In my hometown newspaper, The Miami Herald, I derive some joy every now and then from one of its many liberal columnists, Leonard Pitts.  I experienced one of those moments about two weeks ago. 

In Pitts’ June 21st column (GOP blind to its race problem), he misrepresented the truth about racism in America by advancing baseless myths.  Contrary to his assertions, racism in the U.S. has traditionally been practiced and preached by the Democrat Party.   

Pitts argued that President Lyndon Johnson’s signing of the 1965 Voting Rights Act motivated racist Southern Democrats to leave their party and form the “modern GOP.”  In The End of Southern Exceptionalism, political scientists Richard Johnston and Byron Shafer debunk this myth and establish that the south’s transformation into a Republican stronghold resulted from economics, not race.  The south saw the growth of an upper middle class whose members believed their economic interests were better served by Republicans.  Thus, perceived racial prejudices were mere economic preferences, which many Republicans use to inform their votes today.

Pitts also argued that the GOP is racist, relying on comments from unidentified persons that do not represent any such party-wide racism beyond the bigotries of those few trivial individuals.  Pitts ignored American history, which illustrates that Republicans persistently fought racism while Democrats actively promoted it. 

The Republican Party was founded in 1854 as the anti-slavery party.  It was Republican President Abraham Lincoln who signed the Emancipation Proclamation and a Republican-controlled Congress that introduced and passed the Thirteenth Amendment, which abolished slavery, and passed the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments, the 1866 Civil Rights Act, and the 1867 Reconstruction Act to protect the rights of blacks.

In the 20th century, it was Republican President Dwight Eisenhower who pushed Congress to pass the 1957 Civil Rights Act and opposed segregation in Arkansas schools and the military.  It was Republican Senator Everett Dirksen who drafted several critical civil rights legislations.  In fact, President Johnson could not have signed the 1964 Civil Rights Act without the support of congressional Republicans, who broke the Democrats’ filibuster and 80% of whom voted for the bill.  (Just 63% of a large Democrat majority voted for it.)    

Republicans also founded the NAACP and many black colleges and universities, including Howard University, Spelman College, and Morehouse College.  And it was Republican President Richard Nixon’s 1969 Philadelphia Plan, (crafted by Arthur Fletcher, a black Republican known as the “father of affirmative action”), that implemented America’s first affirmative action program.

Democrats, by contrast, fought to keep blacks enslaved, passed the Jim Crow laws and Black Codes to segregate blacks and limit their rights, started the Ku Klux Klan, and opposed every civil rights law from the 1860s to the 1960s.  Democrats also produced a 20th century president (Woodrow Wilson) who was a white supremacist.

The civil rights efforts of Dr. Martin Luther King, whose niece confirmed he was a Republican in a 2008 article, met bitter opposition from well-known Democrats.  Public Safety Commissioner Eugene Conner unleashed dogs and fire hoses on King and other protesters; Georgia Governor Lester Maddox waived ax handles to keep blacks out of his restaurant; and Alabama Governor George Wallace blocked the doors of an Alabama schoolhouse with supportive shouts for segregation.  It was also President Johnson, who referred to King as “that Nigger preacher.”

Even John F. Kennedy, lauded today as a civil rights proponent, voted against the 1957 Civil Rights Act as a senator.  So did Democrat Senator Al Gore, Sr.  President Kennedy also opposed King’s 1963 March on Washington (organized by A. Phillip Randolph, a black Republican) and ordered the FBI to wiretap and investigate King.

Even today’s racist rhetoric belongs to Democrats.  It was Democrats who consistently asked whether President Obama was authentically black, and it was our current Vice President who referred to Obama as “the first mainstream African-American who is articulate and bright and clean.”      

Pitts is entitled to his opinion, but ignoring history and disparaging the party that fought relentlessly for his ancestors’ rights is irresponsible and offensive.  He should thank the GOP and its emphasis on freedom for the rights he enjoys today.

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