In case you don’t know U.S. civil rights history, here’s a quick lesson.
Which party has traditionally been more responsible for empowering African-Americans — doing away with slavery and its vestiges, enabling black people to vote and own property and putting numerous black members into Congress before 1900? Well here’s a little hint: it isn’t the Democratic Party.
In fact, if it were up to the Democrats, there might still be slave-owning plantations in the United States, and the 13th, 14th and 15th Amendments to the Constitution (which abolished slavery, established citizenship for African-Americans and gave them voting rights, respectively) might never have been ratified.
As it stands, even the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was opposed by a majority of Democrats, who filibustered the proposed law for months. So, while the Democrats may be proud that they first put a black man into the Oval Office (who turned out to be one of the most racially divisive and inflammatory leaders in modern history), the long track record of their party doesn’t reflect well on them at all.
Watch as Vanderbilt University Professor Carol Swain reminds us why the Republican Party is far more of a champion of civil rights than the Democratic Party can ever claim to be.
