Jonathan Bean

Since the 1960s, young Americans have been taught to equate the Democratic Party with civil rights, while being taught that the Republican Party was on the “wrong side” of history. The media and our schools have drummed this myth into our heads so that Republican politicians fear to even deal with civil rights because, as they say, “you can’t fight the race card.” This is bad history, betrays our proud party tradition, and offers no vision for the future....

For 150 years, the Republican Party held high the banner of civil rights. Meanwhile, the Democratic Party defended slavery, segregation and allied itself with the Ku Klux Klan to take the vote away from black and white Republicans and terrorize them into submission. Little wonder the Democratic Party was known as the “party of the Klan” well into the 20th century. When Democrats finally embraced the cause of racial freedom in the 1960s, they were the “Johnny come latelys” of the civil rights movement, simply undoing the damage their Party had inflicted on racial minorities during the prior 100 years. We, the Party of Lincoln and Frederick Douglass and Ward Connerly, have a far better claim to civil rights but we have forgotten our own history....

So why do African Americans continue to vote for the "party of the Klan"? Well, LBJ's signing of the Civil Rights Act (and Goldwater's opposition) Nixon's southern strategy and Reagan's Neshoba County speech probably didn't help...