Last week, the Star published a letter entitled: ‘Democrats are the racists’. This letter attempted to use historical context, dating back to 1861, to prove that assertion. Unfortunately, the facts given were cherry-picked, resulting in a misrepresentation of historical context, and thus misinforming readers.
In the election of 1860, the Democratic and Whig Parties were the nationally established parties. The fledgling Republican Party candidate, Abraham Lincoln, won. The North prospered with trade, manufacturing, immigration, and individual business and land ownership. The South stagnated with an antiquated baronial plantation system, that sustained itself by ownership and sales of other human beings forced to live in nightmare conditions.
Before Mr. Lincoln was even inaugurated, Southern states began seceding, breaking up the country, and forming their own Confederacy of States. It is true that this Republican President and Republican Congress brought the barbaric institution of slavery to an end. The rest of the assertions and conclusions in that letter are not true.
After that God-awful Civil War, the Confederate states were readmitted to the Union; but their animus was so deep towards the North and the Republican Party, that, for the next 100 years, they block voted for candidates who ran for office under the other label, Democratic.
This dynamic in the Confederate states resulted in church burnings, lynchings, bombings, laws to deprive Black Americans of voting and other civil rights, and of course the Ku Klux Klan. This deep animosity was racial and regional, more than political labeling.
Moving forward 100 years, in the 1960’s, Democratic Presidents and Congresses passed the Civil Rights and Voting Rights Acts and used armed troops to force the integration of public schools in the South. Enraged, the Confederate states, en masse, switched to the Republican Party, where they have remained ever since.
In the election of 1968, the Republican Party created what they called their ‘Southern Strategy’, which deliberately enflamed this regional bigotry and anger to win the White House and down ballot offices. They employ it still.
Hate mongers like George Wallace (AL) and Strom Thurmond (SC) actually acquired national importance. In 1964, three young civil rights workers were murdered in Philadelphia, MS, for trying to help Black Americans register to vote. Their plight was documented in the movie “Mississippi Burning”. One was a college classmate of mine.
Ronald Reagan kicked off his run for the Presidency by giving a speech in this same Philadelphia, MS. The very day after the 2016 Republican Convention, Donald Trump Jr. went to Philadelphia, MS to give a speech to kick off his father’s current run for the Presidency.
For over 20 years, I lived and worked in several Confederate states and with people from almost all of them. The level of post-Civil War anger and bigotry and animosity, taught by one generation to the next, was astonishing. Abraham Lincoln must roll over in his grave each time someone asserts he was the founder of today’s Republican Party.
Prejudice and bigotry, of all kinds, have existed for centuries and worldwide. We owe it to our Creator and to those who come after us to resist the herd instinct and do our individual best to overcome these attitudes.
Claire L. Kelly
Stevensville