The dark side of the Democratic party
The racist left is revealed through historical analysis
Those on the left of the political divide, especially ones of the Democratic variety depict themselves as champions of racial justice while portraying Republicans as demagogues of hate. They will list all Republican injustices, real or imagined, while conveniently forgetting innumerable Democratic sins: Woodrow Wilson’s segregationism, William Jennings Bryan’s support of the Ku Klux Klan, and Franklin Roosevelt’s indifference to anti-lynching legislation. Fortunately, in the light of history, their arguments fall far from the truth.
Many have forgotten that Democrats were not just the party of slavery, they were the party of Jim Crow, of segregation, of “separate but equal,” and until as recent as the 1960s, the party that required blacks to count the number of jellybeans in a jar as a “test” to be registered to vote. President Bush’s National Security Advisor and close friend Condoleeza Rice, arguably the most powerful and influential black woman in the history of America, likes to tell the story of how her father became a Republican because Democrats would not allow him to be registered to vote. Let it be known that in the 26 major civil rights votes after 1933, a majority of Democrats opposed civil rights legislation in over 80 percent of the votes. By contrast, the Republican majority favored civil rights in over 96 percent of the votes! If one were to peel back the layers of history even further, one party has stood on the grounds of racial equality and civil rights, and that party is the Republican Party.
The Civil Rights Act of 1964
The Civil Rights Act of 1964 (Public Law 88-352) was largely based on Civil Rights legislation sponsored by Republicans in years past that had been watered down, defeated by segregationist Democrats, or struck down by Democrat-controlled courts. Republicans, the minority party at the time, voted in higher percentages for the Civil Rights Act of 1964 than Democrats. In the House of Representatives, Republicans voted for civil rights by a margin of 80 percent to 20 percent, 138-34. The Democrats margin was 152-96, or 61percent to 39 percent.
However, the most important vote for civil rights legislation was the vote for cloture of the anti-civil rights filibuster where two-thirds of the Senate was needed. On June 10, 1964, Senate Republican leader Everett Dirksen made an impassioned speech before all 100 senators for ending the filibuster.
"There are many reasons why cloture should be invoked and a good civil rights measure enacted. It is said that on the night he died, Victor Hugo wrote in his diary substantially this sentiment, 'Stronger than all the armies is an idea whose time has come.' The time has come for equality of opportunity in sharing of government, in education, and in employment. It must not be stayed or denied."
Civil Rights legislation was not stayed nor denied. Republicans voted overwhelmingly to break the filibuster by 81.8 percent (27-6), while 65.7 percent (44-23) of Democrats voted for cloture. Nine days later the Civil Rights Act of 1964 passed the senate 73-27 with 6 Republicans and 21 Democrats opposing.
With the subsequent passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, one has to ask why it took a century after the end of the civil war to achieve civil rights for Black Americans.
It is to be said that Democrats, from Andrew Johnson's presidency to Lyndon Johnson's, sought to reassemble the Jacksonian coalition of northern machines and southern segregationists. In 1924, Franklin Roosevelt advised Democrats to raise only issues of importance to the entire nation--which meant that they should abstain from the questions of integration and racial equality. While Truman did integrate the military and Kennedy did enforce court orders to integrate Southern state universities, their support for civil rights was luke-warm at best. FDR, Truman, and JFK looked upon civil rights advocates primarily as interests to be managed rather than integral parts of their electoral coalitions.
As a matter of record, John F. Kennedy's civil rights record before 1963 was neither a rejection of civil rights legislation nor a clear endorsement. Southern segregationists preferred jury trials to bench trials because all-white juries rarely convicted white civil rights violators. Well aware of this fact, Kennedy still voted to allow juries to hear contempt cases. As a Massachusetts senator, Kennedy had the opportunity to vote in favor of the 1957 Civil Rights Act. Unwilling to jeopardize his presidential ambitions, Kennedy elected to pass along the legislation to the Senate Judiciary Committee--dominated by Democrats--where it would have been shelved.
To be fair, John F. Kennedy was a Democratic politician of his time, and like all politicians of any party, his first priority was to gain and maintain power. In his narrow win over Richard Nixon in the 1960 election, Kennedy needed to keep the old Jacksonian coalition together and as a result barely mentioned civil rights as part of his presidential campaign. After his election, JFK did not produce any new civil rights proposals in 1961 or 1962. During this period the civil rights movement generally proceeded without Presidential Support. However, by 1963 American opinion had forced the issue.
A poll conducted by The National Opinion Research Center of Northern Whites in 1963 determined that the number of Americans who approved neighborhood integration had risen 30 percent in twenty years, to 72 percent in 1963. Support for integration of schools was even higher at 75 percent. Democrats could no longer appease southern segregationists and win in the north. Years of peaceful protests by blacks and whites made civil rights the most important issue in the coming election for a substantial segment of the American populace. As a result Northern Democrats overwhelmingly joined the Republican Party in supporting civil rights.
Democratic politicians did not lead the charge on civil rights, they merely took credit. Although Republicans have for decades voted in great majorities for civil rights, neither Democrats nor
Republicans can claim sole credit for the passage of the Civil Rights. It was efforts by Protestant and Catholic clergy, Urban Leagues, the NAACP, Martin Luther King Jr., and countless other groups and individuals of all races that forced civil rights to be crafted into federal law. However, the group that deserves the most credit for bringing upon civil rights is black Americans. During their 250 years of bondage and 100 years of segregation, black Americans conducted themselves with nothing less than dignity, perseverance, and bravery. Black contributions as fighting men in both World Wars coupled with the hard work of millions of blacks, their families, and their churches were the keys to success in the civil rights movement.
Realignment and the Rise of Southern Republicans
When Lynden Johnson signed the Voting Rights Act of 1965, he ruefully quipped that he had just delivered the South to the Republican Party for the next generation. Many people attribute this to the South’s racism; however they tend to forget that at that time the overwhelming majority of blacks in the south were Republicans. Blacks in Georgia alone accounted for 70% of the Georgia Republican Party. Lynden Johnson clearly thought he gave Republicans millions of votes across the south that were disenfranchised in previous elections.
However, when given the ability to vote those Black Republicans became Democrats. This process started in 1933 when northern blacks joined Roosevelt’s New Deal coalition and began a gradual realignment of blacks towards the Democratic Party. As late as 1960, Richard Nixon still received 32 percent of the black vote. The Republican share of the black vote in 1964 dropped to a mere six percent and a Republican candidate has not received above 15 percent since then. What happened between 1960 and 1964 to make the black vote almost unanimously Democratic?
Whereas Lyndon Johnson supported the civil rights bill, his opponent in the 1964 presidential campaign, Barry Goldwater, opposed the bill on the grounds that its public accommodations section violated people’s rights to do business with whom they pleased. Goldwater felt that discrimination in the workplace was morally wrong, but feared government would “require people to discriminate on the basis of color or race or religion.” Although called a racist by the left, Barry Goldwater, a pro-choice libertarian-conservative, was perhaps one of the least racist politicians in America. Goldwater was a staunch NAACP supporter who had voted affirmative for every previous civil rights bill. In his state of Arizona, Goldwater desegregated the National Guard before Truman desegregated the military. Alas, Goldwater is proof of how one politician can change the perception of an entire political party for decades to come. Martin Luther King Jr., who had remained neutral in the 1960 presidential race, enthusiastically endorsed LBJ in the 1964 race. While King declared that Barry Goldwater was not racist, his positions gave aide and comfort to racists.
Goldwater’s vote against the Civil Rights Act of 1964 coupled with his 1962 statement that electorally Republicans should “go hunting where the ducks are” convinced blacks that the Republican Party was hostile to blacks and hastened their political realignment. Although Republicans delivered the overwhelming margins needed to pass Civil Rights Act of 1964 and were champion of previous civil rights legislation, Goldwater’s tactics severed black America’s link to the Party of Lincoln. Furthermore, the GOP’s opposition to big government policies such as the Great Society in later years strengthened that view.
Contrary to conventional wisdom, Goldwater’s opposition to the Civil Rights Act of 1964, and the subsequent shift of blacks to the Democratic Party, did not send a flood of segregationist whites towards the Republican Party. The GOP did not, and has not become a racist party. Only one Democratic Senator who voted against civil rights shifted allegiances to the Republicans. That Senator, Strom Thurmond, later renounced his segregationist past and voted for the Voting Rights Act of 1980. Most democrats who opposed civil rights such as Albert Gore Sr., J. William Fulbright, and future Democratic Senate Leader (1977-1988) and former KKK member Robert C. Bryd (who democrats now call the conscience of the senate) remained Democrats. The vast majority of southern segregationist did not become Republicans.
Segregationist created the Dixiecrats and returned to their party of origin- the Democratic Party- when the civil rights movement succeeded. Republicans did not make gains in the south till much later, when a new breed of Southerners emerged and thousands of Northerners began moving south. In the 1968 presidential campaign began, polls showed that Nixon was at 42 percent; Humphrey at 29 percent, and segregationist Democrat George Wallace was at 22 percent. When the presidential race ended, Nixon and Humphrey were tied at 43 percent, with Wallace at 13 percent. The 9 percent of the “racist” vote that Wallace lost had gone to Humphrey. Nixon’s southern strategy was not based on race as his critics have claimed.
When Richard Nixon began his campaign for president in 1968, he penned a column on the South that declared the Republican Party would build its foundation on states rights, human rights, small government and a strong national defense. In that letter he declared he would leave it to the “party of Maddox, Mahoney and Wallace to squeeze the last ounces of political juice out of the rotting fruit of racial injustice.” In this campaign Nixon only endorsed those Republicans who were not members of the John Birch Society. During the Nixon presidency, budgets for black colleges were doubled and the share of Southern schools that were desegregated from 10 percent to 70 percent. Among Nixon’s more notable achievements on Civil Rights was his work on the passing the 1957 Civil Rights Act, for which Martin Luther King Jr. thanked personally.
During the 1960s and 1970s Republicans only mustered one-fifth of the white vote in southern congressional elections. As the old Southern Democrats began to lose power (or die), a new type of non-segregationist Southerners grew. The South’s shift away from the Democratic Party to the Republican Party largely occurred during the Reagan Era. Exit polls taken in eleven southern states in 1982 showed the GOP’s weakness among white voters: on average, 45 percent of southern white voters were Democrats and only 23 percent were Republicans. Ronald Reagan’s platform of racial equality, cultural conservatism, family values, low taxes, federalism (i.e. small government), a strong military, and a hawkish stance vis-à-vis the Soviet Union began to attract Southern white voters. It was not until the 1990s when the GOP gained an advantage in party affiliation and 1994 marked the year Republicans captured a majority of southern house and senate seats. In this past election, the state of Georgia elected the first Republican governor and senator since reconstruction!
With the rise of southern Republicans, the Republican Party has become a truly national party that is competitive in every state. While it is true that the Republican base is centered in the Western and Southern states while the Democratic base is centered in the North Eastern states and California. The states where Democrats enjoy the largest percentage of registered voters - Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Hawaii, Maryland, New York and Connecticut - all have Republican governors.
The Republican rise in power in the south and consequently the entire US was not predicated on race as commonly trumpeted in our universities and the mass media. Our party’s position on civil rights since the age of Lincoln has been constant: we believe government should be color blind and that all people should be judged equally as individuals in the eyes of the law. Unfortunately, the left believes that not supporting items on their agenda all comes down to one issue: race.
They charge that voting against massive transfer payments from one group to another is a display of racism. If you don’t believe in preferences for any group of Americans, you are racist. If you don’t believe in high taxes and an expansion of government programs, you are racist. Fifty years ago Democrats campaigned by stirring up racial fears, opposing color-blind laws, and silencing those who oppose them. In many ways they still do.
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