Listening to excerpts of Sharpton’s Wednesday night speech at the Democratic Convention, I was struck once again by the Democratic Party’s historical amnesia. In order to explain why blacks prefer the Democratic Party 9-1, Sharpton listed all the martyrs who died to secure black voting rights, as if these martyrs died fighting Republicans.
But he ignores that the people who were denying blacks the right to vote were Democrats, who had ruled the South ever since the end of Reconstruction. It was Democrats who created the Jim Crow system that kept blacks down from the end of Reconstruction until the 1950s. The civil-rights movement was a struggle against the southern Democratic Party, not the GOP.
He also forgot to mention that on the Civil Rights Act, which paved the way for the Voting Rights Act, it was Democrat senators who held up passage of the bill until Republicans provided President Johnson with enough additional votes to overcome Democratic resistance.
In fact, as Stephan and Abigail Thernstrom note in their book "America in Black and White," a higher percentage of Republican senators supported the bill than among Democrats. 27 of 33 Republican senators voted for the bill, while just 44 of 67 Democrats supported it.
The GOP is the party of black oppression?
Well, they are against affirmative action, welfare, and failed public schools and for opportunity and hard work to earn mobility in American life. That’s at least why the black leaders seem to hate them so much. The entitlement trough seems to be short of food these days.
Historically speaking the democratic party that stood so admantly in the way of voter rights in the 1950’s IS today’s republican party. Through the history of the south, the parties switched names, and ideals. Sharpton was not speaking out against a name (ie Republican) or in support of a name (ie Democrat) he was speaking out in opposition to the IDEALS that the current republican party holds. Ideals that are detrimental to the goals and values of the African American.
I am extremely proud of him.