Democrat Party Legacy of Racism & Segregation: Part Two

By Tom Correa

Picking things up from PART ONE, after the Civil War, Republicans in control of Congress set up reconstruction efforts in the South, this period is known as the Reconstruction Era. 

During this period coalitions of freedmen (freed slaves), recent black and white arrivals from the North (carpetbaggers), and white Southerners who supported Reconstruction (scalawags) cooperated to form Republican bi-racial state governments.

They introduced various reconstruction programs, including the founding of public schools in most states for the first time, and the establishment of charitable institutions.

They raised taxes, which historically had been low as wealthy planters preferred to make private investments for their own purposes usually offered massive aid to support railroads to improve transportation and shipping.

Were there widespread corruption? Yes. But worse there was a violent opposition towards freedmen and whites who supported Reconstruction.

It first emerged under the name of the Ku Klux Klan (KKK), a secret vigilante organization, which led to federal intervention by President Ulysses S. Grant in 1871 that suppressed the Klan.

It also emerged as the White League and the Red Shirts who were not secret organizations. They were both armed para-military organizations who openly supported the Democrat party.

Democrats calling themselves "Redeemers" regained control state by state, sometimes using fraud and violence to control state elections. Their goal was to limit blacks and run off those helping them.

A deep national economic depression following the Panic of 1873 led to major Democratic gains in the North, the collapse of many railroad schemes in the South, and a growing sense of frustration in the North. The end of Reconstruction was a staggered process, and the period of Republican control ended at different times in different states.

With the Compromise of 1877, Army intervention in the South ceased and Republican control collapsed in the last three state governments in the South. This was followed by a period that Southerner Democrats labeled "Redemption".

They saw it as a time which white-dominated state legislatures enacted Jim Crow laws. And yes, after 1890 they disfranchised most blacks and many poor whites through a combination of constitutional amendments and electoral laws.

Democrats in the South used Reconstruction controls to foster their desire to impose a system of white supremacy and second-class citizenship for blacks, known as the age of Jim Crow.

Democrats love to tell Americans how the Democrat Party has always been on the side of black-Americans and other minorities. But that'a the big lie!

Democrats fail to mention incredibly huge number of Democrats who fought tooth and nail against Civil Rights Bills - all to keep segregation in place. And yes, even so far as to swear an oath to fight it.

Several historians have described Democrat President Woodrow Wilson's policies as racist, and have even gone so far as to describe Wilson personally as a racist. Here was a Democrat who was a supposed "intellectual," yet he was a staunch racist and segregationist. He was not only for segregation -- he expanded it to the federal level.

In 1912, "an unprecedented number" of African Americans left the Republican Party to cast their vote for Wilson, a Democrat. They were encouraged by his promises of support for minorities. But, once he entered office, Wilson's cabinet members expanded racially segregationist policies.

Black leaders who had supported Wilson in the 1912 election were angered when Wilson placed segregationist Southerners in charge of many executive departments, and the administration acted to reduce the already-meager number of African-Americans in political-appointee positions.

Wilson's cabinet officials, with the president's blessings, proceeded to establish official segregation policies in most federal government offices. In some departments this was taking place for the first time since 1863. And yes, those policies had an effect on new buildings and facilities in the federal government, they were being designed to keep the races separated while working.

Historian Eric Foner wrote: "[Wilson's] administration imposed full racial segregation in Washington and hounded from office considerable numbers of black federal employees."

The Democrat's concept of segregation was also quickly implemented at the Post Office Department headquarters in Washington, D.C. as many African American employees were downgraded and even fired. And yes, the segregation implemented in the Department of Treasury and the Post Office Department involved not only screened-off working spaces - but separate lunchrooms and toilets.

Some segregationist federal workplace policies introduced by the President Wilson's administration would remain in place through Harry Truman administration - only to be stopped by a Republican president by the name of Dwight S. Eisenhower.

Other steps were taken by the Wilson Administration to make obtaining a civil service job more difficult for blacks. Primary among these was the requirement, implemented in 1914 and continued until 1940, that all candidates for civil service jobs attach a photograph to their application further allowing for discrimination in the hiring process.

President Wilson did not interfere with the well-established system of Jim Crow -- and in fact backed the demands of Southern Democrats that their states be left alone to deal with issues of race and black voting without interference from Washington.

In 1914, Wilson told The New York Times, "If the colored people made a mistake in voting for me, they ought to correct it."

Wilson drafted hundreds of thousands of blacks into the army, giving them equal pay with whites, but kept them in all-black units with white officers, and kept the great majority out of combat. When a delegation of blacks protested the discriminatory actions, Wilson told them "segregation is not a humiliation but a benefit, and ought to be so regarded by you gentlemen."

Some Democrat Party allies started way back then. The NAACP is a great example of talking about fighting racism and segregation -- yet supporting those who are directly responsible for it. To show how even the NAACP could be bribed back then, even after seeing the racism coming from the Democrat Party, take a look at NAACP leader W. E. B. Du Bois.

Du Bois, believe it or not, actually went out and campaigned for Woodrow Wilson in 1918. He did so after being offered an Army commission in exchange for his support. DuBois accepted, but he later failed his Army physical and did not serve.

Wilson's segregationist stance as president should perhaps not have come as a surprise. While holding the position of president of Princeton University, Wilson had discouraged blacks from even applying for admission, preferring to keep the peace among white students than have black students admitted.

In Wilson's History of the American People (1901), he supported the Ku Klux Klan of the late 1860s by saying that their rise was as the natural outgrowth of Reconstruction. 

Democrat President Woodrow Wilson made excuses for what the KKK was doing. He even went so far as saying that the Klan was "a lawless reaction to a lawless period."

Wilson excused the Klan's actions by saying that the Klan "began to attempt by intimidation what they were not allowed to attempt by the ballot or by any ordered course of public action".

That my friends, is a real load of crap! But wait, President Wilson was the perfect Democrat for many reasons. He was touted as being a University intellectual, a die-hard liberal, a progressive, supposedly enlightened and refined, and he cared about people.

Of course the Democrat Party seem to conveniently look the other way over the facts that Wilson did not care for black people or any of the new European immigrants that were showing up from across the Atlantic. This guy hated all sorts of Americans.

Wilson had harsh words to say about immigrants in his history books, but after he entered politics in 1910, Wilson worked to integrate immigrants into the Democratic party - some say because he was told they needed the votes.

During World War I, all Irish and Italian and other immigrants who wanted to join the United States military were forced to repudiate any loyalty to enemy nations - as if their joining our military wasn't enough of a statement all by itself.

Irish Americans were becoming very powerful in the Democratic Party and opposed going to war as allies of their traditional enemy Great Britain, especially after the violent suppression of the Easter Rebellion of 1916. Wilson won them over in 1917 by promising to ask Britain to give Ireland its independence. At Versailles, however, Wilson reneged.

It was something that Democrats learned to do early on. It has been the Democrat Party method of operating for years. It is their political philosophy: To get votes, or money, or favors, make promises with no intention of fulfilling them. then re-neg on those promises with lame excuses. It's the way they have operated for well over a 100 years -- with no change in sight.

As a result of Wilson going back on his word, much of the Irish-American community denounced him. But Wilson didn't care because in turn he blamed the Irish Americans and German Americans for lack of popular support for the League of Nations. But please don't think that President Wilson was the lone Democrat in Washington who was a hardcore racist as he was. He had lots of company.

Democrat Ellison DuRant "Cotton Ed" Smith who represented South Carolina in the United States Senate from 1909 until 1944 was one of them. During Smith's time in Congress, he had a goal "to keep the Negroes down and the price of cotton up."

Known for being a reputed showman, Smith would publicly promote this goal by riding to Washington on a wagon-load of cotton waiving the banner of white supremacy. Isn't it sort of queer how Democrats today fail to mention him?

Smith also developed a reputation for having a violent temper while speaking in Congress and would at times stand on his feet and try to get the floor speaker's attention by repeatedly hacking his armchair with a penknife whenever the speaker angered him.

In 1944, Olin D. Johnston challenged Smith in the Democratic Primary. During the campaign, Johnston, Governor of South Carolina, was able to the snatch the "flag of white supremacy" from Smith by boasting how he countered the US Supreme Court's recent Smith v. Allwright decision - which ruled that racial segregation in state primaries was unconstitutional.

You see, as Governor of South Carolina, Olin Johnston passed a series of laws to make the South Carolina Democratic Party "a private club" - which could keep blacks from voting in the state's primary.

Democrats have always been devious that way. And honestly, you've got to love it when Democrats one up each other, even if it means boasting about how many slaves they own or how they screwed over the next guy - in this case black Americans in South Carolina.

To me, the Democrat that was the biggest racist of them all was probably Theodore Gilmore Bilbo who twice served as Governor of Mississippi and later was elected a U.S. Senator from 1935 to 1947).

This Democrat made his name a synonym for "white supremacy". He was proud of being a racist in the old style of the Slave Owner Democrats in the South. And like other Democrats who created the Ku Klux Klan after the Civil War, Bilbo believed that black people were inferior. So he vehemently defended segregation.

He also had another distinction, while serving as a U.S. Senator -- he was a member of the Ku Klux Klan. And frankly, I bet you thought Senator Robert Byrd was the only Democrat to be in Congress and the Klan at the same time.

Nope, Senator Theodore Bilbo was a true racist from the get go. He was the real deal. He even wrote a book entitled, "Take Your Choice: Separation or 'Mongrelization'." And in the Senate, Bilbo became attracted by the ideas of black separatists such as Marcus Garvey.

In fact, he was such a racist that on June 6th, 1938, Senator Bibo even went so far as to propose an Amendment to the Federal Work-Relief Bill of 1938 -- proposing that Americano deport 12 Million black-Americans to Liberia at Federal expense. All with the excuse that this was being done to help relieve America's unemployment problems.

But wait, it wasn't only Bibo. You see, there was a group of Democrats who were led by Senator Theodore Gilmore Bilbo who all wanted to deport 12 Million black Americans to Liberia at government expense - with the excuse that it would relieve unemployment problems during the Great Depression.

And believe it or not, Democrat Senator Bilbo even wrote a book advocating the idea. Black separatists such as Marcus Garvey praised him in return, saying that "Bilbo had done wonderfully well for the Negro".

The Senate assigned Bilbo to what was considered the least important Senate committee, one on governance of the District of Columbia. It was an attempt to limit his influence. But even banishing him to some obscure job didn't help, instead Bilbo used his position to advance his white supremacist views.

Bilbo was against giving any vote to district residents, especially as the district's Black population was increasing during the Great Migration. After re-election, he advanced to sufficient seniority. Bilbo revealed his membership in the Ku Klux Klan in an interview on the radio program Meet the Press.

Democrat Senator Bilbo said, "No man can leave the Klan. He takes an oath not to do that. Once a Ku Klux, always a Ku Klux."

Bilbo was outspoken in saying that blacks should not be allowed to vote anywhere in the United States, regardless of the Fourteenth and Fifteenth amendments to the Constitution.

It's a fact that African-American World War II veterans complained of longstanding disfranchisement in the South, which Mississippi had achieved in 1890 by changes to its constitution related to electoral and voter registration rules. Other Southern states followed with similar changes through 1910, which survived most court challenges. After all, Democrat politicians and Democrat judges -- how could blacks in the South ever hope to be free and equal.

Bilbo's campaign was accused of provoking violence related to voting. He was a prominent Democrat participant in the lengthy Southern Democratic filibuster of the Costigan-Walker Anti-Lynching Bill before the Senate in 1938.

If you want to hear what a real Democrat racist sounds like, listen to the things Democrat Bilbo came up with!

Bilbo said,: "If you succeed in the passage of this bill, you will open the flood-gates of hell in the South. Raping, mobbing, lynching, race riots, and crime will be increased a thousand-fold; and upon your garments and the garments of those who are responsible for the passage of the measure will be the blood of the raped and outraged daughters of Dixie, as well as the blood of the perpetrators of these crimes that the red-blooded Anglo-Saxon White Southern men will not tolerate."

A real charmer huh! But of course Democrats tell a different story as to who really held down black-Americans. Maybe now you see why I say that history tells a different story than what Democrats are today.

As for Democrat Senator Bilbo, well everyone except those Democrats voting for him took him to task for his denouncing Richard Wright's autobiography, Black Boy, on the Senate floor.

Bibo said, "Its purpose is to plant the seeds of devilment and trouble-breeding in the days to come in the mind and heart of every American Negro.... It is the dirtiest, filthiest, lousiest, most obscene piece of writing that I have ever seen in print. I would hate to have a son or daughter of mine permitted to read it; it is so filthy and so dirty. But it comes from a Negro, and you cannot expect any better from a person of his type."

Bilbo was re-elected to a third Senate term in November 1946. Based on a request by liberal Democratic Sen. Glen H. Taylor of Idaho, the newly elected Republican majority in the United States Senate refused to seat Bilbo for the term because of his speeches.

Republicans believed that Bilbo was responsible for inciting violence against blacks who wanted to vote in the South. In addition, a Republican controlled Senate committee found that he had taken bribes.

And those he was as famous a racist and white supremacist as there was, Democrats rushed to the defense of Bilbo and a filibuster by his supporters delayed the seating of the Senate for days. It was resolved when a supporter proposed that Bilbo's credentials remain on the table while he returned home to Mississippi to seek medical treatment for cancer.

But don't let Democrats make you think that Senator Theodore Bilbo was an oddity in Congress, because that simply was not the case. Take for example Democrat Howard Smith of Virginia, who was Chairman of the House Rules Committee.

Just like the Democrats who controlled the South after Reconstruction, Howard Smith routinely used his influential position to stop any sort of Civil Rights legislation. In fact, Smith often shuttered committee operations by retreating to his rural farm to avoid deliberations on pending civil rights reform bills.

So now, let's talk about White-Supremacist Democrat Congressman John Rankin who has monuments named after him -- including the Senate Office building.

John Elliott Rankin was a Democratic congressman from the U.S. State of Mississippi who supported racial segregation tooth and nail! On the floor of the United States House of Representatives, he voiced racist views on African Americans, Jews, Japanese, and even accused Albert Einstein of being a Communist Agitator.

In 1944, following the Port Chicago disaster, the U.S. Navy asked Congress to give $5,000 to the victim's families. He was fine with that, that is until he found out the those who died were black sailors.

After he learned most of the dead were black sailors, Democrat Rankin insisted the amount be reduced to $2,000. He was such a major player in Congress that his influence caused the compromise which lowered the amount to $3,000 because most of the dead sailors were black. Friends, that's a racist!

So how long does an openly racist Democrat last in Congress? As you will see, a very long time!

Fact is House Member John E. Rankin of Mississippi defended southern white supremacy and openly fought against Civil Rights on the floor of Congress for 16 Terms.

Later in Rankin’s Congressional career, fellow Democrat Representative Adam Clayton Powell, Jr., of New York, who was black, regularly needled Rankin by sitting as near to him as possible in the House Chamber. As a fellow Democrat, Adam Clayton Powell, Jr., was a pastor who represented Harlem, New York City, in the United States House of Representatives. He was the first person in the state of New York of African-American descent elected to Congress, and became a powerful national politician. Rankin is said to have hated the mere idea that a black man was in Congress, nevertheless as a Democrat. 

Of course there is the Democrat racist who has a Senate building is named after. I'm talking about racist Senator Richard Brevard Russell Jr. from Georgia.

While Democrats are today attacking symbols of the South such as the Confederate Battle flag, they hide the fact that their own Senate building named after Russell who in fact was one of the Democrat Party's biggest racist to ever work in Washington DC. No kidding!

The building was first occupied in 1909 by the Senate of the 61st Congress, but after millions of dollars of renovation, in 1972, the building was named for former Democrat Senator Richard Brevard Russell Jr. who was an ardent racist. He was in fact a key Democrat who fought against Civil Rights for black and women. 

For PART THREE, please click here:

Democrat Party Legacy of Racism & Segregation: Part Three

Democrat Party Legacy of Racism & Segregation: Part One

By Tom Correa

Dear Friends,

Allow me to put this article into perspective for you. As most of you know, I mostly write about American History, especially 1800s American history. Do you want to know why many blacks fled the South and headed West after the Civil War? Do you want to know who they were fleeing from and why? This has everything to do with the Buffalo Soldiers, Black Cowboys, and 1800s America.

Republicans have fought for freedom from their start! Democrats cannot say the same. In fact, Democrats have tried everything humanly possible to keep the black-American down and segregated in our society. And today, Democrats want to ignore the Democrat Party's legacy of racism and segregation and spin things around to make the public think that Republicans are historically racists and are for segregation. It is a lie!

It is a lie the Democrats are trying hard to spin!

Proof that Democrats are trying to rewrite history came during that fantasy special they called the Democrat National Convention in 2012. One by one, each speaker marched up to the podium and told the crowd how mean and heartless Republicans are. Some were not surprising, such as Liberal student Sandra Fluke (pronounced "Fluck" at Georgetown University) who was angry that American taxpayers are against buying condoms. Yes, she feels the American taxpayer should subsidize her $1,000 a year expenditure on condoms. Oh the humanity!

But the speaker who proves the point best, that yes Democrats are liars trying to rewrite history, was Representative John Lewis. John Lewis used his convention speech to argue that a Republican victory in November will send African-Americans back to the early 1950s and '60s, when Africans-Americans were forcibly denied access to restaurants, public restrooms, transportation and the ballot box. Imagine that for a moment! He knowing said that! Knowing very well that it was in fact Democrats who fought against stopping segregation and equality.

Do you want to know what helped drive Black freed slaves West for better lives, and why they fled to escape the terror put upon them by in the South? It was the Democrat Party.

The Democrat Party's History of Racism and Segregation and Jim Crow Laws and the Democrat's use of terror against both Republicans and Black freed slaves during the 1800s!  Democrats, not Republicans, gained the political power to start segregation in the South that lasted almost 100 years. And yes, for a black-American, John Lewis should not have forgotten that fact of history.

“I’ve seen this before, I lived this before,” he claimed with a straight face, after extensively describing his activism in Southern states in the 1950 and 1960s. "We were met by an angry mob that beat us and left us lying in a pool of blood."

On the floor, the roughly 20,000 Democrat delegates went wild giving Lewis a raucous applause. Their applause was incredible! Loud and thunderous cheered the Democrat delegates! 

Of course, the whole time, either through ignorance or apathy, the Democrats there did not realize that the old man up before them was lying to them. John Lewis’ speech was intended to rally African-Americans to vote for Obama, despite the stalled economy which has increased their unemployment rate. And yes, without skipping a beat like an old con artist, John Lewis had the nerve to say that Republican legislators are trying to suppress voting by African-Americans.

“Too many people struggled and died … [and] we have come to far together to ever turn back,” Lewis said. “We must not be silent. … We must march to the polls like never ever before.”

The event was scheduled to be held in the nearby 74,000 capacity at the Bank of America football stadium, but was relocated to the 20,000 capacity basketball arena because of weather concerns. And yes, the almost 20,000 delegates there went wild. Since Lewis proved that he did not want to deal in facts or the truth, why should his followers. Why bother dealing with facts when you are running a smear campaign based on lies, lies, and more lies!

There is no truth, and there is no evidence, to indicate that Republicans plan to put black-Americans "back in chains" or re-segregate African-Americans as Lewis said. But worse, historically, that old con man knew real well that the Republican Party was in fact established in the 1850s to helped destroy slavery, which it did under the first elected Republican president, Abraham Lincoln.

To help win some support from African-Americans, Republican nominee Mitt Romney has argued he can spur the economy and boost the employment and wealth of all Americans. But honestly, Democrats don't want to hear that because they are too busy painting him and other Republicans as "slave owners".

Of course none of that matters when you are in the process of re-writing history. And that is exactly what John Lewis and other Democrats are doing these days. Democrats want people to forget that after they perfected racism, they created the KKK and invented Segregation in the South.

No matter what kind of lies Democrats want to pass, American History does not lie. And yes, our history tells a story of a Democrat Party legacy of racism and segregation only matched by South Africa's apartheid government. After all, Democrats used a system of apartheid in our South long before South Africa ever did!

Democratic Party Campaign Advertisement 1860s

In 1860, because the pro-slavery Democrats wanted to keep their slave "property" -- they instead handed the newly formed anti-slavery Republican Party the presidential election that year. Democrats love of slavery made Republican Abraham Lincoln the 16th President of the United States.

It was pro-slavery Democrats who were at the root cause of the American Civil War. It was over slavery pure and simple. And yes, even thought there are some who will say it was about "states rights" - the fact remains that the "states rights" they were talking about was the Southern states right to keep and sell slaves. Something Republicans were against and Democrats were for!

During the Civil War, Abe Lincoln wanted to reunify the states at any cost. It was hardline Republicans who forced President Lincoln and proclaim the Emancipation Proclamation which freed black-Americans. The Union victory in the Civil War may have given some 4 million slaves their freedom, but African Americans faced a new onslaught of obstacles and injustices during the Reconstruction Era from 1865 to 1877. By late 1865, when the 13th Amendment officially outlawed the institution of slavery, the question of freed blacks' status in the postwar South was still very much unresolved.

Under the lenient Reconstruction Era policies of Democrat President Andrew Johnson, Southern Democrats reestablished civil authority in the former Confederate states in 1865 and 1866. During that time Democrats immediately enacted a series of restrictive laws known as "Black Codes," which were laws designed to restrict the activity freed blacks and ensure their availability as a labor force now that slavery had been abolished. For instance, many states required blacks to sign yearly labor contracts; if they refused, they risked being arrested as vagrants and fined or forced into unpaid labor.

Republicans became outraged over the "black codes," and blamed President Andrew Johnson's policies. By late 1866, control over Reconstruction had shifted to the Republican Party who controlled Congress. And yes, Republicans coined the term "Civil Rights."

The Civil Rights Act of 1866 -- Democrats Were Against Giving Rights To Black Americans

It was something long overdue for black-Americans. The Republicans enacted the Civil Rights Act of 1866 which became a federal law mainly intended to protect the civil rights of African-Americans, in the wake of the American Civil War.

It was formally titled "An Act to protect all Persons in the United States in their Civil Rights, and furnish the Means of their vindication, the Act declared that people born in the United States and not subject to any foreign power are entitled to be citizens, without regard to race, color, or previous condition of slavery or involuntary servitude."

A similar provision was written a few months later in the proposed Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution. Regarding citizenship by birth in the U.S.: "...all persons born in the United States and not subject to any foreign power, excluding Indians not taxed, are hereby declared to be citizens of the United States."

The Civil Rights Act of 1866 also said that any citizen has the same right as a white citizen to make and enforce contracts, sue and be sued, give evidence in court, and inherit, purchase, lease, sell, hold, and convey real and personal property. Persons who denied these rights to former slaves were guilty of a misdemeanor and upon conviction faced a fine not exceeding $1,000, or imprisonment not exceeding one year, or both.

It was intended to provide the freedmen (freed slaves) with the full range of civil rights that were enjoyed by other citizens. This statute was a major part of general federal policy during the Reconstruction era.

Interestingly, parts of the Civil Rights Act of 1866 are still in effect in the 21st century, according to the United States Code: All persons within the jurisdiction of the United States shall have the same right in every State and Territory to make and enforce contracts, to sue, be parties, give evidence, and to the full and equal benefit of all laws and proceedings for the security of persons and property as is enjoyed by white citizens, and shall be subject to like punishment, pains, penalties, taxes, licenses, and "exactions" of every kind, and to no other.

This section of the United States Code is based on section one of the Civil Rights Act of 1866. The Democrat response to the Civil Right Act of 1866 was anger and resentment. And yes, Democrats benefited from the white resentment of Republican administrators and Reconstructionist who helped the newly freed slaves. Their political power steadily grew stronger in the South. Reconstruction after the war, and the consequent hostility to the Republican Party, benefited the Democrat Party. As hostilities grew, Southern Democrats gained political power and created the Ku Klux Klan, the White League, and the Red Shirts to enforce their will.

During the Civil War, Democrats made up the majority of the Confederate Army. After the war, returning Confederate soldiers from Pulaski, Tennessee, created the original Ku Klux Klan during Reconstruction. In actuality, the Ku Klux Klan was one among a number of secret, oath-bound organizations using violence. Others were the Southern Cross in New Orleans (1865) and the Knights of the White Camelia (1867) in Louisiana.

Known as the KKK, historians generally see the KKK as part of the post Civil War insurgent violence related not only to the high number of veterans in the population, but also to their effort to control the dramatically changed social situation by using extrajudicial means to restore white supremacy by the Democrat Party.

In 1866, Mississippi Governor William L. Sharkey reported that disorder, lack of control and lawlessness were widespread. In some states armed bands of Confederate soldiers roamed at will. The Klan was the terrorist arm of the Democrat Party and they used public violence against blacks and Republicans as intimidation. They whipped the white Republicans and burned their houses. They attacked and killed the freed blacks and left their bodies on the roads.

Former Confederate Brigadier General George Gordon developed the "Prescript," or Ku Klux Klan dogma. Dogma is the established belief or doctrine held by a religion, or a particular group or organization. It serves as part of the primary basis of an ideology or belief system, and it can not be changed or discarded.

The KKK "Prescript" set forth the white supremacist belief system. For instance, an applicant should be asked if he was in favor of "a white man's government", "the re-enfranchisement and emancipation of the white men of the South, and the restitution of the Southern people to all their rights."

The latter is a reference to the Ironclad Oath, which stripped the vote from white persons who refused to swear that they had not borne arms against the Union. Confederate General Nathan Bedford Forrest became Grand Wizard, claiming to be the Klan's national leader. Gordon was elected as a Democrat to the Sixtieth, Sixty-first, and Sixty-second Congresses. He was a Democrat member of the United States House of Representatives for the 10th congressional district of Tennessee.

In an 1868 newspaper interview, Democrat Party hero Nathan Bedford Forrest stated that the Klan's primary opposition was to the Republican state governments, rights for freed black slaves, carpetbaggers and scalawags.

Carpetbaggers were Northern Republicans who came South during the Reconstruction Era. Scalawags were Southerners who were pro-Union.

Historian Eric Foner observed: "In effect, the Klan was a military force serving the interests of the Democratic party, the planter class, and all those who desired restoration of white supremacy. Its purposes were political, but political in the broadest sense, for it sought to affect power relations, both public and private, throughout Southern society. It aimed to reverse the interlocking changes sweeping over the South during Reconstruction: to destroy the Republican party's infrastructure, undermine the Reconstruction state, reestablish control of the black labor force, and restore racial subordination in every aspect of Southern life." (per Foner 1989, p. 425–426)

The Klan attacked black members of the Loyal Leagues and intimidated southern Republicans and Freedmen's Bureau workers. When they killed black political leaders, they also took heads of families, along with the leaders of churches and community groups, because these people had many roles in society.

Agents of the Freedmen's Bureau reported weekly assaults and murders of blacks: "Armed guerrilla warfare killed thousands of Negroes; political riots were staged; their causes or occasions were always obscure, their results always certain: ten to one hundred times as many Negroes were killed as whites."

Klan violence benefited the Democrat Party cause as it worked to suppress black voting. More than 2,000 persons were killed, wounded and otherwise injured in Louisiana within a few weeks prior to the Presidential election of November 1868. Although St. Landry Parish had a registered Republican majority of 1,071, after the murders, no Republicans voted in the fall elections. Democrats cast the full vote of the parish for Grant's opponent.

The Democrat controlled KKK killed and wounded more than 200 black Republicans, hunting and chasing them through the woods. Thirteen captives were taken from jail and shot; a half-buried pile of 25 bodies was found in the woods. The KKK made people vote for the Democrat Party and gave them certificates of the fact.

In the April 1868 Georgia gubernatorial election, Columbia County cast 1,222 votes for Republican Rufus Bullock. By the November presidential election, however, Klan intimidation led to suppression of the Republican vote and only one person voted for Ulysses S. Grant.

Democrat Klansmen killed more than 150 African Americans in a county in Florida, and hundreds more in other counties. Freedmen's Bureau records provided a detailed recounting of Klansmen's beatings and murders of freedmen and their white allies.

By 1868, two years after the Klan's creation, its activity was beginning to decrease. Members were hiding behind Klan masks and robes as a way to avoid prosecution for freelance violence. Union Army veterans in mountainous Blount County, Alabama, organized "the anti-Ku Klux". They put an end to violence by threatening Klansmen with reprisals unless they stopped whipping Unionists and burning black churches and schools. Armed blacks formed their own defense in Bennettsville, South Carolina and patrolled the streets to protect their homes.

Northern sentiment gathered to crack down on the Klan, even though - believe it or not - some Democrats at the national level questioned whether the Klan really existed or believed that it was "just a creation of nervous Southern Republican governors."

The south had long been a Democrat stronghold, favoring a state's right to legal slavery and post-Civil War segregation. In addition, the ranks of the fledgling Ku Klux Klan were composed almost entirely of white Democrats angry over poor treatment by northerners and bent on reversing the policies of Reconstruction.

The Ku Klux Klan Act of 1871 fought against Democrat Terrorism in the South. 

The second Republican attempt to ensure rights for black-Americans was the Civil Rights Act of 1871. It was also known as the Ku Klux Klan Act of 1871.

In January 1871, Pennsylvania Republican Senator John Scott convened a Congressional committee which took testimony from 52 witnesses about Klan terrorist atrocities. It was political terrorism sponsored by the Democrat Party of the time. The committee accumulated 12 volumes of horrifying testimony which established that the Ku Klux Klan was acting as the military arm of the Democrat Party in the South.

In February, former Union General and Congressman Benjamin Franklin Butler of Massachusetts wrote and introduced the Civil Rights Act of 1871 (Ku Klux Klan Act). This added to the enmity that southern white Democrats bore toward him. While the bill was being considered, further violence in the South swung support for its passage. The Governor of South Carolina appealed for federal troops to assist his efforts in keeping control of the state.

A riot and massacre in a Meridian, Mississippi, courthouse were reported, from which a black state representative escaped only by taking to the woods. The 1871 Civil Rights Act allowed President Ulysses S. Grant to use troops and suspend Habeas Corpus if need be.

In April of 1871, President Ulysses S. Grant signed Butler's legislation. The Ku Klux Klan Act was used by the Federal government together with the 1870 Force Act, another act that President Grant signed, to enforce the civil rights provisions for individuals under the Fourteenth Amendment of Constitution.

The Force Act of 1870 was formally known as, "An Act to enforce the Right of Citizens of the United States to vote in the several States of this Union, and for other Purposes."  It was a Republican effort enacted on May of 1870, to restrict the first wave of the groups that made up the Klan.

In this act, the government banned the use of terror, force or bribery to prevent people from voting because of their race. Other laws banned the KKK entirely. Hundreds of KKK members were arrested and tried as common criminals and terrorists. The first Klan was all but eradicated within a year of federal prosecution.

Interestingly, in 1964 the United States Justice Department charged eighteen individuals under the 1870 US Force Act, with conspiring to deprive Michael Schwerner, James Chaney, and Andrew Goodman of their civil rights by murder because Mississippi officials refused to prosecute their killers for murder, a state crime.

The Democrat Party used the Klan as part of its military wing. The Democrat Party used the KKK as terrorists.

While its people used the Klan as a mask for political crimes, state and local governments seldom acted against them and instead worked with the Klan. African Americans were kept off juries, and in lynching cases all-white juries almost never indicted Ku Klux Klan members because of Democrats in political office.  Fact is Democrats turned a blind eye to lynching as a way of keeping dominance over black men.

When Republican Governor of North Carolina William Woods Holden called out the militia against the Klan in 1870, it added to his unpopularity. Combined with violence and fraud at the polls, the Republicans lost their majority in the state legislature which led to white Democratic legislators' impeaching Holden and removing him from office.

In some areas, other local white para-military organizations such as the White League, Red Shirts, saber clubs, and rifle clubs continued to intimidate and murder black voters - taking over where the KKK left off. 

In 1874, organized white para-military groups were formed in the South. The White League in Louisiana and the Red Shirts in Mississippi, North and South Carolina campaigned openly to get Republicans out of office, intimidated and killed black voters, tried to disrupt organizing and suppressed black voting.

There was nothing secret about the White League or the Red Shirts. They openly used violence and were out in force during the campaigns and elections of 1874 and 1876, contributing to the Democrats regaining power in 1876, against a background of electoral violence.

During the Reconstruction Era, the White League and Red Shirts were the para-military groups described as "the military arm of the Democratic Party."

Through violence and intimidation, its members reduced Republican voting and contributed to the Democrats' taking over control of the south in 1876. After white Democrats regained power, members of the White Leagues and Red Shirts were absorbed into their individual state militias and later in the National Guard. In the former Confederacy and neighboring states, local governments constructed a legal system aimed at re-establishing a society based on white supremacy. Democrat Party controls barred African-Americans from voting.

The Democrats passed legislation known as Jim Crow laws forcefully separating people of color from whites in schools, housing, jobs, and public gathering places.

The first anti-Segregation legislation in the United States was the Republican's Civil Right Act of 1875

What? You say you never heard of the Civil Rights Act of 1875? Well, it was a United States federal law proposed by Republicans in 1870. The act was passed by Congress in February, 1875 and signed by Republican President Ulysses S. Grant in March. And yes, that's quick!

So what's the big deal about the Civil Rights Act of 1875? 

Well, it was supposed to end segregation in the United States! Yes, it is true! And that's the great thing about history, it doesn't lie like liberal politicians do. You see the Republicans controlled Congress in Washington D.C., and pushed through the Civil Rights Act of 1875. It was the first time, almost 100 years before the Civil Rights Act of 1964, that Republicans tried to end segregation. That's right. Republicans worked for almost 100 years to get segregation stopped in the Democrat held South. And please, take a moment to imagine that for all it's worth.

If it were continued, the Civil Rights Act of 1875 would have guaranteed that every person, regardless of race, color, or previous condition of servitude, was entitled to the same treatment in "public accommodations" - i.e. inns, public conveyances on land or water, theaters, and other places of public amusement.

If the Republican Civil Rights Act of 1875 was kept in place, then maybe there would not have been a Brown case, or a need for great men like Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., or the marches, or the dogs and the fight that took place years later in the 1950s and 60s.

The Act made it so that if a violator was found guilty, then the lawbreaker could face a penalty anywhere from $500 to $1,000 and/or 30 days to 1 year in prison. And friends, $500 to $1,000 in the 1870s was equal to $25,000 to $50,000 today.

So yes, if Republicans got there way back then, I believe that there would have been no black and white entrances or restrooms or anything else. I believe we would have been a more color-bind society today for what old anti-slavery Republicans tried to do many many years ago.

The problem they faced was however two fold. First, the law was rarely enforced, especially after the 1876 presidential election when Republicans lost power and the withdrawal of federal troops from the Democrat controlled South took place. And second, by the end of the 1870s, Republicans were absolutely powerless to fight for black-Americans in the Democrat stronghold known as the "Solid South."

I would hope that there is some solace the Republicans can have knowing that later, many years later, the provisions they wrote into their anti-segregation act known as the Civil Rights Act of 1875 would actually be used and enacted into the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Fair Housing Act.

Of course the difference between the acts is that today they are backed by the federal government.

Back then, the Supreme Court ruled that the Force Act of 1870 did not give the Federal government power to regulate private actions, but only those by state governments. The result was that as the century went on, African Americans were at the mercy of hostile state governments controlled by Democrats. And yes, Democrats absolutely refused to intervene against private violence and para-military groups.

After Redeemers ended Reconstruction in the 1870s, and following the often extremely-violent disenfranchisement of African Americans led by such "firebreather" white supremacist Democrat politicians as Ben Tillman of South Carolina that took place in the 1880s and 1890s, the South voted Democrat and became known as the "Solid South."

The Civil Rights Cases, in 1883, were a group of five similar cases consolidated into one issue for the United States Supreme Court to review. Believe it or not, the Court held that Congress lacked the Constitutional authority under the enforcement provisions of the Fourteenth Amendment to outlaw racial discrimination by private individuals and organizations, rather than state and local governments.

More particularly, the Court held that the Republican written and passed Civil Rights Act of 1875, which provided that "all persons within the jurisdiction of the United States shall be entitled to the full and equal enjoyment of the accommodations, advantages, facilities, and privileges of inns, public conveyances on land or water, theaters, and other places of public amusement; subject only to the conditions and limitations established by law, and applicable alike to citizens of every race and color, regardless of any previous condition of servitude" was actually unconstitutional. Consequences of the decision were long lasting.

The decision and the political power of the Democrat Party put an end to the attempts by Republicans to ensure the civil rights of blacks and ushered in the widespread segregation of blacks in housing, employment and public life that confined them to second-class citizenship throughout much of the United States until the passage of civil rights legislation in the 1960s in the wake of the Civil Rights Movement.

So when Democrats talk about starting up segregation again, ask yourself which party has worked to end it over a hundred years ago versus which party has tried to keep segregation alive? You'll find that Democrats fought tooth and nail to keep the black man down and states segregated. That included denying black people the right to vote. And through legal maneuvering and violence, Democrats blocked the Civil Rights of black-Americans after the Civil War, And yes, they thought of every devious way of doing it.

Beginning in the 1890s, Democrat controlled states enacted literacy tests, poll taxes, elaborate registration systems, and eventually whites-only Democratic Party primaries to exclude black voters. Poll taxes required citizens to pay a fee to register to vote. These fees kept many poor African Americans, as well as poor whites, from voting.

These racist laws proved very effective. In Mississippi, fewer than 9,000 of the 147,000 voting-age African Americans were registered after 1890. In Louisiana, where more than 130,000 black voters had been registered in 1896, the number had plummeted to 1,342 by 1904.

From the end of the Civil War, African Americans primarily favored the Republican Party due to its overwhelming political and more tangible efforts in achieving abolition, particularly through President Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation.

In the 1890s under Chief Justice Melville Fuller, the Supreme Court of the United States established the separate-but-equal rule. In 1890 a new Louisiana law required railroads to provide “equal but separate accommodations for the white, and colored, races.” Outraged, the black community in New Orleans decided to test the rule.

On June 7, 1892, Homer Plessy agreed to be arrested for refusing to move from a seat reserved for whites. Judge John H. Ferguson upheld the law, and the case of Plessy v. Ferguson slowly moved up to the Supreme Court.

On May 18, 1896, the U.S. Supreme Court, with only one dissenting vote, ruled that segregation in America was constitutional. In that case, the Supreme Court in 1896 upheld the constitutionality of social segregation of the "white and colored races" under the "separate but equal" doctrine.

The case came from Louisiana, which in 1890 adopted a law providing for "equal but separate accommodations for the white and colored races" on its railroads. In 1892, passenger Homer Plessy refused to sit in a Jim Crow car and was arrested. He was brought before Judge John H. Ferguson of the Criminal Court for New Orleans, who upheld the state law. The law was challenged in the Supreme Court on grounds that it conflicted with the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Amendments.

By a 7-1 vote, the Court said that a state law that "implies merely a legal distinction" between the two races did not conflict with the Thirteenth Amendment forbidding involuntary servitude, nor did it tend to reestablish such a condition.

The Court avoided discussion of the protection granted by the clause in the Fourteenth Amendment that forbids the states to make laws depriving citizens of their "privileges or immunities," but instead cited such laws in other states as a "reasonable" exercise of their authority under the police power.

The purpose of the Fourteenth Amendment, the Court said, was "to enforce the absolute equality of the two races before the law.... Laws ... requiring their separation ... do not necessarily imply the inferiority of either race." The argument against segregation laws was false because of the "assumption that the enforced separation of the two races stamps the colored race with a badge of inferiority. If this be so, it is ... solely because the colored race chooses to put that construction upon it."

Many historians believe that that arrest of Homer Plessy in 1892 was part of an organized effort by The Citizen’s Committee to challenge Louisiana’s Separate Car Act.  While many consider the civil rights movement to have begun in the 1950s with Brown, communities were organizing for equal rights much earlier than the 1950s.

Following the Plessy decision, because of the power of the Democrat Party, restrictive legislation based on race continued and expanded steadily, and its reasoning was not overturned until Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka in 1954. But then again, it is apparent that people like Whoopi Goldberg and Representative John Lewis have conveniently forgotten these historical facts. Facts that, even they can't change.

For PART TWO, please click here:

Democrat Party Legacy of Racism & Segregation: Part Two 

Hollywood Democrat Queers Jeer Republicans ...

At Liberal Love Fest Called Emmy Night!

Yes, I know I have already posted this in a RANDOM SHOTS article. And yes, I know you've written saying how much you like it. I can't thank you enough for that.

So again, I'd like to thank you for the many letters. And since I have gotten many letters asking me to reprint it on its own, I'm doing just that to oblige you. So with pleasure, I am re-posting this on its own as per your request.  Again, thanks for reading my blog.

Let's talk about being queer!

Though I really enjoyed Robert Downey Jr as Sherlock Holmes, when I think of Sherlock Holmes, the movies starring Basil Rathbone and Nigel Bruce come to mind.

Besides the suspense, the language, the British accents, were always fun to listen to. In fact, it was from those old movies that I first heard the word "Queer."

I learned from those old Holmes and Watson movies that "queer" meant strange, or not normal as in "a queer situation." I learned that the word "queer" meant odd or strange behavior, a questionable attitude or character, suspicious actions, "very queer behavior."

Of course during college, I had a Criminal Justice teacher who would call counterfeit money - "queer notes."

Because I grew up in Hawaii in a very Blue Collar family, we referred to homosexuals as Mahus. The word mahu (mah-who) is the traditional word for a male who assumes female roles in his daily life.

I didn't hear the term "queer" to refer to homosexuals until I first arrived in California in 1972. Like many others, I remember hearing one guy call another guy "queer." It didn't make any sense right away, until later when I saw for myself that the guy labeled "queer" really did in fact act strange.

Over the years, I've referred to strange behavior as acting queer. And yes, I know real well that the homosexual community has put their copyright on the term "queer". But I don't see how they can.

Sure I call homosexuals "queer" just as I call them "gay" and even "mahus" at times. But homosexuals aren't the only strange acting folks in the Democrat party. There's a lot of queer behavior in that party.

Queer behavior is strange behavior. Acting queer is not the norm. Having a queer attitude is not OK. And yes, people recognize queers for what they are: strange people.

The 64th Primetime Emmy Awards on Sunday night brought out droves of Hollywood's small screen "stars", if there really is such a thing.

And yes, for the most part, they are a queer lot! It was a Democrat liberal love fest, as queer as the day is long!

Host Jimmy Kimmel set the stage for every queer there. Fakes all, in a business of make believe, the telecast ended up focusing as much on their own hypocrisy as it did on Presidential Politics.

Forget the fact that they were supposedly there competing for awards for best TV shows etc etc etc, they wanted to use their time at the microphone to make their liberal politics known.

They all did the same thing, one by one, the queer group that they are, all marched to the microphone to tell their audience how they loathed Republicans, Conservatives, Middle-America, Sarah Palin, and Mitt Romney.

And no, it doesn't matter that Sarah Palin is not running for office. They just hate her guts.

The news said that Jimmy Kimmel "peppered the show with a handful of somewhat predictable political jokes."

"Are any of you voting for Mitt Romney? Oh good, only 40 Republicans, and the rest godless liberal homosexuals... Being a Republican in Hollywood is like being a Chick-fil-A sandwich on the snack table at 'Glee," he said, throwing in a jab at Republican supporter Kelsey Grammer, and comparing the PBS series on English aristocrats "Downtown Abbey" to what life was like for Mitt Romney growing up.

Both winners and presenters, including Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Stephen Colbert and Julianne Moore, who won Outstanding Actress for her portrayal of Sarah Palin in the HBO movie "Game Change," also used their moment in the limelight to put forth their own personal political hatred for anything Conservative and Republican.

"I feel so validated since Sarah Palin gave me a big thumbs down," Moore told the audience. "Game Change" won four Emmys in total. Of course, queer Hollywood would never say how much of a flop it was.

"Game Change" director Jay Roach avoided the fact that this little film was all promotion and no audience. And of course there was no mention how the movie has been met with criticism by Sarah Palin and aids for the McCain-Palin ticket.

The "Game Change" liberals conveniently leave out how the truth was not presented in the film, or how former Alaska governor Sarah Palin called the trashy movie "Hollywood lies."

While accepting the Outstanding Movie statue on behalf of the film, of which he was credited as producer, ultra-left Tom Hanks decided to make cracks about America's Founding Fathers.

Hanks said that he wanted to thank "our Founding Fathers for the process they came up with that has provided not only us and HBO and all the comedy series here a plethora of material, seems to just go on and on."

In my opinion, Tom Hanks is a queer bird. I mean, doesn't anyone else find it queer that Tom Hanks' "plethora of material" only ridicules Conservatives and Republicans? But then again, what should I accept from a queer group as those from Hollywood.

It's no wonder very few see Hollywood in the same light as it did years ago when they were pro-American.

It's no wonder most see Tom Hanks and others as all living in some queer place that many now refer to as "Hollyweird."

In addition to "Game Change," the other winner in the Liberal Love Fest was another politically-themed show, the national security Showtime thriller "Homeland." I know many of my readers are shocked that another hate America film would win an award, but honestly - look at those queer people who are voting.

And no, it wasn't just in front of the camera. Backstage, our so-called "stars" and wannabe important queer acting Hollyweird types got their chance to speak of their liberal political opinions. As if anyone gives a shit!

Louis-Dreyfus talked of how the current political climate influenced her role in some film that no one saw.

The creator of "Modern Family," Steve Levitan noted his hope for "all political candidates to support marriage equality."

Claire Danes spoke enthusiastically about President Obama's affection for her show "Homeland." Ultra-violent "Breaking Bad" lead actor winner Damian Lewis detailed his "insightful" political views on the "polarization" of the political landscape and the impact of 9/11.

Weak minds and queer behavior!

Strange, very queer indeed, but no one mentioned how Obama has done nothing to help the economy or stop the EPA's assault on farms and the coal industry and small businesses across the nation?

Not one liberal talked about Obama through incentives has encouraged American companies to leave America and relocate in poorer nations?

Not one liberal actor or producer or director asked people to stop the attacks on Christians here and abroad, or why Obama finds the time to appear on "The View" and David Letterman yet not find time to meet with the Prime Minister of Israel?

It is very queer that some of those in Hollywood, did not take the time to condemn their own industry for its prolific violence and immorality, or their incessant attacks on Christianity?

Why is it that not one self-rightious liberal there talked about Obama encouraging Muslim radicals?

Why can't ultra-left guys like Tom Hanks find the cojones to condemn Muslim violence, or the Muslim world's queer behavior of abusing their women, or even criticize Obama skipping out on his own National Security Intel Briefings?

No, not one liberal at the Democrat Love Fest got up there to use their microphone time to condemn Hollywood for advocating the use of drugs and random senseless violence that is responsible for inspiring the Aurora Colorado mass murderer.

Hollywood is a whorehouse, and most of those there that night are whores and pimps. They compromise any sort of principle for personal gain, even if that means sucking up to the political left in America.

If not, then why didn't any of those so-called "stars" and other libs care about the real problems that America is facing right now.

Why aren't these wannabe intellectuals talking about Obama spending SIX TRILLION DOLLARS in 3 years and America has nothing to show for it?

And no, I don't think giving $10 Billion to Brazil to explore for oil, or Stimulus Fund contract to China is OK? But the liberals at the Emmys must have, because after all, it wasn't mentioned at all.

Where are these liberals on Fast & Furious and how Obama's Justice Department armed the Mexican Drug Cartels with over 2,000 weapons and is directly responsible for hundreds of murders?

How come no one there talked about the National Security Intelligence leaks from the Obama White House, or the global instability brought on by a lack of leadership from the White House?

Strange isn't it that no one Hollywood liberal, including that ultra-left poster boy Tom Hanks, mentioned the rise in poverty or the huge increase in food stamps or the high number of businesses that are closing after almost 4 years of Obama?

Not one liberal at the Emmy Awards stood up and asked why Obama has given $1.5 Billion of taxpayer money to Egypt for no reason, or why Obama and Hillary Clinton attacked a YouTube film and took its director into custody?

I would think that that would hit home? But then again, it just shows that Hollywood has no loyalty - not even to other film makers.

Instead of focusing on the real issues, Hollyweird is worried about gay marriage and pushing a liberal agenda that is against everything that most of America believes in.

And yes, American ain't buying what Hollywood is selling.

Want evidence of that? Well, the politically-charged telecast - which aired on ABC - was not embraced by all those outside the Tinseltown bubble.

"If I wanted to hear vapid people talking about politics, I would read half my friends' Facebook walls," tweeted one. Another wrote that the Kimmel's political hate speech was "unnecessary."

One commented that the political chatter during an awards show was "just non-sense," and another noted that "Hollywood is delusional" in response to the proclamation by Kevin Costner that night.

In what was an unbelievable statement, Costner, who won an award for lead actor in a TV movie/miniseries for his role History's "Hatfields and McCoys," said that "everyone talks about politics, but it's so freaking hard to get films made about politics."

That was a very odd comment, an absolute queer statement to make, since several of this year's Emmys nominees from "Game Change" to "Homeland" to "Veep" to his own film were based on political themes.

Costner's comment sparked one viewer to tweet, "It is hard to make movies about politics? Then why are there 40,000,000 of them?"

Politics aside, the Emmy ceremony was widely panned by reviewers and industry watchers. TheWrap.com called it "hideous" and Kimmel's hosting performance "bad".

The Chicago Tribune referred to the show as being "far from a ringing endorsement of Hollywood's ability to produce anything but an eye-rolling awards show."

There is one thing that I find really interesting about all of their awful behavior. Its about the business end of making films.

Why would anyone selling a product, in this case wanting to get people to watch your film, go out of their way to offend as many people as possible in the process?

Why offend the vast majority of Americans outside of Hollywood if you need them as viewers?

The answer probably rests in their very strange way of thinking. It's probably the same reasoning they use when they make shows that insult and attack most Americans, specifically Christians and Conservatives.

It most likely goes straight to their queer behavior of not caring if they make television shows that people are not going to watch.

It's probably the same reason that Hollywood and its liberals like Tom Hanks think they can stick their finger in your eye. They figure they have a captured audience and we will watch what they put out no matter what.

But honestly, that's queer thinking on their part.

Story by Tom Correa

A True American Western Icon - Ward Bond

Unlike actors today, his voice was as rugged as the West.

Some have said he was hard as nails and no non-sense on and off-screen. Others have said his tough and proud - yet understanding - manner depicted the essence of being an American.

His full name was Wardell Edwin Bond, but the world knew him as Ward Bond. He was born on April 9th, 1903, and died on November 5th, 1960.

He was an American film actor. And yes, most of his characters were gruff and burly Cowboys in one form or another. The fact is that he acted in so many Western films that he was inducted into the Western Performers Hall of Fame at the National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum in Oklahoma City in 2001.

For his contribution to the television industry, Bond has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 6933 Hollywood Blvd. And yes, there is also a Ward Bond Memorial Park in his birthplace of Benkelman, Nebraska.

Lately, with all of the junk in the movies these days, like many of us, I've turned to watch old movies on DVDs. Westerns are my preference, but there are a lot of old movies that I enjoy that are not Westerns. Tonight, I talked my wife into watching one of my favorite old movies - The Long Gray Line.

The Long Gray Line is a 1955 American drama directed by famed Western director John Ford. It is based on the life of Marty Maher - a soldier who spent 50 years of his life at West Point Military Academy. In the movie, famed actor Tyrone Power stars as the Irish immigrant Martin Maher whose 50-year career at West Point took him from dishwasher to NCO (non-commissioned officer) and athletic instructor.

Maureen O'Hara, who most will surely remember as co-staring with John Wayne in classics such as Rio Grande, The Quiet Man, The Wings Of Eagles, McLintock, and Big Jake, plays Maher's wife and fellow Irish immigrant, Mary O'Donnell. The film co-stars Ward Bond as Herman Koehler, the Master of the Sword (West Point's athletic director) and Army's head football coach in 1897, who also befriends Maher.

The phrase "The Long Gray Line" is used to describe, as a continuum, all Army graduates and cadets of the United States Military Academy at West Point, New York. It is based on a true story as the film recalls the first days at the Point for Irish immigrant Maher (Tyrone Power), who can't seem to fit in with the Army and in especially West Point's regimen of unquestioning discipline.

As the Point's Athletic director, Ward Bond takes a liking to Maher and arranges for the young man to become his assistant. Bond even goes so far as to play Cupid between Maher and Irish maidservant Mary O'Donnell (Maureen O'Hara).

The movie is one of my favorites and I recommend anyone to check it out. My favorite scene in the movie is when Ward Bond as Captain Koehler orders Marty Maher (Tyrone Power) into the ring to give him some one-on-one boxing instruction. It doesn't turn out well for the scrappy Maher.

Ward Bond played that part as he did most others. He fit the part of a hard as nails, yet an insightful leader. Ward Bond depicts the soldier's soldier in this film. And no, no other could have played that part.

Of course, growing up in the late 1950s and early 60s when TV Westerns were hot, I remember Ward Bond as the take-charge Wagon Master in the television series Wagon Train.

Wagon Train was inspired by the 1950 film Wagon Master, in which Bond also appeared, and was influenced by The Big Trail.

In her recent article WAGON MASTER 1950, Ms. Keith Payne talks about how the film Wagon Master was named many times by famed director John Ford as being one of his favorite movies.

Ford was one of the most visual of directors, at this time working near the peak of his career, and he called Wagon Master not only his favorite Western but described it as, “along with The Fugitive (1947) and The Sun Shines Bright (1953), the closest to being what I had wanted to achieve.”

Ward Bond starred in Wagon Master where he played the leader of a group of Mormons in their journey across the West. Headed to their supposed promised land, they sought a place where they would be able to settle down and form a community without the prejudices and hardships of where they came from.

Although Ben Johnson, Joanne Dru, and Harry Carey, Jr. received top billing on the film, Ward Bond was paid the top money, $20,000 for a film with a one million dollar budget. Dobe Carey said many times later that it was Ward Bond who was actually the star. Bond is also credited with being the glue that held the entire movie together.

One quote from his book, “A Company of Heroes” was that he had great regard for Ward Bond and said that he brought stability in every scene he was in.

One scene required Ward Bond to break up a fight between Sandy and one of the Mormons. John Ford had wanted two of the dogs who had been fighting each other most of the filming days to be fighting in the background. Instead, when the take began, both dogs froze, then one took off and the other ran in and tore Ward Bond’s pants as he was separating the boys.

Being the consummate actor he was, Ward Bond continued on with the scene. In the end, Mrs. Ledyarde blew her horn, (which, by the way really sounds like that unless you have enough wind to blow it…I know, I have one), to help separate the two, and then saw the tear in Ward Bond’s trousers.

It happened to be large and right at the spot where he had been subjected to years of operations, grafts, and physical therapy for a leg that was almost completely severed in the 40s. In fact, Ward Bond had only in the last few years just been able to walk without the aid of a cane, and in some scenes did not have to wear the large heavy brace.

For Wagon Train, Bond specifically requested Terry Wilson for the role of assistant trail-master Bill Hawks and Frank McGrath as the cook Charlie Wooster. Wilson and McGrath stayed with the series for the entire run. 

Ward Bond was born in Benkelman, Nebraska, a small town located in the Southwestern corner of Nebraska just a few miles from the Kansas and Colorado borders. The Bond family lived in Benkelman until 1919 when they moved to Denver. Ward graduated from East High School in Denver.

Bond attended the University of Southern California and played football on the same team as future USC coach Jess Hill. At 6'2" and 195 pounds, Bond was a starting lineman on USC's first national championship team in 1928.

He was a football player at the University of Southern California when, together with teammate and lifelong friend John Wayne, he was hired as an extra in the silent film Salute (1928), directed by John Ford.  

Actually, Ward Bond, John Wayne, and the entire Southern Cal team were hired to appear in Salute (1929), which was a football film starring George O'Brien and directed by John Ford.   It was during the filming of this movie that Bond and Wayne became friendly with Ford, and both actors would appear in many of Ford's later films.

Both Bond and Wayne continued in films, but it was Wayne who ascended to superstardom. Bond was content with smaller roles and character parts throughout the 1930s. Ward Bond was one of the most prolific of Hollywood's actors over a period of 30 years. He regularly appeared in 10 to 20 films per year, with the record year for him being 1935, when he acted in 30 movies.

He worked with director John Ford on 26 films. Few, if any, actors, have appeared in so many films for a single director. Mostly playing traffic cops, bus drivers, and western heavies, Ward Bond began getting better breaks after a showy role as the murderous Cass in John Ford's Young Mr. Lincoln (1939).

After that film, John Ford cast Bond in important roles all through the 1940s. It's said that Ford would usually contrive ways to include at least one scene per picture in which the camera would favor Bond's rather sizable posterior. It was an "inside" joke which delighted everyone on the set with the exception of Bond.

Ward Bond has been in some really big movies. Today we call them classics, and they are some of the most memorable roles for film history.

For example, we can find Ward Bond as a bus driver with Clark Gable & Claudette Colbert in It Happened One Night; as "Bert" the policeman in the Jimmy Stewart classic It's A Wonderful Life; as Reverend Captain Clayton in John Wayne's The Searchers; as the fly fishing Catholic priest in John Ford's The Quiet Man which starred John Wayne and Maureen O'Hara; and as one of the hard-boiled detectives harassing Humphrey Bogart in The Maltese Falcon. And for you trivia buffs out there, Ward Bond has the last line in The Maltese Falcon.

It happens when Sam Spade (Humphrey Bogart) hands over a fake version of the supposedly priceless Maltese Falcon to San Francisco Detective Tom Polhaus (Ward Bond).

Bond asks, "It’s heavy, what is it?" 

Bogart replies, "The stuff that dreams are made of." 

Bond then says, "huh?" - which is the last line of that classic movie.

Actually, Ward Bond has been in 11 films that were nominated for the Academy Award for Best Picture, which may be a record because it's more than any other actor:

 Arrowsmith (1931), Lady for a Day (1933), It Happened One Night (1934), You Can't Take It with You (1938), Gone with the Wind (1939), The Grapes of Wrath (1940), The Maltese Falcon (1941), Sergeant York (1941), It's a Wonderful Life (1946), The Quiet Man (1952) and Mister Roberts (1955).

He made 16 movies with his friend John Wayne.

They were The Big Trail (1930), Conflict (1936), The Long Voyage Home (1940), The Shepherd of the Hills (1941), Tall in the Saddle (1944), Dakota (1945), They Were Expendable (1945), 3 Godfathers (1948), Fort Apache (1948), Operation Pacific (1951),  The Quiet Man (1952), Hondo (1953), Rookie of the Year (TV drama 1955), The Searchers (1956),  The Wings of Eagles (1957), and his last film Rio Bravo (1959).

One of my favorite Ward Bond roles is his portrayal of boxing champion John L. Sullivan in Gentleman Jim. At 6'2" tall and 195 pounds, he's very believable in that role. Yes, Ward Bond played in over 250 movies during his career.

Some might wonder why he didn't serve in the military in World War II like say John Wayne and other stars in Hollywood did back in those days? The answer to that is because Ward Bond was an epileptic, and he was rejected by the draft board during World War II.

But don't count Ward Bond out of the fight or think that he didn't do his part in some way during World War II. You see besides making great movies to keep the morale of our troops high, he along with another actor by the name of Ronald Reagan made training and morale films for the troops, and there is something else -- because Ward Bond couldn’t serve on active duty in the military during the war, he became an Air Raid Warden and was known to pull duty every chance he had subsequently putting in many long days.

It's interesting to note that because of his efforts during the war, he was given full military honors with an honor guard and flag-draped coffin during his funeral.

As for his politics? Well, to give you an idea of how Conservative he was, during the 1940s Ward Bond was a member of the conservative group called the Motion Picture Alliance for the Preservation of American Ideals.

The Motion Picture Alliance for the Preservation of American Ideals was an American organization of high-profile, politically conservative members of the Hollywood film industry.

It was formed in 1944 for the stated purpose of defending the film industry, and the country as a whole, against what its founders claimed was Communist and Fascist infiltration. It's just my opinion, but I don't think they know how right they were.

Besides Ward Bond, other prominent members of the Alliance included Clark Gable, Ayn Rand, Ronald Reagan, John Wayne, Charles Coburn, Gary Cooper, Cecil B. DeMille, Walt Disney, Irene Dunne, Victor Fleming, Ginger Rogers, Robert Taylor, Barbara Stanwyck, King Vidor, Frank Wead, and Sam Wood.

In 1960, Bond campaigned for the Republican presidential nominee Richard M. Nixon. Bond died three days before Democrat John F. Kennedy narrowly defeated Nixon.

As for away from films and television? It is said that Ward Bond, John Wayne, and John Ford all loved the outdoor life, and probably did more than a bit of drinking and "raising hell."

Their fishing trips to Catalina Island were well known, and their hunting trips into remote areas in Baja California and other destinations, via horseback, were the stuff of legends.

On one hunting trip, it's true that John Wayne accidentally shot Ward Bond with Bond's own shotgun.

In case you are curious about the shotgun incident, Duke accidentally shot Ward in the butt. That was part of the private joke that Duke and Ford shared about always "shooting" Ward’s backside.

On November 5, 1960, midway into Wagon Train's fourth season, Ward Bond and his wife were in Dallas to attend a Cowboys-LA Rams football game. He was to receive some sort of award at the game. That night, at the couple's hotel, Ward suffered a massive heart attack and was rushed to the hospital where he was pronounced dead. Bond was 57 at the time of his death.

At his funeral, John Wayne gave the eulogy. Legendary director John Ford is said to have been in tears.

Duke and Ward owned a private 400-acre "hobby farm". He gave Duke the option of buying out his half in his will. But besides the farm, later when Ward Bond's Will was read, he bequeathed to John Wayne that same shotgun with which the Duke had once accidentally shot Bond.  I'd say that that was pretty fitting.

I've always believed that Ward Bond was the perfect example of what an American should be. Sure I didn't know him other than in his movies. And sure, during his career, he played good guys and bad. But when I saw him on the screen as a Cowboy, a Trail Boss, a Rancher, an Oil Rig Roughneck, a Cop, or even as the Cavalry Top Sergeant, he was that part -- and it was always great.

One writer once wrote of him, "Ward Bond acted best what he was in reality: a dyed-in-the-wool social and political conservative, a perfect expression of the American West."

I agree. I believe Ward Bond was what he was. He played the many facets of Ward Bond extremely well. And yes, that's why Ward Bond is truly an American Western Icon. He was his own man.

Editor's Note:

This article is growing as I get more information. And yes, I want to thank Ms. Keith Payne for all of her assistance with this article.  She knows a great deal about Ward Bond! You can find her at Speakeasy - Where classic stuff is always on tap 

And yes, Keith is a great gal!

Story by Tom Correa