Bruce Bartlett from the Wall Street Journal’s editorial page: Whitewash, The Racist History The Democratic Party Wants You To Forget.
In his new book, “The Conscience of a Liberal,” New York Times columnist Paul Krugman makes a strong case for his belief that the political success of the Republican Party and the conservative movement over the past 40 years has resulted largely from their co-optation of Southern racists that were the base of the Democratic Party until its embrace of civil rights in the 1960s. A key piece of evidence for Mr. Krugman is that Ronald Reagan gave his first speech after accepting the Republican presidential nomination in 1980 near Philadelphia, Miss., where three civil rights workers were murdered in 1964. In the course of this speech, Reagan said he supported “states’ rights.” Mr. Krugman says this was code declaring his secret sympathy for Southern racism…
However, if a single mention of states’ rights 27 years ago is sufficient to damn the Republican Party for racism ever afterwards, what about the 200-year record of prominent Democrats who didn’t bother with code words? They were openly and explicitly for slavery before the Civil War, supported lynching and “Jim Crow” laws after the war, and regularly defended segregation and white supremacy throughout most of the 20th century.
Following are some quotes from prominent Democrats largely drawn from my new book, “Wrong on Race: The Democratic Party’s Buried Past.” Even with the exclusion of all quotes that contain the N-word, it is clear that many of the Democratic Party’s most important historical figures have long made statements that reduce Reagan’s alleged transgression to a drop in the ocean. If we are going to hold him and his party accountable for a single mention of states’ rights, then the party of those listed below is far more culpable in promoting and defending racism.
….
“I hold that a Negro is not and never ought to be a citizen of the United States. I hold that this government was made on the white basis; made by the white men, for the benefit of white men and their posterity forever, and should be administered by white men and none others.”
–Sen. Stephen A. Douglas (D., Ill.), 1858
Presidential nominee of the Democratic Party, 1860“Instead of restoring the Union, it [the Republican Party] has, so far as in its power, dissolved it, and subjected ten states, in time of profound peace, to military despotism and Negro supremacy.”
–Platform of the Democratic Party, 1868
“While the tendency of the white race is upward, the tendency of the colored race is downward.”
–Sen. Thomas Hendricks (D., Ind.), 1869
Democratic nominee for Vice President, 1876
Vice President, 1885“Republicanism means Negro equality, while the Democratic Party means that the white man is supreme. That is why we Southerners are all Democrats.”
–Sen. Ben Tillman (D., S.C.), 1906
Chairman, Committee on Naval Affairs, 1913-19“The Republican Party committed a great public crime when it gave the right of suffrage to the blacks.”
–New York Times editorial, May 10, 1900.
Mr. Bartlett’s article contains much more.
More
Deroy Murdock: “Blacks might be surprised to compare Republican history with the Democrats.”
Grand Old Partisan: The GOP’s Emancipation Proclamation.
Right Truth: Why Martin Luther King, Jr. Was A Republican.
National Black Republican Association: “The Ku Klux Klan was the Terrorist Arm of the Democrat Party.”