Posted on 10/25/2007 11:42:36 PM PDT by RussP
The original targets of the Ku Klux Klan were Republicans, both black and white, according to a new television program and book, which describe how the Democrats started the KKK and for decades harassed the GOP with lynchings and threats.
An estimated 3,446 blacks and 1,297 whites died at the end of KKK ropes from 1882 to 1964.
The documentation has been assembled by David Barton of Wallbuilders and published in his book "Setting the Record Straight: American History in Black & White," which reveals that not only did the Democrats work hand-in-glove with the Ku Klux Klan for generations, they started the KKK and endorsed its mayhem.
(Excerpt) Read more at worldnetdaily.com ...
The despicable history of the Democratic Party in supporting slavery and the KKK must be heralded far and wide. And so also the Republican history of fighting them.
Rusty Humphries talked extensively about this book today -- and I loved every second of it. We need more of that.
I am always amazed at people who are obsessed with the history of slavery and racism yet are apparently ignorant of the fact that, for many decades, the Democrats fought tooth and nail to keep them in place while the Republicans fought to end them.
Imagine how the political landscape could change if this history were widely known.
Every member of the KKK who ever served in the US Congress was a Democrat.
Good grief, there have only been 20,000 books on this subject in the last 100 years. This article acts like its some new found revelation.
Why did you choose 1882 as your starting year?
I don’t think it matters. And most people do know this or have heard of it. It’s ironic or ‘interesting’ and nothing more, to me. When I hear it, I realize that it’s “What Democrats were at one time” and that they definitely are not that now.
Whatever the party did previously with respect to the KKK doesn’t matter when they are firmly devoted to siding with minorities, particularly blacks as they are the loudest, on every issue from affirmative action to reparations (should the latter ever get off the ground), and will stomp the head of any ‘whitey’ who gets in the way now—just in case anyone doubts their sincerity.
They have clearly evolved into the all inclusive party, regardless of whatever they were then. You don’t have to have ambition. You don’t have to prize family, English, the forefathers, the US itself or anything else: All you have to do is throw em a vote, and they’ll fight for you.
Someone should let this guy know that Abraham Lincoln was a Republican.
“Good grief, there have only been 20,000 books on this subject in the last 100 years. This article acts like its some new found revelation.”
Well, not quite 20,000. I know of only two, Perryman and Zak (but then I look forward to seeing your list). And I don’t think either of them has had anything like the attention it deserves. Why? Because the NYT prefers to keep its readers in the dark, of course.
Yes, it’s history, but you cannot just pretend that decades of history didn’t happen. And yes, most of the public is ignorant of that history. Yes, they may know that Lincoln was a Republican, but they know little of the epic struggle and the fact that the KKK and Jim Crow were Democratic Party institutions.
Also, I would argue that “Affirmative Action” policies of the Democrats are still racist. Deep down, they don’t believe that blacks can compete in academia or the marketplace without favoritism mandated by the government. Yes, their intentions may be more noble than they were in the KKK days, but their racist policies are still harmful to blacks in the long run.
By the way, the History Channel did a program on the KKK, and if I am not mistaken they never so much as mentioned that it was an arm of the southern Democratic Party. Do you think they would have overlooked something like that if the KKK was started by Republicans?
It’s time to wake up and realize that the public has been kept ignorant of the history of the two major parties on racial matters. And for Republicans not to exploit this history to the hilt is the epitome of folly.
There is good reason that it has not been posted and, in my opinion it should be removed immediately before someone sees it. The Republican Party is the party of Freedom and Decency but to post blatantly false information which can be easily disproved is a disservice to the Party.
An estimated 3,446 blacks and 1,297 whites died at the end of KKK ropes from 1882 to 1964.
Balderdash. This was the total number of lynchings in the United States. Many were carried out by the Klan but many, probably most, were not. The numbers include 31 lynchings of Whites in Arizona while NOT ONE Black was lynched. Was this the work of the Klan? Not at all. Look here.
When we use false statistics it creates an atmosphere where everything we say can be discredited. My family has been a part of the Freedom Party since the time of Lincoln and I do not want the record sullied by some half fast "historian".
Wow, the despicable KKK is so desperate...
The more things change, the more they stay the same.
>Yes, their intentions may be more noble than they were in the KKK days
Who says they are? Read what you wrote: “Deep down, they don’t believe that blacks can compete in academia or the marketplace without favoritism mandated by the government.”
Hardship must be overcome for there to be growth from slavery into adulthood. By keeping anyone dependent on government, the Democrats maintain the infantilization of those dependent on government.
Maybe the wrong people are being asked to pay repriations.
One note; if anyone has read anything about Forrest. The KKK was started by him and others; and was not for the purpose the KKK eventually became. He also left the KKK when he saw what they were becoming.
Hillary and Bill have a lot of money now; so maybe they would like to contribute it.
Blacks have always been pawns in the political process. First as slaves and then afterward. The mostly Republican North wanted to empower them to weaken the power of the mostly democrat South. The Democrat South resisted for the same reason, political power.
However, the Democrat South has always been more faithful to the intent of the founders, more conservative. As the Communist began infiltrating the Democrat Party in the early ‘20s and became progressively stronger, reaching a high point in the 1960s, conservatives began switching parties to the Goldwater Republican Party.
The Democrats exploited the historic separation of the races with Lyndon Baines Johnson commenting about the passing of the 1964 voting rights act to his friend Richard Russel of Georgia, “That’ll keep the (N word) voting Democrat for the next 200 years.”
The fight has always been between Constitutionalist and those who wanted to bend it (a Living Document) and blacks have always been exploited by one side or another, often both.
Today, we have blatant Communism versus a free society. The Democrats are outwardly exploiting the race issue while the conservative Republicans are trying to adhere to conservative principles. However, all is politics still.
The battle has always been conservative principles, those this country was founded upon, versus “progressives” who want to exploit it for their personal ambitions. The prize is control.
Conservatives value personal individual control, letting each become what they will, and the Progressives value central collective control making each become what they want of them.
Blacks are still exploited but have now been joined by women, the “poor”, Hispanics, and any other group the Democrats can convince to become “victims.” As far as this article is concerned, Republicans should be careful about being proud as a party. As they used to say in the opening of an old TV show, “ ... only the names have been changed, to protect the innocent.”
Jim Crowe was one of the founders of the KKK.
The Democrats still continue to promote slavery and dependence on government, they just pay them better and with other peoples money.
Republicans still want to set them free.
How many people have been crippled by the war on poverty?
Every time I point that out, the answer I get from libs is that those democrats are now the republicans.
Then ask them when Senator Byrd switched parties.
All I ever hear is Ronald Reagan. When I mention Byrd, of course they had never heard that.
Umm that’s sort of true. Most of those folks switched over after the 60’s. Now the Dims are mostly communists in disguise, but they’re really not so much southern racists anymore. They love the northeastern kind of racism now.
My father's family fought for decades the one party Dem system in LA and Texas.
Simply put, and as sad as it is, the majority of Blacks elected to return to the plantation.
I disagree...the Democratic party of today still uses minorities under the guise of being ‘inclusive’ to continue to keep those minorities in line. All the government give aways are just another form of slavery to keep the recipients beholden to the master and therefor in power.
Cheers.
Article notes that Harding and Truman were accused, but, disputed by too many facts. Whereas, Robert Byrd, Hugo Black and other Supreme Court Justices were KKK.
I don’t know if Harding was actually a member, but I do know that he hosted fully-robed Klan members in the WH and seemed to be quite comfortable with it.
Darn, I thought only black people were hung. Some people deny history. I guess it doesn’t fit their agenda. The ratio is 2.66 black to 1 white hung. What is the ratio of black and white crime today.?
Remember too that at the time women had no vote and Confederate veterans were slow to get their vote back and thus they were politically disenfranchised. Thus the rise of the underground movements like the Klan which arose in areas which had suffered great amounts of looting, rape, and murder at the hands of the occupying forces. Read about the sack of Athens, Alabama which occurred during the war and then study the Athens-Pulaski axis in the formation of the Klan. The Klan that arose as a fad after the hit film BIRTH OF A NATION had its strongest numbers in the midwestern states.
The KKK was the terrorist wing of the democrat party.
Reconstruction was a tragedy for all involved and would have been conducted much differently had Lincoln lived.
I grew up in middle Tennessee where half the towns have a historical marker with the title, “FORREST’S RAID”. He was a man of great energy in addition to his great abilities. Like Cromwell he came out of a pure civilian background yet beat professional soldiers and was in Cromwell’s words “more severe than perhaps you would have it”.
An estimated 3,446 blacks and 1,297 whites died at the end of KKK ropes from 1882 to 1964.
During the height of lynch law terror, in the period from 1890 to 1910, the Ku Klux Klan did not exist. The first Klan was suppressed by Federal authorities in the early 1870s, and the second Klan was not started until 1915.
"Starting with Harry Truman, Democrats began – that is, they made their first serious efforts – to fight against the barriers of race; yet … Truman's efforts were largely unsuccessful because of his own Democratic Party."
Franklin Roosevelt established the Fair Employment Practice Committee by executive order and prohibited discrimination by any Federal agency, including the military. Many of the discriminatory practices in the Federal government had been established by Woodrow Wilson in the 1910s, but were not undone in 12 years of Republican presidents (Harding, Coolidge, and Hoover), in spite of GOP majorities in both houses of Congress during their administrations. While the black vote had been overwhelmingly Republican, it shifted to the Democrat column, in part due to the efforts of big city machine politicians who set up patronage programs for African Americans in a manner similar to what they had done for European immigrants. The New Deal also offered blacks welfare programs that appealed to their pocketbooks. By 1940, black Republicanism was moribund.
Barton's documentation said the first opponents of slavery "and the chief advocates for racial equal rights were the churches (the Quakers, Presbyterians, Methodists, etc.).
True enough. However, many churchmen, such as Episcopal bishop Leonidas Polk and Presbyterian theologian R. L. Dabney, later a leader of conservative Presbyterians in the South, were strong supporters of the Confederacy. In later times, such conservative evangelicals as W. A. Criswell and Jerry Falwell defended segregation in their younger days (though both later repented for their support of segregation). Overall, the record of churches and churchmen, Protestant and Catholic, on the issues of slavery and segregation was mixed.
The article suggested a contrast with the GOP, which, when former Klansman David Duke ran for Louisiana governor in 1991 as a Republican, was "scorned" by national GOP officials.
By 1991, support for a known white supremacist was as deadly to a political career as being associated with a dead girl or a live boy, as Earl Long once put it. The record of the Republican Party with regard to the second Ku Klux Klan in the 1920s was far from admirable. Republican state administrations in states like Maine, Indiana, and Oregon were controlled by Klansmen.
Distorting history for the sake of promoting the conservative cause is no better than the PC rewriting of history performed by liberals in academia or the entertainment business.
Maybe so, but they obviously haven't been read by the people who really, REALLY need to read them. For many, this could be a new found revelation.
True, they don't physically lynch any more (for the most part). They oppress in other ways.
Since you disagree with the “facts” in this article and seem to have knowledge that contradicts, perhaps you should contact Wallbuilders and share with them what you know. I agree if the facts are wrong it does no good either to the conservative or the Christian cause to present them as true. Wallbuilders can be contacted here:
http://www.wallbuilders.com/default.asp
Thank you for the recommendation, although it appears to me that WorldNetDaily should be addressed as well, since these are not the words of David Barton, but of their reporter Bob Unruh, who was commenting on Barton’s work.
I know of this history. Many Freepers know of this history. Yet, Ken Mehlman, a few months before the 2006 election, gives a speech where he “admits” that Republicans have practiced racism against blacks and have a sordid history of same. So, the question now is how do you fight against idiots in your own party?
“Thank you for the recommendation, although it appears to me that WorldNetDaily should be addressed as well, since these are not the words of David Barton, but of their reporter Bob Unruh, who was commenting on Barton’s work.”
There’s a reason many of us ignore the World Nut Daily.
“......many Northern States were run by Republican affiliated Klan members. I have a picture of Warren G. Harding holding a Klan meeting in the White House....”.
Let the South hating posters chew on this for awhile. These idiots still don’t get it. The South was solidly Democrat because of the opression and other excesses of the Radical Republican “Reconstruction”. Ex Confederates were totally disenfranchised and were not allowed to vote and their property was taken by corrupt Carpetbagger (and Scalawag) tax collectors. The Democratic Party was our refuge In those days, the Republicans were our mortal enemies.
It took 100 years and Barry Goldwater to begin the conversion of the Southern Democrats over to the Republican Party and now ironically, the South is the most solidly Republican region in the Country. Also ironically, the once solidly Republican Northeast is the most solidly Democrat. The political world has flipped.
Nothing like keeping racism at the forefront, eh?
Tell me about it... It used to be, "As Maine goes, so goes the nation." and now it's watch what ever Maine's doing and do the opposite.
Good post. General Polk took one for the team at Kennesaw Mtn. Down a little path, there is a memorial where he was killed
“Baton lives in the past. He digs up all kinds of history and represents it as new information.”
That’s what historians do. Are you suggesting that we should forget the past? If so, then you’d make a good Leftist.
“Nothing like keeping racism at the forefront, eh?”
That remark has to take the cake for ignorance. The Democrats and Left are the ones who are always bringing race to the forefront. Since they are obsessed with it, why not rub their noses in a bit of their own doo-doo?
To let this go would be the height of political folly. When the truth is on your side, why not use it?
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