The Secret Racist History of the Democratic Party

Kimberly Bloom Jackson 

Have you heard of Josiah Walls or Hiram Rhodes Revels?  How about Joseph Hayne Rainey?  If not, you’re not alone.  I taught history and I never knew half of our nation’s past until I began to re-educate myself by learning from original source materials, rather than modern textbooks written by progressive Democrats with an agenda.

Interestingly, Democrats have long ago erased these historic figures from our textbooks, only to offer deceitful propaganda and economic enticements in an effort to convince people, especially black Americans, that it’s the Democrats rather than Republicans who are the true saviors of civil liberties.  Luckily, we can still venture back into America’s real historical record to find that facts are stubborn things.  Let’s take a closer look.

An 1872 print by Currier and Ives depicts the first seven black Americans elected to the U.S. Congress during the Reconstruction period of 1865 to 1877-- and they’re all Republican!

From left to right:

• Hiram Rhodes Revels, R-MS (1822-1901):  Already an ordained minister, Revels served as an army chaplain and was responsible for recruiting three additional regiments during the Civil War.  He was also elected to the Mississippi Senate in 1869 and the U.S. Senate in 1870, making him America’s first black senator. 
• Rep. Benjamin Turner, R-AL (1825-1894):  Within just five years, Turner went from slave to wealthy businessman.  He also became a delegate to the Alabama Republican State Convention of 1867 and a member of the Selma City Council in 1868.  In 1871, Turner was even elected to the U.S. Congress.
• Rep. Robert DeLarge, R-SC (1842-1874):  Although born a slave, DeLarge chaired the Republican Platform Committee in 1867 and served as delegate at the Constitutional Convention of 1868.  From 1868 to 1870, he was also elected to the State House of Representatives and later Congress, serving from 1871 to 1873.
• Rep. Josiah Walls, R-FL (1842-1905): Walls was a slave who was forced to fight for the Confederate Army until he was captured by Union troops.  He promptly enlisted with the Union and eventually became an officer. In 1870, he was elected to the U.S. Senate. Unfortunately, harassing Democrats questioned his qualifications until he was officially expelled.  Although he was re-elected after the first legal challenge, Democrats took control of Florida and Walls was prohibited from returning altogether.
• Rep. Jefferson Long, R-GA (1836-1901): Long was also born into slavery, and he too became a successful business man.  However, when Democrats boycotted his business he suffered substantial financial loses.  But that didn’t stop Long, who in 1871 became the first black representative to deliver a congressional speech in the U.S. House. 
• Rep. Joseph Hayne Rainey, R-SC (1832-1887):  Although born a slave, Rainey became the first black Speaker of the U.S. House for a brief period in 1870. In fact, he served in Congress longer than any other black America at that time.
• Rep. Robert Brown Elliot, R-SC (1842-1884): Elliot helped to organize the Republican Party throughout rural South Carolina.  He was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives in 1870 and reelected in 1872.  In 1874, he was elected to the State House of Representatives and eventually served as Speaker of the House in the State Legislature.

Clearly, the latter half of the 19th Century, and for much of the early half of the 20th Century, it was the Republican Party that was the party of choice for blacks. How can this be? Because the Republican Party was formed in the late 1850s as an oppositional force to the pro-slavery Democratic Party.  Republicans wanted to return to the principles that were originally established in the republic’s founding documents and in doing so became the first party to openly advocated strong civil rights legislation.  Voters took notice and in 1860 Abraham Lincoln was elected President along with a Republican Congress.  This infuriated the southern Democrats, who soon afterwards left Congress and took their states with them to form what officially became known as The Slaveholding Confederate States of America.

Meanwhile, Republicans pushed full steam ahead.  Take, for example, the Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution that officially abolished slavery in 1864.  Of the 118 Republicans in Congress (House and Senate) at the time, all 118 voted in favor of the legislation, while only 19 of 82 Democrats voted likewise.  Then there’s the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments guaranteeing rights of citizenship and voting to black males.  Not a single Democrat voted in favor of either the Fourteenth (House and Senate) or Fifteenth (House and Senate) Amendments.

In spite of this, in almost every Southern state, the Republican Party was actually formed by blacks, not whites. Case in point is Houston, Texas, where 150 blacks and 20 whites created the Republican Party of Texas. But perhaps most telling of all with respect to the Republican Party’s achievements is that black men were continuously elected to public office.  For example, 42 blacks were elected to the Texas legislature, 112 in Mississippi, 190 in South Carolina, 95 representatives and 32 senators in Louisiana, and many more elected in other states -- all Republican. D

Read more here:
Articles: The Secret Racist History of the Democratic Part