The picture above includes Sen. Hiram Revels (R-MI), Rep. Benjamin S. Turner (R-AL), Robert DeLarge (R-SC), Josiah Walls (R-FL), Jefferson Long (R-GA), Joseph Rainey and Robert B. Elliott (R-SC), in 1872. They were the First Black American Senators and Representatives to the Untied States Congress. Yes, they were all Republicans.
Picking up where we left off from
Part Two, today Democrat racist Richard Brevard Russell, Jr. has a building in Washington D.C. named after him. No kidding!
Richard Brevard Russell, Jr. was from Georgia, belonged to the Democratic Party, briefly served as Governor of Georgia from 1931 to 1933, and then served in the United States Senate for almost 40 years, from 1933 until his death in 1971.
As a Senator, believe it or not, he was a candidate for President of the United States in the 1952 Democratic National Convention, coming in second to Adlai Stevenson. Senator Russell was a Democrat Party leader who dominated Congress from 1937 to 1963, and at his death was the most senior member of the Senate.
He was for decades a leader of Southern opposition to the civil rights movement. He was a racist pure and simple. He believed that blacks should not have equal rights. Russell opposed civil rights laws "as unconstitutional and unwise." He vehemently defended white supremacy and apparently did not question it or ever apologize for his segregationist views, votes and speeches.
For many decades, Russell was key in blocking civil rights legislation that might have protected African-Americans from lynching, disenfranchisement, and disparate treatment under the law.
After President Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act of 1964, Russell, along with more than a dozen other Southern Senators, including Herman Talmadge and Russell Long, boycotted the 1964 Democratic National Convention in Atlantic City.
The Russell Senate Office Building was named for former Senator Richard Brevard Russell, Jr. of Georgia in 1972. It seems that Russell being a bigot, a racist, a white supremacist, doesn't matter - Democrats honor their own no matter how horrible they were.
But how about naming a Nuclear Aircraft Carrier after an old hardcore racist?
That's exactly what they did for John C. Stennis who was a Democrat U.S. Senator from the state of Mississippi. He was a Democrat who served in the Senate for over 41 years, becoming its most senior member by his retirement.
Stennis was an ardent supporter of racial segregation, like most Mississippi politicians.
In the 1950s and 1960s he vigorously opposed the Voting Rights Act, the Civil Rights Act of 1964 as well as the Civil Rights Act of 1968 and he signed the Southern Manifesto of 1956, supporting the Democrat filibuster tactics to block or delay passage of all civil rights cases.
Before Congress, as a prosecutor, Stennis sought the conviction and execution of three black sharecroppers whose murder confessions had been extracted by torture, including flogging.
The convictions were overturned by the U.S. Supreme Court in the landmark case of Brown v. Mississippi (1936) that banned the use of evidence obtained by torture. The transcript of the trial indicated that John C. Stennis was fully aware that the suspects had been tortured. And no, it didn't effect his career or his conscience.
And of course, what would mentioning Stennis be without mentioning his cohort racist Democrat James Oliver Eastland from Mississippi who briefly served in the United States Senate in 1941 - and again from 1943 until his resignation December 27, 1978.
Eastland is best known for his strong opposition to the civil rights movement.
When the Supreme Court issued its decision in the landmark case Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas 347 US 483 (1954), Eastland, like most Democrats, denounced it.
In a speech given in Senatobia, Mississippi on August 12, 1955, he said: "On May 17, 1954, the Constitution of the United States was destroyed because of the Supreme Court's decision. You are not obliged to obey the decisions of any court which are plainly fraudulent sociological considerations."
Eastland did not mince words when it came to his feelings about the races mingling. He testified to the Senate 10 days after the Brown decision came down:
"The Southern institution of racial segregation or racial separation was the correct, self-evident truth which arose from the chaos and confusion of the Reconstruction period. Separation promotes racial harmony. It permits each race to follow its own pursuits, and its own civilization. Segregation is not discrimination...
Mr. President, it is the law of nature, it is the law of God, that every race has both the right and the duty to perpetuate itself. All free men have the right to associate exclusively with members of their own race, free from governmental interference, if they so desire."
In March of 1956, he and a whole lot of other Democrats signed something called the Southern Manifesto. It was officially called "The Declaration of Constitutional Principles," known informally as the Southern Manifesto.
It was a document written in February and March of 1956, in the United States Congress, in opposition to racial integration of public places. The manifesto was signed by 97 Democrats from Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, and Virginia.
The Congressmen drafted the document to counter the landmark Supreme Court 1954 ruling Brown v. Board of Education, which determined that segregation of public schools was unconstitutional.
Senators led the opposition, with then Democrat Strom Thurmond writing the initial draft and none other than Richard Russell -- who they named the Senate Building after -- did the final version.
The manifesto was signed by 19 Senators and 82 Representatives, including the entire congressional delegations of the states of Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, South Carolina and Virginia. All of the 99 signatories were Democrats except for two Republicans, Joel Broyhill and Richard Poff of Virginia.
School segregation laws were some of the most enduring and best-known of the Jim Crow laws that characterized the American South and several northern states at the time. The Southern Manifesto accused the Supreme Court of "clear abuse of judicial power."
It promised to use "all lawful means to bring about a reversal of this decision which is contrary to the Constitution and to prevent the use of force in its implementation." The Manifesto suggested that the Tenth Amendment to the United States Constitution should limit the reach of the Supreme Court on such issues.
In many southern States, signing was much more common than not signing. Refusal to sign occurred most prominently among the Texas and Tennessee delegations, where the majority of members of the United States House of Representatives refused to sign.
Tese people were ardent racist, many of whom stood by their oath to the Southern Manifesto when the Civil Rights Act of 1964 came about.
As for Democrat Senator James Eastland, when three civil rights workers Mickey Schwerner, James Chaney, and Andrew Goodman went missing in Mississippi on June 21, 1964, he reportedly told President Lyndon Johnson that the incident was a hoax and there was no Ku Klux Klan in the state, surmising that the three had gone to Chicago.
President Lyndon Johnson once said that, "Jim Eastland could be standing right in the middle of the worst Mississippi flood ever known, and he'd say the niggers caused it, helped out by the Communists."
Eastland, like most of his southern Democrat colleagues, opposed the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
So now let's talk about Senator Robert Byrd, the man who Hillary Clinton called her "Mentor".
Democrat opposition to the Civil Rights Act of 1964, takes us to Senator Robert C. Byrd from West Virginia. A member of the Democratic Party, Byrd served as a U.S. Representative from 1953 until 1959 and as a U.S. Senator from 1959 to 2010. He was the longest-serving senator and the longest-serving member in the history of the United States Congress.
But no, that wasn't his only accolade. Fact is, Democrat Byrd was a Ku Klux Klan member, a man who never ever apologized for his being a Ku Klux Klan Recruiter and racist Draft Dodger during World War II.
In the early 1940s, Robert Byrd recruited 150 or more men to create a new chapter of the Ku Klux Klan. Not just join, but he recruited them to create a chapter that did not exist. When World War II broke out, Byrd was 24 years old. During that time, both younger and older men were enlisting to get into the war and do their part for America. But no, not Robert Byrd.
At an age where other young men were going in the military to fight for Uncle Sam, Robert Byrd got some sort of diferment and held the Klu Klux Klan titles of "Kleagle" (recruiter) and then later "Exalted Cyclops."
Yes, believe it or not, he was a Klan Recruiter and than leader of the Klan. In fact, he was such a popular Klansmen that when it came time to elect the "Exalted Cyclops", the top officer in the local Klan unit, Byrd won unanimously.
When it looked like his Klan connections wouldn't be able to keep him out of the U.S. Army, Byrd wrote to that old champion of white supremacy segregationist Mississippi Senator Theodore Bilbo to help him avoid the Draft Board.
Robert Byrd wrote: "I shall never fight in the armed forces with a Negro by my side ... Rather I should die a thousand times, and see Old Glory trampled in the dirt never to rise again, than to see this beloved land of ours become degraded by race mongrels, a throwback to the blackest specimen from the wilds."
Yes, that was Robert C. Byrd in a letter to white supremacist Sen. Theodore Bilbo (D-MS) in 1944. He followed up that in 1947, when Byrd wrote a letter to a Grand Wizard stating: "The Klan is needed today as never before, and I am anxious to see its rebirth here in West Virginia and in every state in the nation."
Later when running for the United States House of Representatives in 1952, he promptly lied about his Klan connections saying, "After about a year, I became disinterested, quit paying my dues, and dropped my membership in the organization. During the nine years that have followed, I have never been interested in the Klan."
Later he tried to get people to believe that he joined the Klan because he felt it offered excitement and was anti-communist. But Byrd himself, once openly admitted to being in the Ku Klu Klan even in his 30s.
Fact is that his mentor, Senator Theodore Bilbo put it better than any known Klansmen at the time when he said: "No man can leave the Klan. He takes an oath not to do that. Once a Ku Klux, always a Ku Klux."
Byrd demonstrated his loyalty to the Ku Klux Klan when he joined with other Democrat Senators to filibuster the Civil Rights Act of 1964. He personally filibustering the bill for 14 hours.
Democrat President Johnson signed the bill into law. But it was not because of Democrat, it was because President Johnson got almost all of the Republicans to vote for it.
President Johnson got just enough Democrats from the Northern states to fill the ranks and pass the bill. But the fact remains, that without the Republicans the bill would have died because of the Democrat filibuster.
Yes, on June 10, 1964, the Democrat Filibuster of the Civil Rights Act ended. A Bill that would contain provisions that were first laid out in the Republican Civil Rights Bill of 1875.
It was at 9:51 on the morning of June 10, 1964, Senator Robert C. Byrd completed an address that he had begun 14 hours and 13 minutes earlier. The subject was the pending Civil Rights Act of 1964, a measure that occupied the Senate for 57 working days, including six Saturdays.
As Senator Byrd took his seat, House members, former senators, and others—150 of them—vied for limited standing space at the back of the chamber. With all gallery seats taken, hundreds waited outside in hopelessly extended lines.
Georgia Democrat Richard Russell offered the final arguments in opposition to the Civil Rights Bill.
Republican Minority Leader Everett Dirksen, who had enlisted the Republican votes that made cloture a realistic option, spoke for the proponents with his customary eloquence.
He noted that that day marked the 100th anniversary of Abraham Lincoln's nomination to a second term, the Illinois Republican proclaimed, in the words of Victor Hugo, "Stronger than all the armies is an idea whose time has come."
Republican Sen. Dirksen continued, "The time has come for equality of opportunity in sharing in government, in education, and in employment. It will not be stayed or denied. It is here!"
Never in history had the Senate been able to muster enough votes to cut off a Democrat filibuster on a Civil Rights bill. And only once in the 37 years since 1927 had it agreed to cloture for any measure.
The clerk proceeded to call the roll. It got to Republican John James "Whispering Willie" Williams. He was a businessman in Millsboro, in Sussex County, Delaware. He was a Republican, who served four terms as U.S. Senator from Delaware.
John Williams provided the decisive 67th vote, Majority Leader Mike Mansfield exclaimed, "That's it!"
Ardent racist Richard Russell slumped in his chair.
With six wavering senators providing a four-vote victory margin, the final tally stood at 71 to 29. Nine days later the Senate approved the act itself—producing one of the 20th century's towering legislative achievements.
Democrats, and of course today's media talking heads like Chris Matthews, really prefer that you not know about Republicans like George Holden Tinkham of Massachusetts who became known as “the conscience of the House” for his efforts to protect voting rights for blacks.
The Role Of Republicans In Black-American Civil Rights
I find it interesting that Black-Americans have so little information when it comes to what political party has really fought for their best interest.
It seems that the majority of blacks in America today have no knowledge of went occurred, our history, in pre and post Civil War America. The fact that Democrats founded the Ku Klux Klan, the terror and the lynchings of blacks and Republicans and Catholics were a direct result of the Ku Klux Klan, the White League, the Red Shirts and others who were indeed a product of the Democrats is conveniently forgotten today.
It was a Republican President by the name of Dwight D.Eisenhower who declared racial discrimination "a national security issue," as Communists around the world used the racial discrimination and history of violence in the U.S. as a point in their propaganda attacks.
The day after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Brown v. Board of Education, that segregated schools were unconstitutional, it was Dwight D. Eisenhower who told District of Columbia officials to make Washington a model for the rest of the country in integrating black and white public school children.
He proposed to Congress the Civil Rights Acts of 1957 and 1960 and signed those acts into law. The 1957 Civil Rights Act for the first time established a permanent civil rights office inside the Justice Department and a Civil Rights Commission to hear testimony about abuses of voting rights.
Granted both acts were much weaker than subsequent civil rights legislation, but they were in fact constituted the first significant attempts at producing Civil Rights Acts since since the Republican Civil Rights Act of 1875.
In 1957, the state of Arkansas refused to honor a federal court order to integrate their public school system stemming from the Brown decision. Eisenhower demanded that Arkansas governor Orval Faubus obey the court order.
When Faubus balked, President Eisenhower placed the Arkansas National Guard under federal control and sent in the 101st Airborne Division to Arkansas to make sure black-Americans were being treated right.
They escorted and protected nine black students' entry to Little Rock Central High School, an all-white public school, for the first time since the Reconstruction Era. And yes, Republicans did that.
Martin Luther King, Jr., wrote to Eisenhower to thank him for his actions, writing "The overwhelming majority of southerners, Negro and white, stand firmly behind your resolute action to restore law and order in Little Rock".
It seems that Democrats today, liberal whites and blacks, forget or refuse to hear who voted for and who was in reality against the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Those who signed the Democrat Southern manifesto were against the Civil Rights Act of 1964, in fact they filibustered in an attempt to stop blacks from having equal rights.
It is a fact that Democrats have traditionally fought against Civil Rights Act for black Americans starting way back in the 1860s. In fact if it weren't for Republicans who were founded as an anti-Slavery Political Party, none of the Civil Rights Acts would not have been passed.
And while Democrats today attempt to spin the truth all they want, including now making the horseshit assertion that somehow by magic the Republican Party today is actually the Democrat Party of yesterday, the truth is that Republicans have fought for minorities in America. And yes, longer than the Democrat Party ever has. And friends, the Democrat Party is much older than the Republican Party by decades!
For PART FOUR of the history of the Democrat Party's Legacy of Racism & Segregation, their efforts to discriminate, and fight against Equal Rights and even Women's Rights, click here:
Democrat Party Legacy of Racism & Segregation: Part Four
Tom Correa