"For more than 200 years, our party has led the fight for civil rights..."
That might be persuasive to a potential voter who has never opened a History textbook but it bears no resemblance to the truth.
Democrats would like for everyone to believe (especially African American voters) that Democrats have been the champion of civil rights and liberties for over two centuries all the while battling vile racist Republicans. In reality, the historical record shows exactly opposite.
The Republican Party was actually founded in 1854 as an oppositional force to the pro-slavery Democrat Party specifically to prevent the further spread of slavery into the western territories. Six years later Abraham Lincoln became the first Republican elected President and he brought him with both houses of Congress. With the Democrats outnumbered in Congress, and Lincoln in The White House, the southern states made the decision to secede from the union as they foresaw that slavery would inevitably be banned at the federal level with Republicans in control.
The votes of Republicans and Democrats on the major legislative votes involving civil rights over the years says it all.
13th Amendment- Abolished slavery in the United States (1865)
Every Republican in the House and Senate supported the amendment.
Only 16 Democrats in the House (most lame ducks) and 2 in the Senate voted for the amendment.
14th Amendment-Provided full citizenships to slaves
Not one Democrat in the House or Senate voted for the amendment.
15th Amendment-Provided voting rights to slaves
There was not a single vote of the 56 Democrats in the House or Senate that voted for the amendment.
A little more U.S. History...
The first Black U.S. Senator was a Republican (Hiram Revels from Mississippi in 1870). The first Democrat did not enter the U.S. Senate until 1993 (Carol Moseley Braun of Illinois).
In the U.S. House of Representatives, there were 21 Black members elected to Congress before there was the first Democrat elected in 1935.
You might look at these votes and Black Republican officeholders and consider this ancient history (even though the Democrats state that their fight for Civil Rights goes back 200 years) and discount this truth.
However, Robert Rohlfing in an article "Some Of The Lost History Of The Civil Rights Movement" in Canada Free Press points out this fact on more recent history,
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.
In fact, as Rohling points out, the initial impetus for the 1964 Civil Rights Act and 1965 Voting Rights Act both came from Republican President Dwight Eisenhower in a 1957 Civil Rights Act bill that he introduced.
Who was one of the Democrats who opposed that bill?
A name you might recognize is Senator John F. Kennedy of Massachusetts.
Kennedy later did become an advocate for civil rights legislation when he became President and introduced what later became the first version of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 that Lyndon Johnson pushed through Congress. Do you think JFK opposed the bill because he knew he needed Southern Democrats if he hoped to run for President in 1960? That would be my guess.
Turning to his Kennedy's running mate in 1960, Johnson opposed every civil rights bill for his first 20 years in Congress (1937-1957) before he got firmly behind the Civil Rights Act of 1964 soon after becoming President upon Kennedy's assassination. Of course, let it also be remembered that 80% of the no votes for that legislation were Democrats.
It would be nice to believe that Kennedy, Johnson and other Democrats changed their views out of character, conscience or conviction but with politicians you never really know. Politics and popular votes trump principles most of the time.
For example, LBJ is quoted by Ronald Kessler in his book, Inside the White House: The Hidden Lives of the Modern Presidents and the Secrets of the World's Most Powerful Institution, published in 1995 as telling two unnamed governors who were on Air Force One why he was working for passage of the Civil Rights Act, of 1964,
"I'll have them ni**ers voting Democratic for two hundred years."
Some argue that there is not enough proof to support that Johnson ever said this, however, it would seem to be in keeping with some of his other views on race over the years.
Democrats may ultimately get the Black vote for 200 years but it will not be based on the past 200 years of history.
The political reality is that there is no viable Democrat party today without African American votes. That is why you don't see many Democrats criticizing the Black Lives Matter movement and our nation's police officers getting so little support from within the Democrat party.
The same mentality drives the Democrats on the immigration issue. Given a choice between supporting an American citizen or an illegal immigrant, or our nation's security and an Islamic refugee, the Democrats are looking for future votes and little more.
It is a dangerous game. I only hope we have a country that survives those votes over the next 200 years.
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