Plantation Politics and Black Republicanism
First Black members of Congress... Republicans all
The photo of the men above illustrate part of the reason I made my transition from the plantation of the Democratic Party on which many Black Americans continue to languish. These men elected during the period of Reconstruction were the first, and for a very long time, the only Black Americans elected to the United States Congress. They were all of them, courageous and bold men who put lie to the then prevailing notion that Blacks were innately inferior to Whites and they served with distinction.
Hiram Rhodes Revels was the first Black member of the Senate and of Congress, and he was elected from the state of Mississippi in 1870.
Joseph Rainey was the first Black elected to the House of Representatives.
from South Carolina.
These men, and the others, were all republicans. In fact the Republican Party “owned” the Black vote until the 1930’s when FDR’s New Deal programs began to peel away Black voters from their allegiance. It wasn’t until the 1960’s and 1970’s however that Blacks began to move solidly into the Democrat camp. Ironically, it was continued Republican support for Civil Rights that led to the re-enfranchisement of Blacks throughout the South, something that had been systematically stripped from them by Democrats as quickly as possible after the Reconstruction Era. The infamous Compromise of 1877 that ended Reconstruction gave Democrats a free hand to institute as reasonable a facsimile of slavery as possible while Whites on both sides of the Mason-Dixon agreed to agree on making as much money as possible and looking the other way as the US Constitution was trampled underfoot.
Why is it that this rich history was something I and most Americans are never exposed to? Could it be that acknowledgment of Republicans long standing commitment to Civil Rights and the Democratic Party’s long standing use of race politics stands counter to conventional liberal wisdom? Perhaps it simply doesn’t suit the narrative that Republicans are all racists and that Democrats are the party of peace, love, and equal opportunity. I once remember being told by a teacher that the Republicans who championed Civil Rights would be Democrats today.
The absurdity of this claim is obvious to anyone who knows the history, as many unfortunately do not. It was in fact the Republican Party that was from the outset anti-slavery and pro-civil rights. Then and now the Republican Party supported the rights of individuals to stand and fall on their own accord, and not based on his or her race, creed, or confession. Then as now, the Democrat Party held firmly to a doctrine of control.
After all, what else is a plantation but a world in which men are systematically separated from their families, women and children are supported by the plantation establishment, educational opportunity is determined for you, religious expression is smiled upon as long as it doesn’t threaten the status quo, working in the big house is held up as the highest possible attainment (and is usually only permitted for biracial folks who uphold the establishment), and one and all are threatened that freedom of conscience, of self determination, and of life outside the plantation means nothing but sure destruction? A plantation or the state of Black Americans under Democrat control?
I usually don’t visit “black Republican” or “black conservative” sites often, other than Booker Rising because of the trauma caused laying out the truth to those who have willingly enslaved themselves on the Republican Plantation as house slaves creates. You came up on my WordPress Tag surf today…
To be a black Republican, particularly of the racial politics bent you describe above is to ignore every bit of history in this country since the Civil Rights Act of 1964/5… Indeed starting with Goldwater in 1960.
Been thinking about doing a piece on the racial aspects of McCarthy, and how black educators and Civil Rights activists were singled out as “communist sympathizers” in an effort to suppress the nascent post-war Civil Rights Movement.
I do a series under the heading of “The New Jim Crow” which specifically – with references and statistics outlines the history, roots, and impact of Republican conservative racism – right on through the Bushsquat. You might want to read it, considering your professed interest in history…
I will be glad to read it when I have a chance. I am a student of history and enjoy reading such things. Allow me to be clear; I do not at all deny that Republicans have played the race game as frequently (though less adeptly) as have Democrats, and I was a Democrat for most of my voting life. I am very far indeed from being enslaved on anyone’s plantation. Racial politics have a very long history in our country going all the way back to the Revolution itself when emancipation was offered to slaves who would join the side of loyalists to the crown, on to the Constitutional convention when “virtual representation” of Black slaves became a way for southerners to balance the demography of representative government, and so on until today.
That the Civil Rights Act of 1964/65 (and all Civil rights legislation prior) were passed with mostly Republican support is also a historic fact. I am under no illusion however that such policies were passed out of the goodness of anyone’s heart. It was then, and is now, about power and economics. That many black activists and Civil Rights leaders were singled out as communist sympathizers is likewise not in dispute. The fact is that many of them were indeed communist sympathizers if for no other reason than that communists actively sought to exploit the hypocrisy of the American system that so vehemently and aggressively discriminated against Blacks on the basis of race. It was for that same reason that communism found such support among oppressed colonial peoples. I am not a specialist in American history, but neither am I wholly ignorant. Facts neither traumatize nor surprise me. Opposing opinions don’t frighten me. And no one owns me.
You obviously haven’t read much about the history of the NAACP, and how exactly that “communist” label got attached to the Civil Rights Movement – nor of the Labor Movement.
Suggest you do a bit of that before spouting off about “communist sympathizers”.
Here is the Cliff notes version:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Communist_Party_and_African-Americans
And Lord Dunmore’s Proclamation (followed by one from George Washington) predated the founding of the Republican Party by 70-80 years.
Gentle commenter, I hesitate to alert you to the fact that you were the first to use the words “communist sympathizers” in your initial comment. I was only borrowing your phraseology. Thank you for your citation which supports my point: that Blacks (both American and African) were drawn to communism because communism promised an antidote to the political repression experienced by Blacks.
Lord Dunmore’s proclamation of course preceded the founding of the Republican party. As I noted racial politics have a long history in this country, extending back beyond even the revolutionary period; Lord Dunmore’s proclamation being but one example. This was prior to the founding of the republic or to the adoption of our current constitution.