Since its founding in 1829, the Democratic Party has fought against every major civil rights
initiative, and has a long history of discrimination.
The Democratic Party defended slavery, started the Civil War, opposed Reconstruction,
founded the Ku Klux Klan, imposed segregation, perpetrated lynchings, and fought against
the civil rights acts of the 1950s and 1960s.
In contrast, the Republican Party was founded in 1854 as an anti-slavery party. Its mission
was to stop the spread of slavery into the new western territories with the aim of abolishing it
entirely. This effort, however, was dealt a major blow by the Supreme Court. In the 1857 case
Dred Scott v. Sandford, the court ruled that slaves aren’t citizens; they’re property. The seven
justices who voted in favor of slavery? All Democrats. The two justices who dissented? Both
Republicans.
The slavery question was, of course, ultimately resolved by a bloody civil war. The commanderin-chief during that war was the first Republican President, Abraham Lincoln – the man who
freed the slaves.
Six days after the Confederate army surrendered, John Wilkes Booth, a Democrat, assassinated
President Lincoln. Lincoln’s vice president, a Democrat named Andrew Johnson, assumed
the presidency. But Johnson adamantly opposed Lincoln’s plan to integrate the newly freed
slaves into the South’s economic and social order.
During the era of Reconstruction, federal troops stationed in the south helped secure rights for
the newly freed slaves. Hundreds of black men were elected to southern state legislatures as
Republicans, and 22 black Republicans served in the US Congress by 1900. The Democrats
did not elect a black man to Congress until 1935.
But after Reconstruction ended, when the federal troops went home, Democrats roared back
into power in the South. They quickly reestablished white supremacy across the region with
measures like black codes – laws that restricted the ability of blacks to own property and run
businesses. And they imposed poll taxes and literacy tests, used to subvert the black citizen’s
right to vote.
And how was all of this enforced? By terror -- much of it instigated by the Ku Klux Klan,
founded by a Democrat, Nathan Bedford Forrest.
Caption this Meme
