Odd, Hillary failed to mention that part.
Indeed, the closer one looks across the arc of black history, the more ironic it seems that voters would associate civil rights with the Democratic Party. Founded as the anti-slavery party, the Republican Party was responsible for winning passage of the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments, the Ku Klux Klan Act of 1871, the Reconstruction Acts, and the 1866, 1875, 1957 and 1960 Civil Rights Acts. In fact, had Democrats not overturned the 1875 Civil Rights Act, the strikingly similar 1964 Civil Rights Act might never have been necessary.
Myriad reasons are often cited for the rift between African American voters and the Republican Party. Some blame Richard Nixon’s so-called “Southern strategy.” Others cite the GOP’s presidential nomination of Barry Goldwater who opposed the Civil Rights Act of 1964 on philosophical grounds of federal overreach. And still others point to a radicalized professoriate as the source of some Americans’ historical amnesia.
Whatever the case, this Black History Month, voters would do well to reexamine the historical record. What they learn just might surprise them.
Wynton Hall is a Visiting Fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University and author of "The Right Words: Great Republican Speeches That Shaped History".