Democrats and Glass Houses
By Gregg Bish
December 16, 2002
There is a dirty little secret out there, one that's been around a while, but that no one wants to talk about. The dirty little secret is the reality that Democrats, in particular southern Democrats, have played in racial oppression in America, and what the Republican Party's real role has been over the years. The current brouhaha over Trent Lott's mental vacancy at Strom Thurmond's centenary birthday party is a distortion of reality, one that can't be left unchallenged. The Senator's words and insensitivity to modern sensibilities was inexcusable. The Democrats exploitation of the issue to gain political advantages, and abuse of American blacks, is criminal, however. Possibly the only thing more criminal is the willingness of the media to give Democrats a bye in their distortion of the truth.
There is so much history. It would take several books, packed, to cover everything. But there are certain key events that are watersheds in the advancement of African Americans in black society from a political perspective. It would be a digression to visit the stories of noble black Americans that contested their misery, at the cost of their lives, as profound as these stories are. This, however, is a story of the ascent of the black American, and how that American was helped to rise above misery and deprivation by the white community.
The argument with reality begins before the signing of the Declaration of Independence. Slavery was a legal if immoral institution in the colonies. Several of the founders believed that it should be stricken from our culture. In order to build a solid coalition against the British, however, these individuals found themselves bargaining the slave's position away. The South would not become a part of the United States, or join the coalition, if the institution of slavery was not a part of the fabric of the country. The agricultural south relied on the inexpensive labor provided by indentured servants. Without them, the south would collapse. Slavery was retained. From the beginning, the South identified itself as a slaveholder's community. In comparing the North and the South, the North embodied what have become conservative principles, industry, prosperity, relative equality, and devotion to God. The North was settled in pursuit of religious freedom. The South, founded later, embodied an aristocratic division imported from Europe, transplanted nobility, merchants, and slaves. The South was agricultural. The South was settled to provide expanded resources and markets for the crown.
During the Civil War, the division between North and South was also the division between Democrats and Republicans. Abraham Lincoln, a Republican, signed the Emancipation Proclamation, and contested an unpopular war with the South to bring an end to slavery, and to suppress an uprising that would have perpetuated the institution in a Confederate States of America
In the Dred Scott Supreme Court decision, seven of the nine justices that tried to exempt blacks from citizenship, whether free or slaves, were appointed by pro-slavery Southern Presidents. Andrew Jackson, a Democrat, was one of these. James Polk, a Democrat, was another. During their tenure, the Democrats in the pre-Civil War era effectively loaded the Federal bench with pro-slavery judges.
Prior to the Civil War, the history of the Presidency was a continuous struggle between northern Republicans opposing slavery, and southern Democrats championing it. Notably, in 1836 southern Congressmen passed a "gag rule" providing that the House automatically table petitions against slavery. Former Republican President John Quincy Adams, now a Congressman, tirelessly fought the rule for eight years until finally he obtained its repeal. Later, when the first southern states seceded in 1861, Virginia Democrat Tyler led a compromise movement; failing, he worked to create the Southern Confederacy. He died in 1862, a member of the Confederate House of Representatives. In this time, an aging Adams would defend the slave revolt made famous in the Steven Spielberg movie "Amistad".
Since the Civil War, things have been no different. The second civil war, the Civil Rights Movement, was born in the South for a reason. In the South, home of the Ku Klux Klan and lingering secessionism, could be found the most egregious examples of black oppression. Every imaginable contrivance was tried to continue the status of black Americans as second class citizens. Blacks were forbidden to drink from "white-only" water fountains, or to eat at "white-only restaurants. When violence finally erupted in the fifties and sixties, the historical context was once again southern Democrats opposing equality for blacks, and northern Republicans championing their cause. At Little Rock Arkansas, Democratic governor Orval Faubus contested integration by shutting down ALL of Arkansas' schools, rather than admitting blacks. Republican president Dwight Eisenhower dispatched federal troops to enforce the law in the face of Governor Faubus' Arkansas National Guard. In Alabama, Democratic Governor George Wallace contested integration by personally standing in front of school doors, with a baseball bat, preventing black children from entering the school. Lamenting his loss as Georgia Governor in 1966, Nobel Laureate Jimmy Carter said, "The guy that beat me was Lester Maddox, a racist who won the race because he would stand in front of his restaurant with a pick handle and anybody who came up that was black, he would beat him over the head with it." Governor Maddox was, of course, a Democrat.
When the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was made public law, it was Republicans that sponsored the bill, and Republicans that assured that there were enough votes to pass the bill into law. Earlier, under Republican President Ulysses S. Grant, a northern Republican-dominated Congress proposed, and passed, the fifteenth Amendment, assuring black Americans the right to vote.
History argues that the ascent of black Americans to an equal footing has been a continuous contest of wills between Southern Democrats opposing, and Northern Republicans supporting equal rights. The notion being advanced by the media, and their Democratic masters, is simply wrong.
Whether Trent Lott, for all of his foibles, lack of sense and polite sensibilities remains as Senate Majority leader will be decided in the fullness of time. The question of whether Republicans are besmirched with the filth of slavery and segregation has been settled for some time. They are not, and never have been. It has always been a machination of the socialist left to tie racism to the conservative right, and by proxy to Republicans. This lie must come to an end. |
