The American Minute: 13th, 14th 15th Amendments And Race In Politics

In 1857, the Supreme Court, with 7 of the 9 Justices being Democrat, decided that Dred Scott was not a citizen, but property.

Chief Justice Roger Taney, appointed by Democrat President Andrew Jackson, wrote that slaves were “so far inferior…that the Negro might justly and lawfully be reduced to slavery for their own benefit.”

After the Civil War, the 13TH AMENDMENT was adopted December 6, 1865, abolishing slavery in America.

Once Southern Democrats were forced to free their slaves, they attempted to effectively re-enslave them by passing ‘Black Codes’ and ‘Jim Crow Laws’ which required former slaves to be “apprenticed” to “employers” and punished any who left.

On November 22, 1865, Republicans denounced Mississippi’s Democrat legislature for enacting
‘Black Codes’ which institutionalized racial discrimination.

On February 5, 1866, Republican Congressman Thaddeus Stevens introduced legislation to give former slaves “40 acres and a mule,” but Democrats opposed it, led by President Andrew Johnson.

On April 9, 1866, Republicans in Congress overrode Democrat President Johnson’s veto and passed the Civil Rights Act of 1866, conferring rights of citizenship on freed slaves.

To force Southern States to extend State citizenship rights to former slaves, Republicans in the U.S. House passed the 14TH AMENDMENT, May 10, 1866, as did the Senate, June 8, 1866. One hundred percent of Democrats voted against it.

The 14TH AMENDMENT was adopted by the States on JULY 28, 1868.

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Republican Congressman John Farnsworth of Illinois stated, March 31, 1871:

“The reason for the adoption (of the 14TH AMENDMENT)…was because of…discriminating… legislation of those States… by which they were punishing one class of men under different laws from another class.”

Once Southern Democrats could no longer re-enslave with ‘Black Codes’ and ‘Jim Crow Laws’ they attempted to keep former slaves from voting.

On January 8, 1867, Republicans granted voting rights to former slaves in the District of Columbia by overriding Democrat President Andrew Johnson’s veto.

On July 19, 1867, Republicans passed more legislation protecting voting rights of all African-Americans after overriding again Democrat President Andrew Johnson’s veto.

On March 30, 1868, Republicans began impeachment proceedings of Democrat President Andrew Johnson.

On September 12, 1868, Democrats in Georgia’s Senate expelled civil rights activist Tunis Campbell and 24 other Republican African-Americans, who would later be reinstated by a Republican Congress.

On October 22, 1868, while campaigning for re-election, Republican Congressman James Hinds was assassinated by Democrats who had organized vigilante groups.

The 15TH AMENDMENT, granting the right to vote to all men regardless of race was passed February 3, 1870, overcoming 97 percent Democrat opposition.

Once Southern Democrats could no longer keep former slaves from voting, they attempted to intimidate them through KKK-type vigilante activities and lynchings.

Republican President U.S. Grant signed the Enforcement Act, May 31, 1870, which imposed stiff penalties for depriving any American of their civil rights.

The Republican Congress, June 22, 1870, created the U.S. Department of Justice to safeguard civil rights against Democrats in the South.

The Republican Congress passed another Enforcement Act, February 28, 1871, which provided federal protection for African-American voters.

The Republican Congress enacted the Ku Klux Klan Act, April 20, 1871, outlawing Democrat-affiliated groups which oppressed African-Americans.

On October 10, 1871, African-American Republican civil rights leader Octavius Catto was murdered by a Democratic Party operative, after repeated threats by Philadelphia Democrats against black voting.

Republican President Ulysses S. Grant deployed U.S. troops on October 18, 1871, to combat violence against African Americans.

Republican President Theodore Roosevelt stated December 3, 1906:

“White men are lynched, but the crime is peculiarly frequent in respect to black men…

Governor Candler, of Georgia, stated… ‘I can say of a verity that I have, within the last month, saved the lives of half a dozen innocent Negroes who were pursued by the mob, and brought them to trial in a court of law in which they were acquitted.’

As Bishop Galloway, of Mississippi, has finely said: ‘The mob lynches a Negro charged with rape will in a little while lynch a white man suspected of crime. Every Christian patriot in America needs to lift up his voice in loud and eternal protest against the mob spirit that is threatening the integrity of this Republic…'”

Theodore Roosevelt continued:

“There is but one safe rule…that is, to treat each man, whatever his color, his creed, or his social position, with even-handed justice…

Reward or punish the individual on his merits as an individual. Evil will surely come in the end to both races if we substitute for this…

Every lynching represents…a loosening of the bands of civilization… No man can take part in the torture of a human being without having his own moral nature permanently lowered.

Every lynching means just so much moral deterioration in all the children who have any knowledge of it, and therefore just so much additional trouble for the next generation of Americans.”

Democrat President Woodrow Wilson segregated the U.S. Navy.

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During World War II, General Dwight Eisenhower overcame racism and made the decision to arm African American soldiers with weapons.

In 1952 and 1956, a majority of African Americans voted for Republican President Dwight Eisenhower.

President Eisenhower ordered the desegregation of Washington, D.C. public schools after the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education decision.

In 1953, Republican Vice President Richard Nixon chaired a committee which sought to eliminate discrimination on the basis of race or color in the employment practices of government contractors.

In 1957 and 1959, President Eisenhower proposed civil rights bills to enforce the 15th Amendment, strengthening the rights of African American to vote.

Senate Democrats filibustered the bills, watering them down.

In 1959, when Southern Democrats demanded that any who violated the new civil rights bill should be tried before all-white Southern juries, Republican Vice President Richard Nixon gave the deciding Senate vote to kill the Southern amendment.

Southern Democrats included former klansman U.S. Senator Robert Byrd and Governor George Wallace who opposed desegregation.

After the Birmingham Children’s Crusade Protest where police dogs and fire hoses were used against African Americans, President John F. Kennedy gave a speech calling for a bill which emulated the Republican Civil Rights Act of 1875.

Southern Democrats fervently opposed it, as Democrat Senator Strom Thurmond stated:

“This so-called Civil Rights Proposals, which the President has sent to Capitol Hill for enactment into law, are unconstitutional, unnecessary, unwise and extend beyond the realm of reason. This is the worst civil-rights package ever presented to the Congress and is reminiscent of the Reconstruction proposals and actions of the radical Republican Congress.”

‘The bribe or the bullet’ is a phrase which describes how people can be motivated by positive or negative motivations.

Democrat political strategists realized that public opinion was turning against the use of intimidation tactics – ‘the bullet’ – used to discourage African Americans from voting, so a transition should be made to using ‘the bribe’ of financial incentives and dependency.

Democrat President Lyndon Johnson yielded to the changing political tide and signed Civil Rights legislation.

He then promoted the Great Society Welfare State which would result in poor minorities becoming dependent on government hand outs.

According to Ronald Kessler’s book, Inside The White House (1996), Lyndon Johnson explained his abrupt change in strategy to two governors aboard Air Force One: “I’ll have those n****rs voting Democratic for the next 200 years.”

Lyndon Johnson, with the help of Senator Edward Kennedy, also changed the immigration quotas to bring in more immigrants from poorer countries who would most likely vote for candidates promising more government hand outs.

As the Welfare State offered more money if the father was not in the home, the strong church-centered African American families and neighborhoods were adversely affected, creating a growing dependency on the government, and by extension, creating a larger constituency of voters for candidates promising government money.

 

African American Republican Rep. J.C. Watts, Jr., stated February 5, 1997:

“For the past 30 years our nation’s spent $5 trillion trying to erase poverty, and the result, as you know, is that we didn’t get rid of it at all.

In fact, we spread it.

We destroyed the self-esteem of millions of people, grinding them down in a welfare system that penalizes moms for wanting to marry the father of their children, and penalizes moms for wanting to save money.

Friends, that’s not right…”

Educational emphasis migrated from strictly academic to include more behavior modification. Voters who were less educated tended to be more easily manipulated, as foreshadowed in the pre-Civil War South where it was a crime to teach slaves to read.

An effort began to redefined ‘racism’ to mean anyone opposing big government welfare programs.

 

In a tragic irony, growing dependency on government hand outs appeared reminiscent of the dependency which existed on Southern Democrat plantations where slaves waited for hand outs from their masters.

 

 

Media, music and entertainment began to increasingly be employed to stir passions and prejudices for political purposes, as President William Henry Harrison warned in his Inaugural, 1841:

“The understanding of men can be warped and their affections changed by operations upon their passions and prejudices.”

 

Political organizers exploited racial tensions. Saul Alinsky wrote in Rules for Radicals:

 

“The organizer’s first job  is to create the issues or problems…

“The organizer must first rub raw the resentments of the people of the community…

 

“The organizer…polarizes the issue…and helps to lead his forces into conflict…

 

“An organizer must stir up dissatisfaction and discontent…

 

“Fan the latent hostilities of many of the people to the point of overt expression.

 

“He must search out controversy and issues, rather than avoid them… for unless there is controversy people are not concerned enough to act.”

 

Earlier in the century, Republican Booker T. Washington had written in My Larger Education-Being Chapters from My Experience (1911, ch. V: The Intellectuals and the Boston Mob, p. 118):
“There is another class of colored people who make a business of keeping the troubles, the wrongs, and the hardships of the Negro race before the public.

 

Having learned that they are able to make a living out of their troubles, they have grown into the settled habit of advertising their wrongs — partly because they want sympathy and partly because it pays.
Some of these people do not want the Negro to lose his grievances, because they do not want to lose their jobs…”

 

Booker T. Washington stated:

“There is a certain class of race-problem solvers who do not want the patient to get well, because as long as the disease holds out they have not only an easy means of making a living, but also an easy medium through which to make themselves prominent before the public.”

 

Rep. J.C. Watts, Jr. stated February 5, 1997:

“Too often when we talk about racial healing, we make the old assumption that government can heal the racial divide….

Republicans and Democrats – red, yellow, black and white – have to understand that we must individually, all of us, accept our share of responsibility….

It does not happen by dividing us into racial groups.

It does not happen by trying to turn rich against poor or by using the politics of fear.

It does not happen by reducing our values to the lowest common denominator.

And friends, it does not happen by asking Americans to accept what’s immoral and wrong in the name of tolerance…”

J.C. Watts continued:

“We must be a people who dare, dare to take responsibility for our hatred and fears and ask God to heal us from within.

And we must be a people of prayer, a people who pray as if the strength of our nation depended on it, because it does….”

Booker T. Washington – American Hero

J.C. Watts concluded:

“I’ve often told the story of a boy and his father.

The father was trying to get some work done, and the boy wanted the daddy’s attention, but the father was busy at his desk with so much to do.

To occupy the boy, this father….remembered that he had seen a picture of the world in this magazine.

In what he thought was a stroke of genius, the father tore out the picture and tore it into 20 different pieces, and he said, ‘Here son. Go put the world back together.’

And you know what happened? Five minutes later the little Michelangelo was back, saying, ‘Daddy, look what I’ve done.’

The father looked, and he said, ‘Son, how did you do it so quickly? How did you put the world back together so quickly?’

And the little boy answered, ‘Dad, it was easy. There was a picture of a man on the back of the map, on the back of the world. And once I put the man back together, the world fell into place.’

And friends, this is our agenda: to put our men and women back together, and, in that way, get our country back together.”