-By Duane Lester
The NAACP has released its unbiased report on racism in the Tea Party and has unexpectedly found it is racist.
Hardly surprising.
The president of the North Carolina NAACP chapter, Rev. William Barber, went far enough in his condemnation of the group to be noticed by the Washington Post:
“We have to have particular concern about supremacy attitudes, violence, hate language, particularly when it’s rooted in notions of restoring or taking back or redeeming the country,” Barber said. “Because, in the American social-historical-political psyche, we have historical markers that tell us how dangerous this is to be given legitimacy.”
For instance:
“We know in 1867 when the Ku Klux Klan, for instance, laid out its political purposes, it was about restoring and re-enfranchising, if you will.”
“And then when you go to the Reconstruction Era, you find this same attempt to spew this division, this hate language out…. ‘We need to restore America. We need to take it back.’”
Barber moved on to 1963. “When George Wallace used this language and themes of division, very vitriolic hate language,” Barber said, “Medgar Evers was killed in June of that year… We had the bombing of a church, four girls were killed at Sunday school and then we had a president assassinated.”
It’s hard to believe I have to do this, but I guess I do, at least for the good Rev. Barber.
In 1867, when the Ku Klux Klan was still wet behind the ears, one of the leaders of the group and future Grand Wizard Nathan Bedford Forrest is reported as saying “that the Klan’s primary opposition was to the Loyal Leagues , Republican state governments, people like Tennessee governor Brownlow and other carpetbaggers and scalawags .”
A little bit about Governor Brownlow. He was a Republican.
And during the Reconstrution, it was the Radical Republicans that made the most sweeping changes in the South, after they broke with Democrat Andrew Johnson in 1866. Democrats opposed the changes.
And really? George Wallace? He actually brought up George Wallace, the four term Democrat Governor of Alabama, who is best known for a) saying “I say segregation today, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever,” b) standing in the doorway of Foster Auditorium in order to prevent black students from entering and c) being a Democrat.
The good Reverend then goes on to talk about the assassination of Medgar Evers. He was killed by KKK member Byron De Le Beckwith. We already established that the KKK was founded by those opposed to Republicans, but in the 60s, the KKK was in cahoots with people like…
wait for it…
Democrat Governor George Wallace and Police Commissioner “Bull Conner.”
For those who don’t know, “Bull” Conner “was a Democratic Party politician and police official from the city of Birmingham, Alabama, during the American Civil Rights Movement.”
These same people, the 1960s KKK, were involved in the Birmingham, Alabama church bombing.
Alabama. That’s home of Democrat Governor George Wallace, who was in office when it exploded.
And the assassination he mentioned? The man who killed President John F. Kennedy was an avowed Marxist fan of Castro who tried to give up his U.S. citizenship and become a citizen of the Soviet Union.
Not exactly Tea Party material. He’d fit more in the Democrat ranks today.
Now before we start the whole “But the Dixiecrats joined the Republican Party after Johnson passed the Civil Rights Act” nonsense, let’s remember, by percentage, more Republicans voted for the Civil Rights Act than Democrats, and:
Most of the Dixiecrats did not become Republicans. They created the Dixiecrats and then, when the civil rights movement succeeded, they returned to the Democratic fold. It was not till much later, with a new, younger breed of Southerner and the thousands of Northerners moving into the South, that Republicans began to make gains.
I know. I was there.
So, in his bogus attack on the Tea Party, president of the North Carolina NAACP chapter, Rev. William Barber has reminded us that throughout history, the Republican Party has done more for the welfare of black Americans than the Democrat Party.
Thanks, Rev. Nice work.
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Duane Lester is the editor of All American Blogger.