Democrats and their Klan
Democrats have been lying about themselves and their opponents for so long; few Americans understand the deep history of racism in the party. Even fewer comprehend that Republicans were the liberators of the slaves and the party that fought segregation.
The first grand wizard of the KKK was honored at the 1868 Democratic National Convention, no Democrats voted for the 14th Amendment to grant citizenship to former slaves and, to this day, the party website ignores those decades of racism.
The KKK was a military force serving the interests of the Democratic Party, the planter class, and all those who desired the restoration of white supremacy. Its purposes were political in the broadest sense, for it sought to affect power relations, both public and private, throughout Southern society. It aimed to destroy the Republican Party's infrastructure, undermine the Reconstruction state, re-establish control of the black labor force and restore racial subordination in every aspect of Southern Life.
This is why the late Martin Luther King Jr. was a Republican. He understood the history. He recognized who represented political allies and political foes.
Here's some more of the story most Americans have never heard," that the Klan's war was not just against blacks, it was against Republicans:
Violence was typically directed at Reconstruction's local leaders. As Emmanuel Fortune, driven from Jackson, County, Florida, by the Klan, explained: The object of it is to kill all the leading men of the Republican Party: men who have taken a prominent stand.
Jack Dupree, victim of a particularly brutal murder in Monroe County, Mississippi, assailants cut his throat and disemboweled him, all within sight of his wife, who had just given birth to twins, was president of a Republican club and known as a man who would speak his mind.
On occasion, violence escalated from the victimization of individuals to wholesale assaults on the Republican Party and its leadership. In October 1870, after Republicans carried Laurens County, in South Carolina's Piedmont belt, a racial altercation at Laurensville degenerated into a negro chase in which bands of whites drove 150 freedmen from their homes and committed 13 murders. The victims included the newly elected white probate judge, a black legislator and others known and prominent as connected with politics.
Founded in 1866 as a Tennessee social club, the Ku Klux Klan spread into nearly every Southern state, launching a reign of terror against Republican leaders black and white. Those assassinated during the campaign included Arkansas Congressman James M. Hinds, three members of the South Carolina legislature, and several men who had served in constitutional conventions. In Louisiana, even moderate ex-Governor Hahn by October complained that murder and intimidation are the order of the day in this state. White gangs roamed New Orleans, intimidating blacks and breaking up Republican meetings. In St. Landry Parrish, a mob invaded the plantations, killing as many as 200 blacks. Commanding Gen. Lovell Rousseau, a friend and supporter of the president, refused to take action, urging blacks to stay away from the polls for self-protection and exulting that the ‘ascendance of the negro in this state is approaching its end.
Not only are today's Democrats lying about themselves and their opponents. They are telling a story that is the polar opposite of the truth.
Who do you suppose really wants to keep blacks in chains?
In fact, look around at who has actually kept them on their plantation?
