NOTE: The Radiance Foundation does not advocate for any particular political candidate. We simply advocate for the truth.
A lot has changed since the Party of Lincoln took on the inhumanity of racism and passed landmark legislation to restore what the institution of slavery tried to destroy. Despite the rhetoric from many liberals’ mouths that “nothing has changed” since the (second) Civil Rights era, we had a president of mixed racial lineage in the White House. I’m as black as Obama, and our country has come a long way. From slavery to the presidency, many barriers have been overcome since President Abraham Lincoln issued that monumental declaration–the Emancipation Proclamation–and changed the course of history.
The Radiance Foundation calls out the Democrat Party’s blatant dishonesty about America’s Civil Rights struggle.
The Democrat party (the party of slavery, separate-but-equal Jim Crow laws, lynchings, KKK, poll taxes, literacy tests, and now the party of unlimited abortion and infanticide) doesn’t seem to like its role in that history. Any time you hear so-called “progressive” politicians talking about civil rights, they act as if the Democrat party led the fight for African-Americans, women, and other minorities in this country. It was the Republican Party that introduced and passed all Reconstruction Amendments (13th through the 15th) and introduced nearly every African-American civil rights bill from the end of the Civil War through the mid 20th century. The Civil Rights bills of the 50s and 60s were mere copies of bills defeated by Democrats nearly 100 years prior, and the GOP still voted in overwhelmingly larger margins than Dems in the 20th century’s civil rights legislation. Yet the DNC gets away with launching historical drivel like VotingRightsMatter.org–an advertising effort launched to coincide with the 50th Anniversary of the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom. Ironically, it was Democrats who voted unanimously against the 15th Amendment (S.J. Res 8), which guaranteed the right to vote (for men, at least) regardless of “race, color, or previous condition of servitude”.
Voting rights do matter. Civil Rights do matter. But without Life…without truth…nothing else matters.
It’s one thing to have a two-party system where there are deep ideological chasms between both sides. It’s quite
another to have one party falsely, and absurdly, claiming the mantle of the other. There’s no mention, throughout the Voting Rights Matter site, that Lincoln was a Republican, or that Republicans abolished slavery, or that Republicans were the ones to protect blacks’ civil rights and oversee the Reconstruction of the South (although ending, tragically, in Republican President Hayes and the Democrat party’s deal to withdraw all federal troops from the South), or that Republicans were the ones who overwhelmingly passed the 19th Amendment. Yes. House Republicans voted as a large majority to ensure women’s right to vote–91% GOP versus only 60% Democrats. It was Republicans, thanks to the 14th Amendment, who made people of my complexion, American. Not a single Democrat in the House or the Senate voted for it. These are all inconvenient truths for the Democrat political machine whose media and university “academic” allies help them reshape the Democrat Party’s past. Sadly, today’s GOP leadership lacks the spine of those who were once called Radical Republicans–who courageously fought to change the political landscape because they believed that we’re all created equal.
From 2005-2011, Democrats.org (the official site of the Democrat Party) had the audacity to claim: “…we’ve worked to pass every one of our nation’s Civil Rights laws…On every Civil Rights issue, Democrats have led the fight.” The Radiance Foundation has created a Civil Rights Timeline factsheet that exposes how absurdly false this is. The quote needs to be filed under the ‘lie of the century’.
It was Democrats who passed “black code” and Jim Crow laws further dehumanizing recently emancipated slaves. The Civil Rights Act of 1871, known as the Ku Klux Klan Act, was passed by the GOP and unanimously voted against by Democrats. This act sought to end the terrorist violence and murder by the KKK of black and white Republicans. Nothing says voter suppression like a cross burning in your yard or a lynching. But the Democrat party, desperate to rewrite its DNA of racial division and oppression, has created a scapegoat for its own failures—the Republicans.
Even anti-lynching legislation, such as Republican Leonidas Dyer’s 1918 bill, couldn’t get Democrat support. In 1922, the Republican-controlled House passed the anti-lynching bill only for the legislation to die in the Senate because Democrats wouldn’t allow a vote. Lack of political fortitude allowed the bill to languish for years, with Congress failing to pass such vital legislation to protect American citizens from such heinous scare tactics.
This is history. And it profoundly affects the present, especially when most Americans have no idea which political ideology is truly liberating.
The often Democrat-heralded Civil Rights Act of 1964 was passed by more Republicans than Democrats. The landmark bill passed out of the House by only 60% of Dems yet 80% of Republicans. In the Senate, the margin was 70% of Dems and 79% of the GOP. The final bill’s passage was made possible by a smaller margin of Democrats, again, with 60% of Dems and a much larger 77% of Republicans.
It’s been over 50 years since the landmark passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965. It was a long time coming. Justice, sometimes, takes a while. But this monumental piece of civil rights legislation tore down some of the last strangleholds of eugenics-based social policies like poll taxes and literacy tests. Jim Crow was righteously trampled as the nation marched toward equality.
The ACLU, NAACP, and scores of liberal groups fan the flames of fear acting as if this is the 1960s and Democrats (wait did I say that?) Republicans are trying to suppress the black vote. As always, these “progressives” are like the boy who cried wolf; they’re just louder and their cry is “racism”! Sadly, it renders the word meaningless when it’s used at every turn. Poll taxes and literacy tests, an extension of eugenics-based social policies, were deeply racist. Those were real acts of voter suppression. Literacy tests were crazy. No, really, they were insane. Take a look at Louisiana’s literacy test from the 1963-1964. It was a series of 30 questions that the voter had to answer in 10 minutes—with zero mistakes. Good luck with that! These despicable practices disenfranchised many blacks in the South.
The VRA crushed those practices and gave teeth to the law by allowing the federal government to prosecute those who tried to violate the civil rights legislation. The vote tallies for the Voting Rights Act of 1965 don’t mesh, however, with mainstream media’s liberal narrative. You won’t ever see or hear these numbers from today’s so-called “journalists”. It takes citizen journalists to actually educate the public. In the VRA, 94% of Senate Republicans voted for it; only 69% of Senate Democrats did. Whereas 6% of the GOP voted against the VRA, a whopping 24% of Democrats did.
The faux cries of “voter suppression” and PR efforts like VotingRightsMatter.org are just scare tactics painting the GOP as the party that wants to take away our precious right to vote. Though most liberals won’t make the common sense connection, abortion is the ultimate form of voter suppression. Imagine the political power of the black community that hasn’t been robbed of over 16 million voters, violently eliminated before birth. But race politics are never about common sense; they’re about dollars and cents. There’s huge political machinery on both sides of the aisle, and truth is rarely the end goal. Deep pockets are. Sadly, the GOP establishment runs away and hides when the Democrat party makes its historically-challenged accusations, instead of standing proud of its historical accomplishments. I wish today’s GOP’s had the soul and the spine of the radicals of the Party of Lincoln.
Not one mainstream media outlet takes the DNC’s historical trip of fantasy to task. They parrot it instead. Not one major news network (except Fox News) has challenged their blatantly false civil rights talking points.
No political party is our salvation. It’s up to us.
We can choose to seek and know the truth, or continue to be manipulated by those with a perpetual agenda to be re-elected and in control. We can choose to be the victims that liberals so desperately need, or the victors who reject today’s self-proclaimed “civil rights” movement. We need to know the difference—regardless of race or ethnicity—between being empowered and being fooled by those in power.