Alveda King: Let’s Look at the History of the Democrats and Republicans in Reparations Discussion

Independence Day is here, and during this time our nation’s history, there is a heightened demand to redefine America’s concepts of liberty, freedom, and justice. Juneteenth 2019 is just behind us. We are currently celebrating 400 years of African American history, so it’s likely not by accident that the “reparations debate” is rapidly gaining traction on the left.

For those wondering, the proper response to liberal demands for “reparations” is not to say that slavery ended 150 years ago, as though the passage of time negates the whole debate. Instead, the right answer is to relate the historical facts and argue from the position of moral authority that the Republican Party has always held on the issues of abolishing slavery and repairing the damage it inflicted on our society.

The GOP was explicitly founded as the anti-slavery party in 1854, and a majority of its first presidential campaign platform dealt with stopping the spread of slavery and extending civil rights to emancipated slaves.

Four years later, Abraham Lincoln became the first Republican president, and the Democrats chose to divide the nation rather than accept limits on the expansion of slavery to new territories.

After their defeat in the Civil War, many unrepentant Democrats opposed the 13th, 14th and 15th Amendments, which were supported by every Republican in Congress.

Democrats subsequently founded the Ku Klux Klan to terrorize and kill black Americans, then instituted Jim Crow laws to keep black Republicans from voting. At that time, virtually all emancipated slaves belonged to the party of Lincoln, and Jim Crow was the Democrats’ way of disenfranchising and re-subjugating newly-liberated blacks.

In fact, almost all of the newly-formed state Republican Party organizations in southern states after the war were started by blacks. Not all had been slaves, but they all identified with the party of Lincoln, the Republican Party.

The first 23 black representatives elected to Congress were all Republicans. So was the first black senator, Hiram Revels — who, by the way, ought to have his name on a Senate office building on Capitol Hill instead of Richard Brevard Russell, Jr. They wouldn’t even have to change the initials. It would still be RSOB. Senator Russell, whose name adorns one of the main Senate office buildings to this day, was a racist, a segregationist … and unsurprisingly, a Democrat.

During Reconstruction, southern Democrats routinely used organized violence against anyone they associated with “radical Republicans” — especially black voters and officeholders. In Texas alone, more than 1,000 blacks were murdered in a single year. By supposedly upstanding citizens…

The first moving picture shown in the White House, at the behest of Democrat Woodrow Wilson, was the pro-KKK movie “Birth of a Nation.” The KKK eventually became so powerful within the Democratic Party that the 1924 Democratic National Convention actually came to be known as the “Klanbake.”

The Democrats also habitually ignored the civil rights laws that Republicans established during and after the Civil War, and moved to legalize segregation through decisions such as Plessy v. Ferguson, the Supreme Court ruling that notoriously established the “separate but equal” standard.

That was overturned during the tenure of Republican President Dwight D. Eisenhower, when all of the southern states had Democrat governors who were keeping black children from attending public school. While Republicans fought to integrate the public schools, Democrat governors such as J.L. Almond of Virginia actually shut down public schools to keep them from being integrated.

Long-time Democrat Senator Robert Byrd of West Virginia, a mentor of Hillary Clinton, was even an “Exalted Cyclops” in the KKK. He was called the “conscience of the Senate” by many prominent Democrats, despite his history of virulently racist rhetoric and behavior.

Former Vice President Al Gore’s father, Senator Al Gore, Sr., joined Senator Byrd in filibustering the Civil Rights Act of 1965 — which, as it turned out, was already enshrined in law in the 14th Amendment of the Constitution, but had been ignored by Democrats for decades.

I strongly encourage you to take a few minutes to watch this brief documentary explaining the facts about reparations. If you have the time, also check out this lengthier production called “Emancipation Revelation Revolution,” which thoroughly examines the history of the civil rights movement in America, including the role that both parties played, and what happens to conservative blacks today who leave the liberal plantation of the Democrat Party and identify with the Party of Lincoln.

Republicans should be eager to have this discussion, because all of the facts show that the Democrats have always been the party of slavery, oppression, violence, divisive and deadly behaviour, segregation, and dishonesty.

Black Americans need to be reintroduced to the Party that was founded to liberate our ancestors. If anyone should pay reparations, it’s the Democrat Party.

Alveda King is the niece of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and daughter of King’s younger brother, Rev. A. D. King. She is a prominent American author, pro-life and civil rights activist and minister. She is a Fox News channel contributor and once served as a Senior Fellow at the Alexis de Tocqueville Institution, a Washington, D.C. think-tank. She is a former member of the Georgia House of Representatives and the founder of Alveda King Ministries.