Burgess Owens, former Oakland Raider Super Bowl XV Champion, entrepreneur, bestselling author and speaker said, “I used to be a Democrat until I did my history and found out the misery that that party brought to my race.”
Owens once suffered under the delusion that Republicans were the people that hated, enslaved, abused and lynched blacks. He had the integrity to do his own research and own-up to his ignorance.
He was in Washington D.C. recently to testify before the House Judiciary Circus about whether innocent white Americans today should pay reparations to blacks for the harm done to other blacks hundreds of years ago.
Burgess said to the committee, “I do believe in restitution. Let’s point to the party that was part of slavery, KKK, and Jim Crow that has killed over 40 percent of our black babies, 20 million of them. (In the) State of California, 75 percent of our black boys can’t pass a standard reading and writing test, a Democratic state. Let’s pay reparation. Let’s pay restitution. How about the Democratic Party pay for all the misery brought to my race?”
The Democratic Party touts itself as the Party of Race, close but no cigar. It’s the Party of Racists. Writer Jeffrey Lord in 2008 laid out the evidence pointing to the Democrats as the Party of Slavery. Lord notes that the following facts are mysteriously absent from the Democrat National Committee website.
There is no reference to the number of Democratic Party platforms supporting slavery. There were six from 1840 through 1860.
There is no reference to the number of Democratic presidents who owned slaves. There were seven from 1800 through 1861.
There is no reference to the number of Democratic Party platforms that either supported segregation outright or were silent on the subject. There were 20, from 1868 through 1948.
There is no reference to “Jim Crow laws,” nor is there reference to the role Democrats played in creating them. These were the post-Civil War laws passed enthusiastically by Democrats in that pesky 52-year part of the DNC’s missing years. These laws segregated public schools, public transportation, restaurants, rest rooms and public places in general (everything from water coolers to beaches). The reason Rosa Parks became famous is that she sat in the “whites only” front section of a bus, the “whites only” designation of Democrats.
There is no reference to the formation of the Ku Klux Klan, which, according to Columbia University historian Eric Foner, became “a military force serving the interests of the Democratic Party.” Nor is there reference to University of North Carolina historian Allen Trelease’s description of the Klan as the “terrorist arm of the Democratic Party.”
There is no reference to the fact Democrats opposed the 13th, 14th and 15th amendments to the Constitution. The 13th banned slavery. The 14th effectively overturned the infamous 1857 Dred Scott decision (made by Democratic pro-slavery Supreme Court justices) by guaranteeing due process and equal protection to former slaves. The 15th gave black Americans the right to vote.
There is no reference to the fact that Democrats opposed the Civil Rights Act of 1866. It was passed by the Republican Congress over the veto of President Andrew Johnson, who had been a Democrat before joining Lincoln’s ticket in 1864. The law was designed to provide blacks with the right to own private property, sign contracts, sue and serve as witnesses in a legal proceeding.
There is no reference to the Democrats’ opposition to the Civil Rights Act of 1875. It was passed by a Republican Congress and signed into law by President Ulysses Grant. The law prohibited racial discrimination in public places and public accommodations.
There is no reference to the Democrats’ 1904 platform, which devotes a section to “Sectional and Racial Agitation,” claiming the GOP’s protests against segregation and the denial of voting rights to blacks sought to “revive the dead and hateful race and sectional animosities in any part of our common country,” which in turn “means confusion, distraction of business, and the reopening of wounds now happily healed.”
There is no reference to four Democratic platforms, 1908-20, that are silent on blacks, segregation, lynching and voting rights as racial problems in the country grew. By contrast the GOP platforms of those years specifically address “Rights of the Negro” (1908), oppose lynching (in 1912, 1920, 1924,1928) and, as the New Deal kicks in, speak out about the dangers of making blacks “wards of the state.”
There is no reference to the Democratic Convention of 1924, known to history as the “Klanbake.” The 103-ballot convention was held in Madison Square Garden. Hundreds of delegates were members of the Ku Klux Klan, the Klan so powerful that a plank condemning Klan violence was defeated outright. To celebrate, the Klan staged a rally with 10,000 hooded Klansmen in a field in New Jersey directly across the Hudson from the site of the convention. Attended by hundreds of cheering convention delegates, the rally featured burning crosses and calls for violence against African-Americans and Catholics.
There is no reference to the fact that it was Democrats who segregated the federal government, at the direction of President Woodrow Wilson upon taking office in 1913. There is a reference to the fact that President Harry Truman integrated the military after World War II.
There is reference to the fact that Democrats created the Federal Reserve Board, passed labor and child welfare laws, and created Social Security with Wilson’s New Freedom and FDR’s New Deal. There is no mention that these programs were created as the result of an agreement to ignore segregation and the lynching of blacks. Neither is there a reference to the thousands of local officials, state legislators, state governors, U.S. congressmen and U.S. senators who were elected as supporters of slavery and then segregation between 1800 and 1965. Nor is there reference to the deal with the devil that left segregation and lynching as a way of life in return for election support for three post-Civil War Democratic presidents, Grover Cleveland, Woodrow Wilson and Franklin Roosevelt.
There is no reference that three-fourths of the opposition to the 1964 Civil Rights Bill in the U.S. House came from Democrats, or that 80% of the “nay” vote in the Senate came from Democrats. Certainly there is no reference to the fact that the opposition included future Democratic Senate leader Robert Byrd of West Virginia (a former Klan member) and Tennessee Senator Albert Gore Sr., father of Vice President Al Gore.
Last but certainly not least, there is no reference to the fact that Birmingham, Ala., Public Safety Commissioner Bull Connor, who infamously unleashed dogs and fire hoses on civil rights protestors, was in fact–yes indeed–a member of both the Democratic National Committee and the Ku Klux Klan.
The Democrats refuse to issue an apology for their support of slavery and segregation. Most current Democrat candidates for president are in favor of reparations. But they ignore the fact that their own party should pay them — and neither are they pledging to pay reparations from the millions of campaign funds sent from Democrat supporters.
The Democrats have a 219 year habit of using race to win elections. They were and always have been racists.
(Get Lou’s weekly podcasts at “No Hostages Radio” and articles at nohostagesradio.com)