Once Upon A Time When We Were Republicans

African Americans once voted Republican in large numbers.  We rallied behind Lincoln, who ended slavery,   Teddy Roosevelt, who invited Booker T. Washington to the White House, and Eisenhower for sending Federal troops to integrate Little Rock High School in Arkansas when many Democrats fought against equal rights for people of color.

We even carried ourselves in a much different light in those days.  We championed education as millions of  African Americans completed high school and college. We started scores of businesses in a segregated society and backed the institution of marriage to the fullest.

However, the Civil Rights Movement changed the course of history in the black community as African Americans looked desperately for a way out of Jim Crow throughout the land.

 Ironically, the Democratic Party answered the call or picked up where the Republicans left off.  At the historic Democratic National Convention of 1948,  President Truman staked the outcome of his presidency on the right of all Americans to live in peace without regard to race,  creed, or color.  It may have made a difference for Democrats in northern cities.

Later in the 1960s,  President Lyndon B. Johnson, a Democrat from Texas,  pushed for the Voting Rights Act of 1965,  The War On Poverty, and a host of other social programs in what was called the Great Society that became law.  Johnson also forced Congress to pass the Civil Rights Act of 1964,  which barred discrimination in employment and public places in an attempt to integrate African Americans into the rest of America.

Sadly,  too many African Americans misunderstood integration.  Its purpose was to uphold the Constitution.  We instead saw it as a chance to abandon most black institutions or a competitive two-party system.  As a result, black people are left, at least for the moment,  with rising crime, high unemployment, and single-parent households that cut to the very core of our existence.  

In politics,  African Americans are caught between a rock and a hard place today.  Democrats placate us, while Republicans ignore our vote altogether.  It's a far cry from a generation ago.