Black History/Democratic History
Deroy Murdock observes Black History Month with an unusual concomitant February anniversary:
Today marks the 90th anniversary of a very special White House ceremony. President Woodrow Wilson hosted his Cabinet and the entire U.S. Supreme Court for a screening of D. W. Griffith's racist masterpiece, Birth of a Nation. The executive mansion's first film presentation depicted, according to Griffith, the Ku Klux Klan's heroic, post-Civil War struggle against the menace of emancipated blacks, portrayed by white actors in black face. As black civil-rights leader W.E.B. DuBois explained: In Griffith's 1915 motion picture, "The freed man was represented either as an ignorant fool, a vicious rapist, a venal or unscrupulous politician, or a faithful idiot."
Thumbs up, Wilson exclaimed. The film "is like writing history with lightning," he remarked, adding, "it is all so terribly true."
This vignette — recently recounted in Ken Burns's PBS documentary, Unforgivable Blackness — was neither the first nor last time a prominent Democrat plunged a hot knife in black America's collective back. Each February, Black History Month recalls Democrat Harry Truman's 1948 desegregation of the armed forces and Democrat Lyndon Baines Johnson's signature on the 1964 Civil Rights Act, the greatest black legislative victory since Republican Abraham Lincoln abolished slavery in 1863. This annual commemoration, however, largely overlooks the many milestones Republicans and blacks have achieved together by overcoming reactionary Democrats.
The House Policy Committee's 2005 Republican Freedom Calendar offers 365 examples of GOP support for women, blacks, and other minorities, often over Democratic objections.
Murdock lists some key items from the Freedom Calendar.
Highlights:
July 30, 1866: New Orleans's Democratic government ordered police to raid an integrated GOP meeting, killing 40 people and injuring 150.
September 28, 1868: Democrats in Opelousas, Louisiana killed nearly 300 blacks who tried to foil an assault on a Republican newspaper editor.
October 7, 1868: Republicans criticized Democrats' national slogan: "This is a white man's country: Let white men rule."
April 20, 1871: The GOP Congress adopted the Ku Klux Klan Act, banning the pro-Democrat domestic terrorist group.
October 18, 1871: GOP President Ulysses S. Grant dispatched federal troops to quell Klan violence in South Carolina.
September 14, 1874: Racist white Democrats stormed Louisiana's statehouse to oust GOP Governor William Kellogg's racially integrated administration; 27 are killed.
Let's not forget: Republicans rammed the Thirteenth, Fourtheenth and Fifteenth amendments through Congress, frequently over the rhetorically dead bodies of Democrats.
"But that's all over a hundred years ago!"
Er, no:
August 17, 1937: Republicans opposed Democratic President Franklin Delano Roosevelt's Supreme Court nominee, U.S. Senator Hugo Black (D., Al.), a former Klansman who defended Klansmen against race-murder charges.
February 2005: The Democrats' Klan-coddling today is embodied by KKK alumnus Robert Byrd, West Virginia's logorrheic U.S. senator and, having served since January 3, 1959, that body's dean. Thirteen years earlier, Byrd wrote this to the KKK's Imperial Wizard: "The Klan is needed today as never before and I am anxious to see its rebirth here in West Virginia." Byrd led Senate Democrats as late as December 1988. On March 4, 2001, Byrd told Fox News's Tony Snow: "There are white niggers. I've seen a lot of white niggers in my time; I'm going to use that word." National Democrats never have arranged a primary challenge against or otherwise pressed this one-time cross-burner to get lost.
May 17, 1954: As chief justice, former three-term governor Earl Warren (R., Calif.) led the U.S. Supreme Court's desegregation of government schools via the landmark Brown v. Board of Education decision. GOP President Dwight Eisenhower's Justice Department argued for Topeka, Kansas's black school children. Democrat John W. Davis, who lost a presidential bid to incumbent Republican Calvin Coolidge in 1924, defended "separate but equal" classrooms.
September 24, 1957: Eisenhower deployed the 82nd Airborne Division to desegregate Little Rock's government schools over the strenuous resistance of Governor Orval Faubus (D., Ark.).
May 6, 1960: Eisenhower signs the GOP's 1960 Civil Rights Act after it survived a five-day, five-hour filibuster by 18 Senate Democrats.
July 2, 1964: Democratic President Johnson signed the 1964 Civil Rights Act after former Klansman Robert Byrd's 14-hour filibuster and the votes of 22 other Senate Democrats (including Tennessee's Al Gore, Sr.) failed to scuttle the measure. Illinois Republican Everett Dirksen rallied 26 GOP senators and 44 Democrats to invoke cloture and allow the bill's passage. According to John Fonte in the January 9, 2003, National Review, 82 percent of Republicans so voted, versus only 66 percent of Democrats.
True, Senator Barry Goldwater (R., Ariz.) opposed this bill the very year he became the GOP's presidential standard-bearer. However, Goldwater supported the 1957 and 1960 Civil Rights Acts and called for integrating Arizona's National Guard two years before Truman desegregated the military. Goldwater feared the 1964 Act would limit freedom of association in the private sector, a controversial but principled libertarian objection rooted in the First Amendment rather than racial hatred.
June 29, 1982: President Ronald Reagan signed a 25-year extension of the Voting Rights Act of 1965.
And let I forget (emphasis mine):
President G.W. Bush named Condoleezza Rice America's first black female NSC chief, then our second (consecutive) black secretary of State. Just last month, one-time Klansman Robert Byrd and other Senate Democrats stalled Rice's confirmation for a week. Amid unanimous GOP support, 12 Democrats and Vermont Independent James Jeffords opposed Rice — the most "No" votes for a State designee since 14 senators frowned on Henry Clay in 1825.
Today, the Democrat approach to blacks is the same as Paul Wellstone's approach to the military; programs. "Bread and circuses", it used to be called.
Read it all.
Posted by Mitch at
February 24, 2005 05:18 AM
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Wonderful post! one small error though... I think Ike sent the 101st Airborne to Little Rock rather then the 82nd.
Posted by: rps at February 24, 2005 11:52 AMMitch,
Of course, many GOPs have supported civil rights issues over the years, and many Dems have opposed them.
But are you seriously suggesting that Democratic votes against Rice had anything to do with her race?
On what planet?
Posted by: Slashjjc at February 24, 2005 12:40 PM/jc
I suggest - not necessarily in this posting - that Democrats regard black, hispanic, asian, Jewish and female Republicans as apostates, yes.
I suggest that many of the comments made by Democratic critics of the likes of Rice, Powell, Clarence Thomas, Gonzales, Estrada, Linda Chavez, and (locally) Lucky Rosenbloom, Michelle Bachman, Norm Coleman and on and on, would NOT be tolerated if the parties were reversed.
My planet. Presumably the same as yours, although since your planet is a place were undecideds break toward challengers and Dan Rather is innocent, I guess I should make sure.
Posted by: mitch at February 24, 2005 01:39 PMMitch,
So when Democrats vote in favor of Colin Powell but then vote against Rice, it's not because we object think he's a moderating force while we think she's a Bush enabler who lied about the pre-9/11 warnings and Iraq's WMDs. [You may disagree with our characterization of her, but you must agree that that's what Dems think of her.]
When Democrats vote overwhelmingly in favor of other hispanic nominees to the courts, but vote against Miguel Estrada and Alberto Gonzalez, it's not because we think Estrada is too conservative and Gonzalez supported the President's alleged authority to aprove torture in violation of U.S. laws.
And when Democrats vote against white male conservatives, like Bill Pryor and Pickering, in those case it's genuinely because Democrats vote against people we think are too conservative, and not because we hate white men.
The conclusion that Democrats consistently vote against people we think are too conservative regardless of their race/religion is too neat an explanation, huh?
If we vote in favor of liberal/moderate blacks/hispanics/women/white/men and vote against conservative blacks/hispanics/women/white/men, maybe it's not that we discriminate agasint blacks/hispanic/women/white/men who are conservative, maybe it's because we discriminate against conservatives.
And people who prefer strawberry jelly to grape jelly. We hate that.
Posted by: Slashjc at February 24, 2005 02:06 PM/jc
I noted your mention of the odious Woodrow Wilson and thought a bit more about him might not be amiss:
While president of Princeton, he denied admission to blacks, regarding their desires for higher education as "unwarranted".
While president of the US, he supported the segregation of cabinet departments, requiring pictures from job applicants such that their races could be determined. This support resulted in the termination of many black government employees and is probably one of the major causes of black poverty in Washington, DC.
During WWI, he opposed black officers in the army that were supported by Gen. Pershing (I note that "Black Jack" is a euphemism for Pershing's real nickname).
Even the things he is remembered best for (the "Fourteen Points" and the League of Nations) had no noticeable positive effects and arguably exacerbated international tensions between WWI and WWII.
Wilson was evil. I do not use the term frivolously and I say that even though I actually support some reforms that he pushed through congress (the Federal Reserve, for instance).
Posted by: Doug Sundseth at February 24, 2005 04:50 PM“But are you seriously suggesting that Democratic votes against Rice had anything to do with her race?”
Considering what we all know about the memos in which Senate Democrats admitted they were opposing Miguel Estrada because he was Hispanic, I wouldn’t be surprised.
Posted by: Thorley Winston at February 24, 2005 05:19 PMWoodrow Wilson loved the movie Birth of a Nation (the haigography of the KKK). He held private screenings in the White House. He said, "It's like writing history with lightning. And my only regret is that it is all terribly true."
Posted by: Gideon at February 25, 2005 05:01 AMMitch, I'm curious what you think of Lucky Rosenbloom's article in the Spokesman accusing the Republican party of racism because they didn't hire enough African Americans on staff.
Posted by: Eva Young at March 24, 2005 10:41 PM