American Thinker
July 18, 2016
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!
- Sen. 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. Democrats didn’t elect their first black American to the U.S. House until 1935!
Political Gangs With Pointy Hoods
By the mid-1860s, the Republican Party’s alliance with blacks had caused a noticeable strain on the Democrats’ struggle for electoral significance in the post-Civil War era. This prompted the Democratic Party in 1866 to develop a new pseudo-secret political action group whose sole purpose was to help gain control of the electorate. The new group was known simply by their initials, KKK (Ku Klux Klan).
This political relationship was nationally solidified shortly thereafter during the 1868 Democratic National Convention when former Civil War General Nathan Bedford Forrest was honored as the KKK’s first Grand Wizard. But don’t bother checking the Democratic National Committee’s website for proof. For many years, even up through the 2012 Presidential Election, the DNC had omitted all related history from 1848 to 1900 from their timeline -- half a century worth! Now, for the 2016 election cycle, they’ve scratched even more history. Apparently, they believe it’s easier to just lie and claim to have fought for civil rights for over 200 hundred years, while seeing fit to list only a select few distorted events as exemplary, beginning as late as the 1920s. Incredibly, the DNC conveniently jumps past more than 100 years of American history!
Nevertheless, this sordid history is still well documented. There’s even a thirteen-volume set of Congressional investigations dating from 1872 detailing the Klan’s connection to the Democratic Party. The official documents, titled Report of the Joint Select Committee to Inquire Into the Condition of Affairs in the Late Insurrectionary States, irrefutably proves the KKK’s prominent role in the Democratic Party.
One of the most vivid examples of collusion between the KKK and Democratic Party was when Democrat Senator Wade Hampton ran for the governorship of South Carolina in 1876. The Klan put into action a battle plan to help Democrats win, stating: “Every Democrat must feel honor bound to control the vote of at least one Negro by intimidation…. Democrats must go in as large numbers…and well-armed.” An issue of Harper’s Weekly that same year illustrated this mindset with a depiction of two white Democrats standing next to a black man while pointing a gun at him. At the bottom of the depiction is a caption that reads: “Of Course He Wants To Vote The Democratic Ticket!”
This is reminiscent of the 2008 Presidential election when members of the New Black Panther Party hung out at a Philadelphia precinct wielding big batons.
The Klan’s primary mission was to intimidate Republicans -- black and white. In South Carolina, for example, the Klan even passed out “push cards” -- a hit list of 63 (50 blacks and 13 whites) “Radicals” of the legislature pictured on one side and their names listed on the other. Democrats called Republicans radicals not just because they were a powerful political force, but because they allowed blacks to participate in the political process. Apparently, this was all too much for Democrats to bear.
By 1875, Republicans, both black and white, had worked together to pass over two dozen civil rights bills. Unfortunately, their momentum came to a screeching halt in 1876 when the Democratic Party took control of Congress. Hell bent on preventing blacks from voting, Southern Democrats devised nearly a dozen shady schemes, like requiring literacy tests, misleading election procedures, redrawing election lines, changing polling locations, creating white-only primaries, and even rewriting state constitutions. Talk about disenfranchising black voters!
There were also lynchings, but not what you might think. According to the University of Missouri-Kansas City School of Law, between 1882 and 1964 an estimated 3,446 blacks and 1,279 whites were lynched at the hands of the Klan.
Today, the Democratic Party no longer needs the help of political gangs wearing pointy hoods to do their dirty work. Instead, they do it themselves. You may recall the case of black Tea Party activist Kenneth Gladney, who was brutally beaten by two SEIU members during a 2009 health care town hall meeting. In February 2011, a union thug with Communications Workers of America was caught on tape physically assaulting a young female FreedomWorks activist in Washington, DC. Then in 2012, Michigan Education Association President Steve Cook jumped on the protest bandwagon against the state’s new right-to-work legislation stating, “Whoever votes for this is not going to have any peace for the next two years.” An even worse threat was issued on the floor of the Michigan House of Representatives the next day by Democratic Representative Douglas Geiss who charged, “There will be blood!”
As we forge ahead into this critical 2016 election season, let us not forget the real history of America when blacks and whites, primarily Republicans, worked side by side defending the rights and dignity of all Americans. It’s a history that has been kept out of the history books--a history that today’s Democrats routinely lie about while promptly pointing their finger at Republicans, calling white Republicans racists and black Republicans Uncle Toms. This is because Democrats have a secret past that must be protected and an agenda that must be fulfilled. If history is any indication of what the future might hold, brace yourself. There will be some in the Democratic Party who will be prepared to do whatever it takes to silence any opposition.
Kimberly Bloom Jackson is a former actress turned teacher who holds a doctorate in cultural anthropology. Her many writings on Hollywood, education, and culture can be found at SnoopingAnthropologist.com.
