****MLK Was A Black Republican?****
- Thread starter Mr. Met
- Start date
Probably was. But in those days most blacks were Republicans. Party of Lincoln - get it? Besides the Republican Party in MLK's day was not the Republican Party of today. The Party then was mostly center or Liberal; unlike the Democratic Party that was full of Dixiecrats and other assorted crackers. In today's politics the script has been flipped. The Democratic Party today is largely the Republican Party of old, and vice versa.
ronmch20 said:
Yep, what he said. The republican party was also the party who passed the civil rights act when the democrat party opposed it. But the democrat party is the party most black folk support and defend. That's a part of history I still don't understand. Did the klan run black folk from the republicans or what did happen?
-VG
the klan was actually down with the democrats after the civil warVegasGuy said:
Lyndon B Johnson and the Kennedy's did it and slowly the dems moved center and liberal and repubs moved to the right
You have to keep in mind we were all marginalized by both dems and repubs while Jim Crow was in effect so it didn't make a whole lot of difference since our people were discriminated against so severely.
I'm an independent but I am a state's right and budgetary conservative but social policy wise I'm fairly liberal except for gay rights, abortion shit and the shitty educational system which needs an overhaul
Repubs or Dems would do whatever black people wanted if we told them the right way
A good friend of mine who is a Republican now said that Coretta was a Republican so I wouldn't be surprised.
<font size="4">
What makes Martin or Coretta a Republican, Democrat, Independent or something other? That is, what factors, traits, decisions, philosophies, etc., that they exhibited that would make one feel that either of them fit into any particular party, or, for that matter, any particular political ideology ???
Does it really matter what particular political stripe they were ???
QueEx</font size>
`
What makes Martin or Coretta a Republican, Democrat, Independent or something other? That is, what factors, traits, decisions, philosophies, etc., that they exhibited that would make one feel that either of them fit into any particular party, or, for that matter, any particular political ideology ???
Does it really matter what particular political stripe they were ???
QueEx</font size>
`
This may shed some light on this debate Click here
Democrat, republican.....christian, muslim or jew.......
Dr. King was still the same thing in the eyes of the
power structure.........
a ni99a
Dr. King was still the same thing in the eyes of the
power structure.........
a ni99a
VegasGuy said:
It's kind of a misnomer to say that the Democrats opposed the Civil Rights Act. It was the southern Democrats that opposed it. It was also the Democratic party that pushed for, LBJ and Kennedy. The Republicans try to make it seem that they overwhelminly approved of the Civil Rights Act but many of them opposed it. The Northern Democrats overwhemingly approved it while the southern Republicans voted against it. Since it was Democratic Presidents, that had pushed for it, the South immediately starting voting Republican for the only the 2nd time since the Civil War.
This is the way the votes went:
The original House version:
Southern Democrats: 7-87 (7%-93%)
Southern Republicans: 0-10 (0%-100%)
Northern Democrats: 145-9 (94%-6%)
Northern Republicans: 138-24 (85%-15%)
The Senate version:
Southern Democrats: 1-20 (5%-95%)
Southern Republicans: 0-1 (0%-100%)
Northern Democrats: 45-1 (98%-2%)
Northern Republicans: 27-5 (84%-16%)
As you can see, prior to the Act, it was hard to find a southern Democrat.
Co-Sign!
This is the best one-post one-kill i've seen on a thread.
source: Business Week.com
Playing the Race Card--Over and Over
RUNNING ON RACE
Racial Politics in
Presidential Campaigns, 1960-2000
By Jeremy D. Mayer
Random House -- 368pp -- $26.95
The divide between black and white America is nowhere more evident than in Presidential elections. In 10 of the past 11 showdowns for the White House, Republicans have won the majority of white support, sometimes by vast proportions. Blacks, in contrast, are the most loyal constituency of the Democratic Party. In Running on Race: Racial Politics in Presidential Campaigns, 1960-2000, Jeremy D. Mayer addresses the history and significance of the black-white chasm at the voting booth. It's arguably the most important political story of the past half-century, and the Georgetown University political scientist offers a workmanlike account of African Americans' move into the Democratic fold and the subsequent "white flight" to the GOP.
Until the 1930s, most blacks voted Republican out of loyalty to the party that had brought them emancipation. Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal persuaded many African Americans to start voting Democratic. But by 1960, the black vote was up for grabs, since both John F. Kennedy and Richard M. Nixon promised to improve the lot of African Americans. Then, when Martin Luther King Jr. was briefly incarcerated in Georgia, Kennedy telephoned King's wife to express sympathy. This calculated gesture motivated a majority of blacks to vote Democratic.
The Dems won a lock on African-American support when Lyndon B. Johnson signed the 1965 Voting Rights Act into law, enfranchising blacks almost a century after the 15th Amendment had supposedly guaranteed them the right to vote. The legislation did more than inaugurate a new level of black political participation. As black registration surged, so did white registration. And millions of whites, particularly Southerners, eventually switched their allegiance to the GOP.
Nixon helped nurture this white backlash. As Vice-President, he had been progressive on civil rights--in fact, he had been a member of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. But after the 1960 loss to Kennedy, Nixon political adviser Thruston Morton bitterly resolved that the new approach to blacks would be "to hell with them." When Nixon ran for the Presidency again in 1968, he began to steal the thunder of segregationist and third-party candidate George Wallace. Nixon promised white voters he would appoint conservatives to the federal judiciary and stall school integration. A surge in Southern white support allowed Nixon to eke out a victory. Thereafter, GOP Presidential campaigns would regularly play the race card.
The strategy reached its nadir in 1988, when George Bush discovered the case of Willie Horton, a black convict who had raped a white woman after he was furloughed from a Massachusetts prison. Bush, who was lagging behind his Democratic opponent, Massachusetts Governor Michael Dukakis, played up the incident. His Washington spokesman, Mark Goodin, even kept a photo of Horton near his telephone so that he would remember to mention the rapist in conversations with the press. When Bush won, it was in no small measure due to the millions spent by GOP groups on TV ads to make Horton a household name.
In Mayer's narrative, most Republican candidates come across as a feckless bunch, but Dems don't fare much better. In particular, Mayer explains how Democratic candidates have pandered to white conservatives while taking the black vote for granted. For example, Bill Clinton, then governor of Arkansas and a former death-penalty opponent, made a detour from the campaign trail in 1992 to attend the execution of a brain-damaged black man who had murdered a police officer. It was a blatant appeal to white swing voters. And while Kennedy may have telephoned Coretta Scott King during one tense period, he also avoided meeting with her husband, for fear of alienating white Southerners. Nor did JFK shrink from speaking before segregated audiences.
Such cynical maneuvering left the Democratic Party ripe for an internal or third-party challenge from an African-American leader. Into this breach stepped Jesse Jackson, a civil rights advocate who had never held electoral office. In his two quests for the Democratic Presidential nomination--in 1984 and 1988--Jackson did indeed force the party to pay fresh attention to minority concerns. But as Mayer shows, the black leader did not always take the high road himself. During a joint 1988 appearance, the 6-foot-4-inch Jackson publicly humiliated Dukakis, stepping up on the diminutive governor's concealed riser. Then, as he towered over the Democratic nominee, Jackson declared that he had been waiting for "equal standing" for years.
Running on Race could have used more such spicy vignettes, since Mayer does not, in the end, add much to what we already know. Some of the best material is relegated to footnotes: how, for example, the usually unflappable Ronald Reagan repeatedly (and perhaps tellingly) lost his temper with African Americans while campaigning. And there's one glaring gap: Only in passing does Mayer refer to black ministers, a key in turning out the black vote.
In 2000, less than 10% of blacks voted for George W. Bush, while only about one-third of white males voted for Al Gore. Yet such disparities, the author declares, will eventually fade. It's hard to see why: After all, as Mayer himself shows, both parties benefit from the divide. Until that changes, whites and blacks will continue to differ over who should run the country.
They defend the democrats because of kennedy and Johnson. The fuck up thing about the situation is the fact that Nixon helped African Americans just as much as LBJ.
Example....Look at all the junior colleges....
BTW, Politics is the business of pandering towards different sides. Thus, this is why Nixon did what he did.
I question the description of this article, because the author uses terms such as liberal, a non objective give away.
source: The U.S. National Archives
Teaching With Documents:
Beyond the Playing Field -
Jackie Robinson, Civil Rights Advocate
DRAFT LETTER
RICHARD M. NIXON TO JACKIE ROBINSON
NOVEMBER 4, 1960
Presidential candidate Richard Nixon wrote this letter 4 days before the 1960 Presidential election. The annotations in black ink are Nixon's. Robinson was pressured into taking an unpaid leave of absence and ending his triweekly column with the liberal New York Post when he publicly endorsed Nixon. Originally the ex-player worked on behalf of liberal Minnesota senator Hubert Humphrey but when Humphrey was eliminated early in the primaries, Robinson's support was up for grabs. Robinson viewed Nixon's civil rights record as more promising than Kennedy's, especially after meeting with both candidates.
source: The U.S. National Archives
Teaching With Documents:
Beyond the Playing Field -
Jackie Robinson, Civil Rights Advocate
DRAFT LETTER
RICHARD M. NIXON TO JACKIE ROBINSON
NOVEMBER 4, 1960
Presidential candidate Richard Nixon wrote this letter 4 days before the 1960 Presidential election. The annotations in black ink are Nixon's. Robinson was pressured into taking an unpaid leave of absence and ending his triweekly column with the liberal New York Post when he publicly endorsed Nixon. Originally the ex-player worked on behalf of liberal Minnesota senator Hubert Humphrey but when Humphrey was eliminated early in the primaries, Robinson's support was up for grabs. Robinson viewed Nixon's civil rights record as more promising than Kennedy's, especially after meeting with both candidates.
source: History News Network.com
12-16-02
The Speech by Hubert Humphrey that Helped Trigger Strom Thurmond's Candidacy for President in 1948
By HNN Staff
The event that triggered the formation of the Dixiecrat Party in 1948 was the hotly-fought passage of a ground-breaking plank calling upon Congress to approve a civil rights act to assure blacks of the right to vote, the right to equal employment opportunities, and the right to personal safety. Northern liberals cheered the civil rights proposal, which barely passed, but it alienated Southerners, prompting many (but not Strom Thurmond), to stage a dramatic walk out. A turning point in the battle came when Hubert Humphrey delivered a rousing speech on behalf of human rights, excerpted here:
To those who say, my friends, to those who say, that we are rushing this issue of civil rights. I say to them we are 172 years late!
To those who say, to those who say that this civil-rights program is an infringement on states' rights, I say this: the time has arrived in America for the Democratic party to get out of the shadow of state's rights and walk forthrightly into the bright sunshine of
human rights!
People, people--human beings--this is the issue of the 20th century. People of all kinds, all sorts of people, and these people are looking to America for leadership, and they're looking to America for precept and example.
My good friends--my fellow Democrats--I ask you for calm consideration of our historic opportunity.
Let us not forget--let us do forget--the evil passions, the blindness of the past. In these times of world economic, political, and spiritual--above all spiritual--crisis, we cannot--we must not--turn from the path so plainly before us. That path has already lead us though many valleys of the shadow of death. Now is the time to recall those who were left on that path of American freedom.
For all of us here, for the millions who have sent us, for the whole two-billion members of the human family--our land is now, more than ever before, the last best hope on earth. I know that we can--I know that we shall--begin here the fuller and richer realization of that hope--that promise of a land where all men are truly free and equal, and each man uses his freedom and equality wisely and well.
My good friends, I ask my party, I ask the Democratic party, to march down the high road of progressive democracy. I ask this convention, I ask this convention, to say in unmistakable terms that we proudly hail, and we courageously support, our President and leader Harry Truman in his great fight for civil-rights in America!
12-16-02
The Speech by Hubert Humphrey that Helped Trigger Strom Thurmond's Candidacy for President in 1948
By HNN Staff
The event that triggered the formation of the Dixiecrat Party in 1948 was the hotly-fought passage of a ground-breaking plank calling upon Congress to approve a civil rights act to assure blacks of the right to vote, the right to equal employment opportunities, and the right to personal safety. Northern liberals cheered the civil rights proposal, which barely passed, but it alienated Southerners, prompting many (but not Strom Thurmond), to stage a dramatic walk out. A turning point in the battle came when Hubert Humphrey delivered a rousing speech on behalf of human rights, excerpted here:
To those who say, my friends, to those who say, that we are rushing this issue of civil rights. I say to them we are 172 years late!
To those who say, to those who say that this civil-rights program is an infringement on states' rights, I say this: the time has arrived in America for the Democratic party to get out of the shadow of state's rights and walk forthrightly into the bright sunshine of
human rights!
People, people--human beings--this is the issue of the 20th century. People of all kinds, all sorts of people, and these people are looking to America for leadership, and they're looking to America for precept and example.
My good friends--my fellow Democrats--I ask you for calm consideration of our historic opportunity.
Let us not forget--let us do forget--the evil passions, the blindness of the past. In these times of world economic, political, and spiritual--above all spiritual--crisis, we cannot--we must not--turn from the path so plainly before us. That path has already lead us though many valleys of the shadow of death. Now is the time to recall those who were left on that path of American freedom.
For all of us here, for the millions who have sent us, for the whole two-billion members of the human family--our land is now, more than ever before, the last best hope on earth. I know that we can--I know that we shall--begin here the fuller and richer realization of that hope--that promise of a land where all men are truly free and equal, and each man uses his freedom and equality wisely and well.
My good friends, I ask my party, I ask the Democratic party, to march down the high road of progressive democracy. I ask this convention, I ask this convention, to say in unmistakable terms that we proudly hail, and we courageously support, our President and leader Harry Truman in his great fight for civil-rights in America!
source: http://www.cresswellslist.com/ballots2/mfdp.htm
The Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party
In 1964, African Americans in the deep South were beginning to get involved in the political process. Some had courageously registered to vote, in the face of angry white resistance. Thousands of others expressed a desire to register, but were prevented from meeting that goal by threats, violence, or the refusal of voting registrars to register them. In Mississippi, white resistance to black registration was especially bitter and dangerous.
Unlike their ancestors in Mississippi who had voted overwhelmingly Republican in the 1870s, African Americans in 1964 wanted to support the national Democratic Party, including as it did many Northern friends of civil rights. President Johnson himself deserved support for his signing of the Civil Rights Act of 1963, the first important civil rights law in almost a century. But in Mississippi, the state Democratic Party did not appreciate LBJ, nor the civil rights predilections of Democratic members of Congress from the North. In fact, party leaders in the Magnolia State had made it clear that any good Southern Democrat should vote for Goldwater for president in 1964.
So in the Spring of 1964, black Mississippians attempted to get active in the state's Democratic party, and to steer the party to support Johnson. Predictably, the state party's leaders did not permit black participation in primaries or conventions, and so the black citizens formed their own group, the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party. The MFDP was as overwhelmingly black as the regular party was overwhelmingly white, though there were a very few white members of the MFDP, most notably a minister named Ed King.
As Mississippi's Democratic party continued to refuse black participation, and as its leaders continued to make statements supporting Goldwater, the MFDP organized itself down to the precinct level, and held elections to choose delegates to send to the Democratic National Convention in Atlantic City. They also chose three black women to run for Congress against the Democratic regulars. The candidates they chose were Fannie Lou Hamer, Annie Devine, and Victoria Gray. Because state election authorities didn't recognize the three women, a separate "Freedom Election" was held, in which more than 33,000 black Mississippians participated.
At the Atlantic City convention, national party leaders were horrified when MFDP delegates showed up. President Johnson wanted this convention to be a sort of coronation for himself, and he didn't want bitter debates to detract. Nevertheless, Fannie Lou Hamer was soon in front of a microphone before the Credentials Committee, and she told horrifying stories of her attempts to register to vote in Sunflower County. She told, for example, how the first time she attempted to register she returned home and heard sixteen shots enter her house that night. Turning to the television cameras, Hamer asked, "Is this America?"
When LBJ believed the MFDP was getting too much airtime, he gave the networks about ten minutes notice that he wanted to deliver a special televised speech on an unrelated topic, effectively preempting the most interesting MFDP moments at the convention. Johnson angrily told Hubert Humphrey to work out a deal and get the MFDP off the front pages, or else Humphrey could give up on the idea of being vice-president. Humphrey in turn enlisted the help of labor leader Walter Reuther, Senator Wayne Morse, and several others.
Finally, the Credentials Committee offered a compromise: two of the MFDP representatives would be seated as "At-Large" delegates, while all of the Mississippi regular delegation would be seated. The other MFDP delegates could attend the convention as guests. The deal also included promises that the future would be better, and that the 1968 DNC delegation from Mississippi must be fully integrated.
Joseph Raugh, the MFDP's legal counsel, urged them to accept the compromise. Protest was protest, he said, but this was politics, and in politics you have to compromise.
Against tremendous pressure from Humphrey, Reuther, Raugh, Morse, and dozens of other party leaders, the MFDP delegates finally voted—and defied the party by refusing the compromise. "We didn't come all this way for no two seats," explained Fannie Lou Hamer, "when all of us is tired."
Ironically, the LBJ convention had turned away its friends from Mississippi, while seating the delegates of the white-led state party that hated Johnson. Party leaders did this because they wanted to prevent wholesale defection of white Southerners to the Republican party. Yet despite their winning the dispute, most members of the regular Mississippi delegation left the convention and went back home, angry at all the attention paid to the MFDP.
James Forman, noted leader of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, believed the MFDP story was a turning point for the civil rights movement. He explained that up until that point those in the movement believed the federal government would protect citizens from bigoted state governments, and that the national Democratic Party would protect citizens from bigoted state parties.
Forman believed the MFDP story showed black Mississippians that white leaders would not exert great effort to help black Southerners, and it didn't matter whether such leaders were national leaders like Humphrey and Reuther or state leaders like governors Faubus, Wallace, or Barnett. After 1964, Forman believed, black Southerners would have to rely on themselves, and turn in new and more revolutionary directions.
The Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party
In 1964, African Americans in the deep South were beginning to get involved in the political process. Some had courageously registered to vote, in the face of angry white resistance. Thousands of others expressed a desire to register, but were prevented from meeting that goal by threats, violence, or the refusal of voting registrars to register them. In Mississippi, white resistance to black registration was especially bitter and dangerous.
Unlike their ancestors in Mississippi who had voted overwhelmingly Republican in the 1870s, African Americans in 1964 wanted to support the national Democratic Party, including as it did many Northern friends of civil rights. President Johnson himself deserved support for his signing of the Civil Rights Act of 1963, the first important civil rights law in almost a century. But in Mississippi, the state Democratic Party did not appreciate LBJ, nor the civil rights predilections of Democratic members of Congress from the North. In fact, party leaders in the Magnolia State had made it clear that any good Southern Democrat should vote for Goldwater for president in 1964.
So in the Spring of 1964, black Mississippians attempted to get active in the state's Democratic party, and to steer the party to support Johnson. Predictably, the state party's leaders did not permit black participation in primaries or conventions, and so the black citizens formed their own group, the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party. The MFDP was as overwhelmingly black as the regular party was overwhelmingly white, though there were a very few white members of the MFDP, most notably a minister named Ed King.
As Mississippi's Democratic party continued to refuse black participation, and as its leaders continued to make statements supporting Goldwater, the MFDP organized itself down to the precinct level, and held elections to choose delegates to send to the Democratic National Convention in Atlantic City. They also chose three black women to run for Congress against the Democratic regulars. The candidates they chose were Fannie Lou Hamer, Annie Devine, and Victoria Gray. Because state election authorities didn't recognize the three women, a separate "Freedom Election" was held, in which more than 33,000 black Mississippians participated.
At the Atlantic City convention, national party leaders were horrified when MFDP delegates showed up. President Johnson wanted this convention to be a sort of coronation for himself, and he didn't want bitter debates to detract. Nevertheless, Fannie Lou Hamer was soon in front of a microphone before the Credentials Committee, and she told horrifying stories of her attempts to register to vote in Sunflower County. She told, for example, how the first time she attempted to register she returned home and heard sixteen shots enter her house that night. Turning to the television cameras, Hamer asked, "Is this America?"
When LBJ believed the MFDP was getting too much airtime, he gave the networks about ten minutes notice that he wanted to deliver a special televised speech on an unrelated topic, effectively preempting the most interesting MFDP moments at the convention. Johnson angrily told Hubert Humphrey to work out a deal and get the MFDP off the front pages, or else Humphrey could give up on the idea of being vice-president. Humphrey in turn enlisted the help of labor leader Walter Reuther, Senator Wayne Morse, and several others.
Finally, the Credentials Committee offered a compromise: two of the MFDP representatives would be seated as "At-Large" delegates, while all of the Mississippi regular delegation would be seated. The other MFDP delegates could attend the convention as guests. The deal also included promises that the future would be better, and that the 1968 DNC delegation from Mississippi must be fully integrated.
Joseph Raugh, the MFDP's legal counsel, urged them to accept the compromise. Protest was protest, he said, but this was politics, and in politics you have to compromise.
Against tremendous pressure from Humphrey, Reuther, Raugh, Morse, and dozens of other party leaders, the MFDP delegates finally voted—and defied the party by refusing the compromise. "We didn't come all this way for no two seats," explained Fannie Lou Hamer, "when all of us is tired."
Ironically, the LBJ convention had turned away its friends from Mississippi, while seating the delegates of the white-led state party that hated Johnson. Party leaders did this because they wanted to prevent wholesale defection of white Southerners to the Republican party. Yet despite their winning the dispute, most members of the regular Mississippi delegation left the convention and went back home, angry at all the attention paid to the MFDP.
James Forman, noted leader of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, believed the MFDP story was a turning point for the civil rights movement. He explained that up until that point those in the movement believed the federal government would protect citizens from bigoted state governments, and that the national Democratic Party would protect citizens from bigoted state parties.
Forman believed the MFDP story showed black Mississippians that white leaders would not exert great effort to help black Southerners, and it didn't matter whether such leaders were national leaders like Humphrey and Reuther or state leaders like governors Faubus, Wallace, or Barnett. After 1964, Forman believed, black Southerners would have to rely on themselves, and turn in new and more revolutionary directions.
Once the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was ratified, the post confederate/civil rights backlash began. When Nixon ran for president in 1968, he seized on the white sentiment of paranoia (Nixon himself was paranoid as witnessed in the Watergate scandal) and racism. Kevin Phillips talked about the “Southern Strategy”, a policy the republicans began to use, which is used right up to this day! Below is the original New York Times article describing the Southern Strategy.
[PDF]http://www.nytimes.com/packages/html/books/phillips-emerging.pdf[/PDF]
Reality Check,
source: Humanities & Social Sciences Online
The Republican Party and African-Americans: The Real History
By David Greenberg
History News Service
At July's Republican convention, Texas Governor and presidential candidate George W. Bush won kudos for his gutsy appeals to black voters. Alluding to a proud past, he suggested that his party had embraced African-Americans until only recently. His plan to win them back: Trot out some speakers of color, bandy about the word "inclusion" and presto! The Republicans will again be "the party of Lincoln."
Bush, alas, misreads history. To make good on his rhetoric, he'll actually have to abjure his party's 32-year-old "Southern Strategy" of playing upon racial fears to court whites. Far from representing a recent aberration, as the Bushies suggest, that strategy marks the culmination of a powerful 125-year trend.
Founded in 1854, the Republican Party promoted African-American equality for its first two decades. Abraham Lincoln and the "Radical Republicans" in Congress fought to end slavery and to give black men full citizenship. For that much, Bush and company can claim a worthy lineage.
But as early as 1876 -- not 1960, as the Philadelphia conventioneers suggested -- GOP leaders began to abandon black Americans. In that year's presidential election, Ohio Republican Rutherford B. Hayes agreed to withdraw federal troops from the South in exchange for southern Democratic support. Democrats seized power in the South and ushered in legalized segregation.
When Bush touts his party's history, he does not seem to know that Republican advocacy of black equality was already waning by the early 20th century. Not even on the scourge of lynching did Republicans muster enough enthusiasm to take federal action.
Although House Republicans passed an anti-lynching bill in January 1922, their Senate counterparts wouldn't enact it. Heartland Republicans such as William Borah of Idaho allied with Southern Democrats to kill the bill, arguing that it licensed federal interference with states' autonomy.
Meanwhile, the Democrats were winning the loyalty of black Americans they retain today. As African-Americans fled the South to northern cities, the Democrats' political machines eagerly absorbed the newcomers. Republican machines, by contrast, reacted coolly when black leaders sought to join their ranks.
The black shift to the Democratic Party crystallized under President Franklin Roosevelt. Though FDR won just 23 percent of the black vote in 1932, he subsequently expanded that support with his relief policies. The Depression affected black Americans disproportionately, and programs such as the Civilian Conservation Corps and the Public Works Administration gave them much-needed aid.
To the extent that Republicans still championed civil rights, it was leaders of their now-extinct liberal wing, such as Wendell Willkie and Thomas Dewey, who did so. Anti-government conservatives of Bush's stripe -- the rank and file of today's GOP -- increasingly trumpeted states' rights.
By the 1950s, the Republicans' "party of Lincoln" moniker was all but meaningless. The GOP's leader, President Dwight Eisenhower, had testified before Congress against integrating the military and belittled the landmark 1954 Supreme Court decision that desegregated public schools.
Racial liberalism within the GOP enjoyed its last hurrah with the 1964 Civil Rights Act. But the victory was pyrrhic. President Lyndon Johnson and Northern Democrats had finally resolved to enact a vigorous civil rights bill, but the legislation almost died because of a Senate filibuster by Southern Democrats. Then, at the eleventh hour, Republican leader Everett Dirksen marshaled his wavering party-mates to force a vote, assuring the bill's passage.
Senator Richard Russell of Georgia groused that Dirksen had "killed off a rapidly growing Republican Party in the South." But Russell had it backward.
The foes of the 1964 law included such rising GOP stars as Arizona Sen. Barry Goldwater and Texas Senate aspirant and future President George H.W. Bush. Goldwater and Bush foresaw that their future electoral successes rested on Southern and Western conservatives.
In his 1964 presidential bid Goldwater ran "Operation Dixie," which courted southern whites and ceded the black vote entirely. Goldwater lost badly, but four years later, the approach worked. Republican Richard Nixon won election in 1968 on a "Southern Strategy" that stressed "law and order" and tapped into white anxieties about black violence.
Nixon's plan furnished the blueprint for the campaigns of Ronald Reagan and the elder George Bush, both of whom wrote off the black vote and pursued white voters with coded racial appeals. In 1988 Bush tarred Democrat Michael Dukakis as soft on crime, famously using ads that featured a menacing black rapist named Willie Horton.
If George W. Bush intends to toss out that tried-and-true strategy this year, he'll be declaring, quite literally, that this is no longer his father's Republican Party. That would be a courageous act indeed.
KNOW YOUR HISTORY...
source: Humanities & Social Sciences Online
The Republican Party and African-Americans: The Real History
By David Greenberg
History News Service
At July's Republican convention, Texas Governor and presidential candidate George W. Bush won kudos for his gutsy appeals to black voters. Alluding to a proud past, he suggested that his party had embraced African-Americans until only recently. His plan to win them back: Trot out some speakers of color, bandy about the word "inclusion" and presto! The Republicans will again be "the party of Lincoln."
Bush, alas, misreads history. To make good on his rhetoric, he'll actually have to abjure his party's 32-year-old "Southern Strategy" of playing upon racial fears to court whites. Far from representing a recent aberration, as the Bushies suggest, that strategy marks the culmination of a powerful 125-year trend.
Founded in 1854, the Republican Party promoted African-American equality for its first two decades. Abraham Lincoln and the "Radical Republicans" in Congress fought to end slavery and to give black men full citizenship. For that much, Bush and company can claim a worthy lineage.
But as early as 1876 -- not 1960, as the Philadelphia conventioneers suggested -- GOP leaders began to abandon black Americans. In that year's presidential election, Ohio Republican Rutherford B. Hayes agreed to withdraw federal troops from the South in exchange for southern Democratic support. Democrats seized power in the South and ushered in legalized segregation.
When Bush touts his party's history, he does not seem to know that Republican advocacy of black equality was already waning by the early 20th century. Not even on the scourge of lynching did Republicans muster enough enthusiasm to take federal action.
Although House Republicans passed an anti-lynching bill in January 1922, their Senate counterparts wouldn't enact it. Heartland Republicans such as William Borah of Idaho allied with Southern Democrats to kill the bill, arguing that it licensed federal interference with states' autonomy.
Meanwhile, the Democrats were winning the loyalty of black Americans they retain today. As African-Americans fled the South to northern cities, the Democrats' political machines eagerly absorbed the newcomers. Republican machines, by contrast, reacted coolly when black leaders sought to join their ranks.
The black shift to the Democratic Party crystallized under President Franklin Roosevelt. Though FDR won just 23 percent of the black vote in 1932, he subsequently expanded that support with his relief policies. The Depression affected black Americans disproportionately, and programs such as the Civilian Conservation Corps and the Public Works Administration gave them much-needed aid.
To the extent that Republicans still championed civil rights, it was leaders of their now-extinct liberal wing, such as Wendell Willkie and Thomas Dewey, who did so. Anti-government conservatives of Bush's stripe -- the rank and file of today's GOP -- increasingly trumpeted states' rights.
By the 1950s, the Republicans' "party of Lincoln" moniker was all but meaningless. The GOP's leader, President Dwight Eisenhower, had testified before Congress against integrating the military and belittled the landmark 1954 Supreme Court decision that desegregated public schools.
Racial liberalism within the GOP enjoyed its last hurrah with the 1964 Civil Rights Act. But the victory was pyrrhic. President Lyndon Johnson and Northern Democrats had finally resolved to enact a vigorous civil rights bill, but the legislation almost died because of a Senate filibuster by Southern Democrats. Then, at the eleventh hour, Republican leader Everett Dirksen marshaled his wavering party-mates to force a vote, assuring the bill's passage.
Senator Richard Russell of Georgia groused that Dirksen had "killed off a rapidly growing Republican Party in the South." But Russell had it backward.
The foes of the 1964 law included such rising GOP stars as Arizona Sen. Barry Goldwater and Texas Senate aspirant and future President George H.W. Bush. Goldwater and Bush foresaw that their future electoral successes rested on Southern and Western conservatives.
In his 1964 presidential bid Goldwater ran "Operation Dixie," which courted southern whites and ceded the black vote entirely. Goldwater lost badly, but four years later, the approach worked. Republican Richard Nixon won election in 1968 on a "Southern Strategy" that stressed "law and order" and tapped into white anxieties about black violence.
Nixon's plan furnished the blueprint for the campaigns of Ronald Reagan and the elder George Bush, both of whom wrote off the black vote and pursued white voters with coded racial appeals. In 1988 Bush tarred Democrat Michael Dukakis as soft on crime, famously using ads that featured a menacing black rapist named Willie Horton.
If George W. Bush intends to toss out that tried-and-true strategy this year, he'll be declaring, quite literally, that this is no longer his father's Republican Party. That would be a courageous act indeed.
KNOW YOUR HISTORY...
Wow, you are a stupid fuck. When do you think MLK died, in 1875? Black folks have been overwhelmingly Democrats since FDR. Damn, I thought that even the dumbest ----- knew that... guess not.
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Actually, in 1956 Eisenhower carried 40% of the Black vote. The last republican to get that many Black votes.
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Settled, let's move on!
Not as far out as you might think. It isn't just the parties that changed, people changed as well.
MLK stood arm in arm with Charlton Heston on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial when he gave his "I Have a Dream" speech during the March on Washington.
When MLK gave that speech, Ronald Reagan was a Democrat, and Earl Warren was a Republican.
Eisenhower called his appointment of Warren to the Supreme Court "the biggest damn-fool mistake I ever made", yet Eisenhower sent Federal troops to Little Rock in support of school desegregation.
Richard Nixon, before Watergate, did more for Black Business that any other President.
LBJ was more liberal than JFK.
Isn't one of the MAJOR DIFFERENCES between the Republican party, then and now, is the <s>Democrats</s> <u>Dixiecrats</u> that defected from the democratic party to the republican party when blacks began to be elected to public office under their banner ???
QueEx
QueEx
Why was the Black vote so important to Reps then and Dems now. Reps believed like Dems believe now, that Blacks are the key to holding power, so why is the Black vote so important. At the time of his death Dr. King was considered a broken man, civil rights didn't give Blacks the freedom he hoped for, so why is the Black vote still so important to both parties.
I never knew about this shit...
[FONT=Times New Roman, Times, serif]Myth # 7: King wasn’t a plagiarist.
[/FONT]
[FONT=Times New Roman, Times, serif]OK, even most of the neocons won’t deny this, but it is still worth bringing up, because they all ignore it. King started plagiarizing as an undergraduate. When Boston University founded a commission to look into it, they found that that 45 percent of the first part and 21 percent of the second part of his dissertation was stolen, but they insisted that "no thought should be given to revocation of Dr. King’s doctoral degree." In addition to his dissertation many of his major speeches, such as "I Have a Dream," were plagiarized, as were many of his books and writings. For more information on King’s plagiarism, The Martin Luther King Plagiarism Page and Theodore Pappas’ Plagiarism and the Culture War are excellent resources.[/FONT]
And why did you feel this was the thread to drop this in?
-VG