A quick history lesson from my friend Janice Gilmore Ponds.
by Michael Harris
One of the participants in the anniversary of “Bloody Sunday” stated today that he “Has to understand the past to know what to do in the future.” On this day in 1965, state police under the command of the Democrat Governor, George Wallace, attacked black Americans who were demonstrating for voting rights in Selma, Alabama.
Their voting rights had been stripped by the Democrats repealing almost two dozen civil rights bills put in place by the Republican Party during Reconstruction. The rampaging Democrats used billy clubs and tear gas and dogs in their “Bloody Sunday” assault, subsequent to over 90 years of racial suppression by the Democratic Party. This lines up with the Democrats starting the KKK with the expressed purpose of intimidating, flogging, and lynching black Americans who were former slaves; and had become voting citizens which was granted through efforts of the Republican Party.
A Republican-appointed federal judge, Frank Johnson, soon ruled in favor of the demonstrators, enabling them to complete their march two weeks later in Selma in 1965. When the legislation came up for a vote that the marchers were taking a stand for, President Johnson could not garner sufficient votes from within his own party to pass the bill. Johnson needed 269 votes from his own party to achieve the passage, but could only garner 198 of the 315 of the Democrats in Congress to vote for the bill. Johnson therefore worked with the Republicans to achieve the passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Bill, followed by the 1965 Voting Rights Act.
This lines right up with the historical pattern established in 1870 where not one single Democrat voted for the right of blacks to vote through the 15th Amendment. In 1870, 1964, and 1965 we can thank the Republican Party for their hard work to pass the Civil Rights legislation that gave black Americans the right to vote. For the record Mr. Obama; the march in Selma was about the right of black Americans to vote and NOTHING ELSE.
