Roots of Republican Racism II

A few days ago I posted The Roots of Republican Racism, which revealed that just a few years after Republican president Abraham Lincoln freed the slaves, the party began the systematic disenfranchisement of the free African Americans.

I guess this is going to become a series because the Republican party of 2010 keeps giving us material. Anyone who follows politics knows that the GOP plays on fear as a way to influence the American public to vote their way. They have denied this, but now with the discovery of their power point playbook denial is useless.

This picture from their presentation is all over the Internet.

Here is the entire presentation in pdf.

(As an aside, what is scary about Scooby Doo? How can he be linked to the "Evil Empire"?)

Such fear tactics were used here in Birmingham when the Teabaggers held a rally in Birmingham late last year.



But the roots of using fear tactics go back at least to 1892, when a Republican newspaper in Washington, DC printed an editorial explaining how things could be if equality for blacks was actually allowed. The column was reprinted in the Tallapoosa Voice in Tallapoosa County, AL, so frighten voters.

Quoting from a Republican newspaper in Washington, D.C., the Voice
warned local whites of the "feast" that awaited them if full citizenship was
allowed for blacks:

More than twenty negro Representatives from the South will render the Republican control of the future Congresses absolutely safe and sure. Heavy taxes should be laid upon the property of the whites to develop and extend the public school system of these States. Separate schools of the two races would be abolished, and the plan of bringing the youth of both colors into close and equal relation in school and churches given a fair trial...The State laws against the intermarriage of the races should be repealed, and any discrimination against the blacks in the matter of learning trades or obtaining employment should be a criminal offence - while the colored man's rights to hold office should be sacredly protected and recognized.

From - Blackmon, Douglas. Slavery by Another Name. pp 139-140.

Now, granted, most white voters in Alabama at the time might have been Democrats, they used the Republican message to sway the votes, through fear, at least in Tallapoosa county.

The one issue before the white people of Alabama is to maintain the integrity of
the white man's democratic party. This is the one thing to which party organizers should look. That is the one thing the voter should address himself to.

Tallapoosa Voice, April 7, 1892

From - Blackmon. p 139.

There is no dispute that the powerful Alabama white people of 1892 were racist, after all, just a few years later they wrote our racist and elitist 1901 Alabama Constitution. While Republican racism was documented as far back as 1876 there is no denying the Democrats of the day were just as bad and stayed that way through the "Dixiecats" and on until the 1960's when the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965 were passed under the leadership of President Johnson.

Soon after that, racist Democrats left the party and joined the Republican Party and the rest is history, as evidenced by the RNC message seen this week.