Further, the Fourteenth Amendment pushed by Republicans was ratified in1868 that granted blacks citizenship. The Fifteenth Amendment also pushed by Republicans was ratified in 1870 that granted blacks the right to vote. Undaunted, Democrats passed discriminatory Jim Crow Laws in 1875 to restrict the rights of blacks to use public facilities. In response, Republicans passed the Civil Rights Act of 1875 which prohibited racial discrimination in public facilities. Shamefully, Democrats fought against anti-lynching laws, and when the Democrats regained control of Congress in 1892, they passed the Repeal Act of 1894 that overturned civil right laws enacted by Republicans. Further, the U.S. Supreme Court sided with Democrats and issued a ruling in the case of "Plessy v. Ferguson" in 1896 that established the "separate but equal" doctrine. That opinion stated that it was not a violation of the Constitution to have separate facilities for blacks. It took Republicans nearly six decades to finally get the civil rights laws of the 1950's and 1960's passed over the objection of the Democrats. To advance civil rights for blacks, Republicans started the NAACP on February 12, 1909, the 100th anniversary of the birth of Abraham Lincoln. The first black head of the NAACP was black Republican James Weldon Johnson who became general secretary in 1920 and wrote the lyrics to the song "Lift Every Voice and Sing". Republicans also founded the HBCU's (Historically Black Colleges and Universities) because Democrats were trying to prevent blacks from getting a good education. During the civil rights era of the 1960's, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. fought to stop Democrats from denying civil rights to blacks. It should come as no surprise that Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. as a Republican as has been affirmed by his niece, Dr. Alveda C. King in a video posted on YouTube. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. would not have joined the Democratic Party, the party of the Ku Klux Klan and segregation. Dr. King fought against Democrat Public Safety Commissioner Eugene "Bull" Connor in Birmingham who let loose vicious dogs and turned skin-burning fire hoses on black civil rights demonstrators. Democrat Georgia Governor Lester Maddox famously brandished ax handles to prevent blacks from patronizing his restaurant. Democrat Alabama Governor George Wallace stood in front of the Alabama schoolhouse in 1963 and thundered, "Segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever." All of these racist Democrats remained Democrats until the day they died. The so-called "Dixiecrats" remained Democrats and did not migrate to the Republican Party. The Dixiecrats were a group of Southern Democrats who, in the 1948 national election, ran a third party ticket that supported segregation and Jim Crow laws passed by Democrats. Even so, they continued to be Democrats for all local and state elections, as well as for all future national elections. Unknown today is the fact that the Democratic Party supported the Topeka, Kansas school board in the 1954 "Brown v. Topeka Board of Education" Supreme Court decision by Chief Justice Earl Warren who was appointed by Republican President Dwight Eisenhower. This landmark decision declared that the "separate but equal" doctrine violated the 14th Amendment and ended school segregation. After the Brown decision, Democrat Arkansas Governor Orville Faubus tried to prevent desegregation of a Little Rock public school. President Eisenhower sent troops to Arkansas to desegregate the schools and pushed through the 1957 Civil Rights Act. In 1958, Eisenhower established a permanent US Civil Rights Commission that had been rejected by prior Democrat presidents, including President Franklin D. Roosevelt. Ignored today is the fact that it was Roosevelt who started blacks on the path to dependency on government handouts during the Great Depression with his "New Deal" that turned out to be a bad deal for blacks. Even though Roosevelt received the vote of many blacks, Roosevelt banned black American newspapers from the military because he was convinced the newspapers were communists. Much is made of Democrat President Harry Truman's issuing an Executive Order in 1948 to desegregate the military. Not mentioned is the fact that it was Eisenhower who actually took action to effectively end segregation in the military. Little known is the fact that it was Republican Senator Everett Dirksen from Illinois, not Democrat President Lyndon Johnson, who pushed through the landmark 1964 Civil Rights Act. In fact, Dirksen was instrumental in the passage of civil rights legislation in 1957, 1960, 1964, 1965 and 1968. The chief opponents of the 1964 Civil Rights Act were Democrat Senators Sam Ervin, Albert Gore, Sr. and Robert Byrd, a former official in the Ku Klux Klan who is still in Congress. None of these racist Democrats became Republicans. Democrats ignore the pivotal role played by Senator Dirksen in obtaining passage of the landmark 1964 Civil Rights Act, while heralding President Johnson as a civil rights advocate for signing the bill. Notably, in his 4,500-word State of the Union Address delivered on January 4, 1965, Johnson mentioned scores of topics for federal action, but only thirty five words were devoted to civil rights. He did not mention one word about voting rights. Information about Johnson's anemic civil rights policy positions can be found in the "Public Papers of the President, Lyndon B. Johnson," 1965, vol. 1, p.1-9... In their campaign to unfairly paint the Republican Party today as racists, Democrats point to President Johnson's prediction that there would be an exodus from the Democratic Party because of Johnson's signing the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Omitted from the Democrats' rewritten history is what Johnson actually meant by his prediction. Johnson's statement was not made out of a concern that racist Democrats would suddenly join the Republican Party that was fighting for the civil rights of blacks. Instead, Johnson feared that the racist Democrats would again form a third party, such as the short-lived States Rights Democratic Party. In fact, Alabama's Democrat Governor George C. Wallace in 1968 started the American Independent Party that attracted other racist candidates, including Democrat Atlanta Mayor (later Governor of Georgia) Lester Maddox. continued in Juneteenth continued3 thread
