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The Donkey Once Stood for White Supremacy and the Elephant for Civil Rights

Things sure have changed!

Katharine Valentino
Fourth Wave

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Image created using Gemini by the author

The elephant has always stood for the Republican Party, but the Republican Party was once the democratic party. Similarly, the donkey has always stood for the Democratic Party, but the Democratic Party was once anything but democratic.

It’s complicated.

The Democratic donkey

Andrew Jackson, the seventh president of the United States, was a slave owner and a racist. Black people, 130 of them on a plantation he owned in Tennessee, picked his cotton. Native Americans died on the Trail of Tears after he signed the Indian Removal Act in 1830.

Jackson was, as they say, a man of his time. If he were alive today, I’m sure he would be a man of Trump’s time, too, since he won the presidency by appealing to those voters who thought it was just fine to vote for a slave owner and a racist.

It was during Jackson’s run for the presidency as a Democrat in 1828 that the donkey came to be the Democratic symbol. Think “Jackson.” Then think “jackass,” which is what Jackson’s opponents in the race called him.

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