Does "Black Lives Matter"...Matter to Blacks?

Author's Note: The following story has words that some readers may find offensive, and they should. The outrage should not be because I quoted a prominent person who actually used the words. Instead, the person who made the statements should be condemned. The idea that I should change the word to something less offensive diminishes the impact of what the person said. I spoke with people in the black community about this article, and no one objected to the language as long I stated who made the statements and provided a link verifying that the person made the statement. We should not change history because of political correctness. The truth sometimes may not pretty, but changing the words so people can accept a less descriptive representation is not the truth. 

The Washington Post ran this headline in its paper on July 21, 2020, "Americans support Black Lives Matter, but resist shifts of police funds or removal of statues of Confederate generals or presidents who were enslavers." (1) The BLM people don't seem to know their American history; if they did, they would know that the Democratic Party is the party of slavery. The origins of the Democratic Party relationship to slavery go back to January 1828, when the Democratic Party was created. They also were opposed to the ending of slavery.

After the Civil War, the Democratic Party brought out the Black Codes and the Jim Crow laws to contribute to the control of former slaves in the south. The anti-slave as well as the entire anti-black position of the Democratic Party continued for over 100 years after the Civil War. In fact, a bloc of 18 southern Democrats vehemently opposed the Civil Rights Act, finally passed in 1964. The only way it was passed was because of the pressure and votes of the Republican Party.

I implore Black Lives Matter members and the rest of the black community to spend a little time on Google searching for Democratic Governor George Wallace and his segregation policy that caused Republican President Dwight Eisenhower to send in federal troops to desegregate the schools in Alabama. Wallace later said in his 1963 Alabama governor’s inaugural address that he stood for "segregation now, segregation tomorrow,  segregation forever." (2)

The Ku Klux Klan was founded (3) in 1865 by Democrats, including ex-Confederate soldiers Frank McCord, Richard Reed, John Lester, John Kennedy, J. Calvin Jones, and James Crowe in Pulaski, Tennessee. The group initially had been a "social club," but quickly became a violent white supremacist group. Its first grand wizard was Nathan Bedford Forrest (4), an ex-Confederate general, and prominent slave trader.

There were many incidents where Democratic president LBJ made racial slurs, including what he reportedly said upon appointing African-American Judge Thurgood Marshall to the Supreme Court: "Son, when I appoint a n****r to the court, I want everyone to know he's a n****r." Later he said, “These Negroes, they're getting pretty uppity these days, and that's a problem for us since they've got something now, they never had before, the political pull to back up their uppityness."

"Now we've got to do something about this, we've got to give them a little something, just enough to quiet them down, not enough to make a difference. If we don't move at all, then their allies will line up against us, and there'll be no way of stopping them, we'll lose the filibuster, and there'll be no way of putting a brake on all sorts of wild legislation. It'll be Reconstruction all over again." (5)

One last example of LBJ’s racism was when he reportedly referred to the Civil Rights Act of 1957 as the "N-word bill" in more than one private phone conversation with Senate colleagues. (6) Southern Democrats, as previously stated, held up the 1964 Civil Rights Act and set a filibuster record of 60 days.

More recently, the presumptive Democrat presidential candidate, Joe Biden, said in an interview, "You got more questions. If you have a problem figuring out if you're for me or Trump, then you ain't black." (7)

There has been a long history of racism from members of the Democratic Party and even the party itself. The recent protesters in cities controlled by Democrats have destroyed and looted numerous businesses and public buildings, yet all the while blaming Republicans as being the real racists. Protesters and activists and rioters: take some time off the streets, go to your local library, get some books on the causes of the Civil War, and figure out who the real racists are in America.


NOTES:

1. www.washingtonpost.com/politics/americans-support-black-lives-matter-but-resist-shifts-of-police-funds-or-removal-of-statues-of-confederate-generals-or-presidents-who-were-enslavers/2020/07/21/02d22468-cab0-11ea-91f1-28aca4d833a0_story.html

2. digital.archives.alabama.gov/digital/collection/voices/id/2952

3. apnews.com/afs:Content:2336745806

4. www.khanacademy.org/humanities/us-history/civil-war-era/reconstruction/a/the-first-kkk

5. www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/2088gl/president_lbj_ill_have_those_ns_voting_democratic/

6. www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/2088gl/president_lbj_ill_have_those_ns_voting_democratic/

7. www.latimes.com/opinion/story/2020-05-22/biden-says-if-youre-black-and-dont-vote-for-him-youre-not-black-hes-right