Why did the Democratic South become Republican?
The south did not become Republican until the pro-slavery Democrats had been defeated in the Civil War. They were then further decimated by their vehement opposition to the 13th Amendment abolishing slavery and 14th Amendment guaranteeing equal protection under the law regardless of race.
At that point, the southern Democrats were a minority party on the brink of extinction. While southern blacks became overwhelmingly Republican, committed to the liberating Republican party’s efforts against racism, white Democrats clung to power in southern state governorships and legislatures. This led to the creation of racist Jim Crow laws and the Ku Klux Klan.
Things have remained essentially the same to this day although Democrats have attempted to shift racist motives to Republicans by creating the “Big Switch” and “Southern Strategy” false narratives. The first black citizens were elected to Congress from Mississippi, Alabama, North and South Carolina, Florida and Georgia beginning in 1868. They were all Republicans.
Currier and Ives print: The First Colored Senator and Representatives, December 31, 1871
- US Senator Hiram Revels (1827–1901) from Mississippi was the first African-American to serve in the United States Congress. Revels was a preacher and a powerful speaker. He was a lifelong freedman. Even though he, “…viewed himself as ‘a representative of the State, irrespective of color.” He also “…favored universal amnesty for former Confederates, requiring only their sworn loyalty to the Union.”
Letter from the Governor and Secretary of State of Mississippi certifying Hiram Rhodes Revels to the US Senate, January 25, 1870
- Benjamin Sterling Turner (1825–1894), a former slave, became the first black man to serve in the US House of Representatives from the state of Alabama. Turner also worked in the House of Representatives like Rep. Revels to restore the rights of former Confederates. He sought the repeal of a tax on cotton as an especially heavy burden on black Americans.
- Robert C. De Large (1842–1874) served in the 42nd Congress as a representative from South Carolina. Some records indicate he was born a slave. He worked in politics at the state level and then was elected to Congress in 1870 where he urged legislation to protect Republicans from intimidation and to protect African Americans from racial violence.
- Josiah Thomas Walls (1842–1905) was born in Virginia as a slave in 1842. He was drafted as a Confederate soldier but after capture in 1862 by Union troops in Yorktown, he volunteered to fight for the Union. He became First Sergeant in the US Colored Troops Infantry Regiment and served in Union-occupied Florida. Walls was elected to the Florida Senate becoming the first African American to represent a Florida congressional district in the US house of Representatives.
- Jefferson Franklin Long (1836–1907), a Georgian, was the first African-American to be elected to the US House of Representatives from his state and the second to be elected to the US House. Long gave just one speech to Congress. That speech also was a first — the first to be delivered by an African-American in the US House. Long gave it on February 1, 1871. He “opposed a measure which would remove voting restrictions on ex-Confederate political leaders because he felt these men still posed a threat to African Americans political freedom if allowed to regain power.”
- Encouraged by Long, a group of freedmen went to the polls together to vote on election day in 1872. Armed white thugs incited a riot to prevent them from voting. Violence erupted and four from Long’s group were killed. Discouraged, Long pulled away from political involvement and focused on business endeavors thereafter.
- Joseph Hayne Rainey (1832–1887), was from South Carolina. He was the first black American to be elected to the United States House of Representatives. Born a slave, he acquired his freedom when his father purchased it for him and the rest of the family in the 1840s. In 1861, Rainey was conscripted into the Confederate armed services. He served on a ship and was able to escape to Bermuda in 1862. He returned to South Carolina soon after the war. Rainey was part of several Congresses — the 41st, 42, 43rd, 44th, and 45th. He died on August 1, 1877.
“We [Black Americans] are earnest in our support of the Government. We are earnest in the house of the nation’s perils and dangers; and now, in our country’s comparative peace and tranquility, we are earnest for our rights.”
— Representative Joseph Hayne Rainey —
- Robert Brown Elliott (1842–1884) represented constituents in his district in South Carolina during the 42nd and 43rd Congresses. He served in the South Carolina House of Representatives after being elected in 1868. South Carolina Governor Robert Scott appointed Elliott as the state’s assistant adjutant general. In this capacity, Elliott was authorized to lead militia across the state to defend blacks from attacks by the Ku Klux Klan. Elliott delivered a speech in which he read the letter posted by the Klansmen at the Union Courthouse jail, following it with words about the prejudice against his race:
It is custom, sir, of Democratic [newspapers] to stigmatize the negroes of the South as being in a semi–barbarous condition; but pray tell me, who is the barbarian here, the murderer or the victim? I fling back in the teeth of those who make it this most false and foul aspersion upon the negro of the southern States.
— Robert Brown Elliott —
It is very significant that all of these men, and more like them to follow, were Republicans.
In this video, David Barton of WallBuilders introduces his viewers to these great Americans.
For further study: Setting the Record Straight: American History in Black and White, book and DVD, available from WallBuilders
The video presentation also is available on YouTube.
The beleaguered Democrats effectively moved their plantations north and called them public housing beginning in the 1970’s. America’s government subsidized ghettos have been voting Democrat ever since while providing minimum wage labor to northern industries. The rural and independently minded southerners largely rejected America’s “Great Society” welfare-for-votes bribes and recognized the laissez-faire, libertarian advantages of electing Republicans.
