it was nearly a

century later before similar additional civil rights laws were passed.

Why the delay? As explained by Professor Robert D. Lovey, author of A Brief History of Civil Rights in

the United States of America, “the nationalization of black civil rights came to a complete end in 1892

when the Democrats gained control of the presidency and both houses of Congress for the first time since

the Civil War. By 1894, this Democratic Congress had succeeded in repealing most of the civil rights laws

that had been enacted during the post-Civil War period, most importantly the provisions that had to do with

voting rights. This wholesale removal of protections left the black citizen in the South almost completely at

the mercy of Southern State governments, and the result was a rash of State laws protecting the right of

white citizens to segregate themselves from black citizens in many aspects of social and political life.”lii

African-Americans, therefore, being the victims of Democratic-sponsored racism and segregation,

continued their loyalty to Republicans well into the 20th century. In fact, in the 1932 presidential election,

incumbent Republican President Herbert Hoover received more than three-fourths of the black vote over

his Democratic challenger Franklin D. Roosevelt.

Roosevelt, however, won the election; but because civil rights bills were widely opposed by Southern

Democrats, and because Southern Democrats had been a key constituency in his victories, Roosevelt chose

not to introduce civil rights bills. He did use executive orders to help further some civil rights, and he also

established a Civil Rights Section in the Justice Department; he even directed much of the spending of the

“New Deal” programs toward blacks. As a result, black voters slowly began to switch from the

Republicans to the Democrats. As one civil rights historian explains, “In the years following the New Deal,

the Democratic Party found it best to win black votes with economic benefits rather than by advancing the

cause of black civil rights.”liii

Following President Roosevelt, Democrat President Harry S. Truman did propose a civil rights bill, but it

was not passed; and its introduction effectively ruined Truman’s relationship with Southern Democrats in

Congress.

Even though Republican President Dwight D. Eisenhower knew that it would be difficult to change the

Southern Democrat’s belief in racial segregation, he determined to eliminate racial discrimination in all

areas under his authority. He therefore issued executive orders halting segregation practices in the District

of Columbia, in the military, and in the federal bureaucracy. Furthermore, Eisenhower was the first

president to appoint a black, Frederic Morrow, to an executive position on the White House staff.

Eisenhower consequently received significant support from black voters in his reelection to the presidency

in 1956. In 1960, he introduced a civil rights bill, but it was promptly blocked by the Democratic Chairman

of the Senate Judiciary Committee. Although a Republican Senator and the Republican Attorney General

proposed compromise language, it, too, was rejected by the Democrats.liv

When Democratic President John F. Kennedy was elected in 1960, he was less willing than Eisenhower to

utilize executive orders to promote civil rights. In fact, Kennedy delayed for more than a year the signing of

an executive order to integrate public housing. But following the violent racial discord in Birmingham in

1963, Kennedy finally sent a major civil rights bill to Congress and then aggressively worked for its

passage, but was assassinated before he could see its success. To achieve passage of the measure, Democrat

successor Lyndon Johnson resurrected the compromise language proposed by Republicans under

Eisenhower in 1960, thus breaking a Southern Democratic filibuster of the civil rights bill and allowing

Johnson to sign into law the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965.lv

While these two important civil rights acts were signed into law under a Democratic President, it was the

Republicans in Congress who made possible the passage of these Acts, for even though the Democrats

controlled both Houses by wide margins, they still could not garner enough of their own votes to pass the

bills. In fact, in the House, only 61% of the Democrats voted for the Civil Rights Act (152 for, 96 against)

while 80% of Republicans voted for it (138 for, 38 against).lvi In the Senate, only 69% of Democrats voted

for the Act (46 for, 21 against) while 82% of Republicans did (27 for, 6 against).lvii The passage of the Civil

Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965 would not have been possible without the strong,

cohesive support of the Republicans. In fact, all Southern Democrats voted against the Civil Rights Act,

including Sen. Al Gore, Sr., who voted with the Southern Democrats against civil rights whenever the

occasion arose.lviii

One other important civil rights note is that after the Democrats regained control of the federal and of many

State governments in the 1880s and 1890s, they instituted what became known as “white primaries” to keep

blacks from being placed on the ballot.lix Democrats also developed poll taxes to keep blacks from voting

because, according to prominent Democrat leader A.W. Terrell, the 15th Amendment guaranteeing black

voting rights was “the political blunder of the century.”lx

As confirmed by Encyclopaedia Britannica, “the Democrats amended their State constitutions or drafted

new ones to include various disfranchising devices. When payment of the poll tax was made a prerequisite

to voting, impoverished blacks and often poor whites, unable to afford the tax, were denied the right to

vote.”lxi How effective were the Democratic poll taxes in keeping blacks from voting? In Texas alone,

100,000 blacks had voted before the poll tax was instituted but only 5,000 afterwards.lxii

While an attempt was made in 1943 in Congress to repeal the poll tax instituted by Southern Democrats,

the repeal failed, with the floor of Congress becoming the site of ugly racist rhetoric.lxiii It was not until

1966 that the poll tax was ended, and it had only been in 1944 that the “white primaries” had finally ceased.

Significantly, it was not Democrats, but the Republicans, who had long championed the repeal of the poll

tax. In fact, as early as 1896, the Republican platform declared:

We demand that every citizen of the United States shall be allowed to cast one free and unrestricted ballot,

and that such ballot shall be counted and returned as cast.lxiv

Clearly, then, the charge that Republicans in general, and George Bush in particular, would not extend the

Voting Rights Act of 1965 is completely without any factual basis and relies solely on historical

revisionism.

Yet, despite the unequivocal (but often unknown) records of history, today’s blacks often hold an opposite

view. As African-American professor Ronald Walters explains in Black Oklahoma Today:

[Blacks] vote their interests and when it appears that a person or party doesn’t particularly like them, they

will take their business elsewhere. The “elsewhere” for blacks has generally been with Democrats, largely

because of the feeling that, even though Democrats have also done them wrong, they feel that Democrats

are less prone to be racist than Republicans.lxv

However, as black media personality R.D. Davis of Alabama correctly observes, “History tends to

unilaterally and falsely depict Republicans as racists when Southern Democrats truly deserved this title.”lxvi

Family Values, Blacks, and Party Politics

The history of blacks in the American political process shows that blacks were originally drawn to the

Republican Party for its values and made their greatest strides in civil rights and elected representation

under the Republican Party, but by economic allurements begun under President Roosevelt, were finally

enticed to join the Democratic Party. Notwithstanding their change in party affiliation, the current values of

African-Americans not only are generally more conservative than those of whites but are still best

represented by the Republican rather than the Democratic Party. For example, recent polls demonstrate that

blacks:

� Oppose the legalization of marijuana by a margin of 75% to 21% (while whites oppose it by a margin

of 73% to 24%);

� Support English as the official language by 84% to 15% (whites by 82% to 16%);

� Support a constitutional amendment to return prayer to schools by 80% to 17% (whites 71% to 26%);

� Oppose same-sex marriages by 71% to 23% (whites 66% to 29%);

� Support educational choice by 73% to 24% (whites 57% to 39%);

� Support charitable choice by 74% to 24% (whites 51% to 46%); and

� Support a flat tax by 51% to 24% (whites 52% to 44%).lxvii

Additionally, blacks:

� Support the death penalty by 64% to 31% and

� Support a balanced budget amendment to the Constitution by 75% to 24%.lxviii

Ironically, the Democratic Party – as demonstrated both by its platform and by its voting record in

Congress – not only opposes school prayer, educational choice, a flat tax, charitable choice, and a balanced

budget amendment to the Constitution but also supports same-sex marriages – all positions opposite to

those held by most blacks.

While African-Americans currently have more in common with Republicans than with Democrats, it has

been a lack of knowledge of the political history of African-Americans that has allowed the current

fallacious misportrayals to be accepted – a fact made clear during Presidential Election 2000.

Summary

In short, an historical review of black involvement in the political process demonstrates that: (1) African-

Americans made their greatest political advancements in the Republican Party (in fact, while Democrats

have talked the talk, Republicans have walked the walk); (2) the three-fifths clause was not a racist, proslavery

provision in the Constitution but rather was an abolition part of the Constitution; (3) the Civil

Rights and Voting Rights Acts of the 1960s were the product of Republicans, not Democrats, and therefore

were not in danger from Republicans in this election; and (4) black values generally continue to be

conservative and are best reflected by the values expressed in the Republican rather than the Democratic

platform.

Even though it was Democrats who actually committed the racial injustices of which they accuse

Republicans, many today believe just the opposite, thus affirming a statement attributed to William James

(the father of modern psychology):

There is nothing so absurd but if you repeat it often enough, people will believe it.

Now, more than ever, President Woodrow Wilson’s declaration is true:

A nation which does not remember what it was yesterday, does not know what it is today, nor what it is

trying to do. We are trying to do a futile thing if we do not know where we came from or what we have

been about.lxix

R E P U B L I C A N P A R T Y O F T E X A S

Slavery [was] introduced into America by the Dutch in 1619

There's obviously something wrong with this report. Everyone knows that slavery was introduced into America by Newt Gingrich and the Republicans in 1994.

</sarcasm>

One big bump for David Barton, the Texas GOP, and Lincoln republicanism!

Richard F.

"I believe most of these Souther Democrats eventually became Republicans, most notably Strom Thurmond."

What? That's bullcorn! George Wallace eventually became a Republican? Former Klan recruiter Senator Robert Bird became a Republican? No. Didn't happen that way.

Oh you nailed it. Man did you nail it!

Strom became a republican, Algore Sr. did not though. I can't think of anyone other than Strom that did. Got any others?

Thank you so much for converting it...I despise PDF files and avoid them at all costs, LOL! Maybe the Pubbies ought to condense this some and send out fliers to black communities.

What? That's bullcorn! George Wallace eventually became a Republican? Former Klan recruiter Senator Robert Bird became a Republican? No. Didn't happen that way. .

There were far more of the segregationists who remained Democrats like Al Gore Sr., Lester Maddox, and Clinton's mentor, Wm. Fullbright. Another irony is that they called those old racist creeps "Conservatives"! There was nothing conservative about them. From Russell Long all the way up to Bobby Byrd, they were all feeding big time at Uncle Sam’s pork barrel. They were FDR Democrats who never saw a spending program they didn’t love.

Nixon talked about this a little in RN, the 1960 election of JFK was the first time the majority of black voted dem. Really it all started with FDR, when FDR started mucking with the economy is when the first accusations managed to hit that the GOP was pro-business and anti-worker, especially anti-poor worker (a line they still use today, anybody that's seen MurryMom on a minimum wage thread has seen it). Well the poorest of your poor workers are black, have been for a long time. That was the foundation of taking the black vote from the GOP. It took a long time for them to build it up but that's what happened. And as long as they own the rhetoric we'll always be in trouble when it comes to the poor and/ or blacks. The facts mean nothing, politics is about rhetoric.

This looks interesting. I'm printing it out to read while dinner is cooking. Thanks!

Any thoughts to add?

Good article, but I just wish he hadn't quoted Woodrow Wilson who was a Southern Democrat segregationist himself. One of the first acts of the Wilson administration was to order Federal offices in DC to provide segregated cafeterias and wash rooms and such. They had never been segregated before his administration.

RIGHT ON TARGET!The democraps have had decades to use that wonderous and massive VOTE BUYING scheme known as WELFARE!

A large portion of the Black Community have their hand out, and those individuals know that the Dimocrats will put something in their open hand. In other words- it's a payoff!!

Bingo! This is precisely the reason. Black Americans have been sold the notion that nothing good is ever going to happen to them unless the government does it. They've literally becomes wards of the state. So, whomever promotes expansion of the state and state services, will get their support. This "slavish" support of the state and the statist party is literally a "plantation mentality" that is truly offensive and demeaning, considering the history of blacks in this nation.

The support for slavery reparations is a spinoff from this plantation mentality. Anyone who thinks that the US government, or the American people owe the descendents of slaves anything should go and read Lincoln's second inaugural address. They want money, but the freedom of slaves was paid for in the blood of people from both the north and south. 350,000 union soldiers alone gave their lives for Union and for the end of slavery -- the losses touched nearly every family in the nation. Why shouldn't white families ask for reparations from blacks for the loss of family members in the struggle which set the slaves free?

The kind of politics which the Democrat Party practices -- one that creates racial divisions, class envy, and dependence -- is criminal in my opinion. Thank God that many African Americans are freeing themselves from this plantation mentality, and it's no coincidence that these "emancipated blacks" are more aligned with the Republican Party.