Bet you didn’t you know

Fri, Dec 21, 2012

by Frank E. da Silva

Sometime in 1990, I met a man from North Carolina, LeRon Hanna who was employed at a company with which I did business. Mr Hanna never joined in the political debates between the other blacks and me but apparently he was listening. One day when we were alone he posed a question, “How come you are not one of those blacks who seems not to be waiting for the ‘forty acres and the mule’ promised to be finally given to blacks by Democrat President Franklin D. Roosevelt?” I did not know what he was talking about.{{more}} Mr Hanna also informed that Jimmy Carter was a racist – a cracker. The term “cracker” was the equivalent to “nigger” and I learnt it had more to with Irish emigrants than English. He called Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson sell-outs. He did not have kind words for a fellow named W.E.B. Dubois [more about him later] and Margaret Sanger. I went home and got on my computer – Encarta. I was surprised at what I did not know. Am sure you will be likewise as you continue to read.

Bet you didn’t know that on:

• October 18, 1871:

Susan B. Anthony arrested for voting, after boasting to Elizabeth Cady Stanton that she voted for “the Republican ticket, straight.”

•  January 17, 1874:

Armed Democrats seize Texas state government, ending Republican efforts to racially integrate government.

• September 14, 1874:

Democrat white supremacists seize Louisiana statehouse in attempt to overthrow racially-integrated administration of Republican Governor William Kellogg; 27 killed.

• March 1, 1875:

Civil Rights Act of 1875, guaranteeing access to public accommodations without regard to race, signed by Republican President U.S. Grant – passed with 92% Republican support over 100% Democrat opposition.

•  January 10, 1878:

U.S. Senator Aaron Sargent (R-CA) introduces Susan B. Anthony amendment for women’s suffrage; Democrat-controlled Senate defeated it 4 times before election of Republican House and Senate guaranteed its approval in 1919.

• February 8, 1894:

Republican Booker T. Washington protests Alabama Democratic Party’s refusal to permit voting by African-Americans.

•  October 16, 1901: Booker T, at the invitation of Republican President Theodore Roosevelt, dines at the White House. He is celebrated for his bestseller, ‘Up from Slavery’. Democrat Governor of Mississippi opined that the White House is “so saturated with odor of the nigger that rats have taken refuge in the stable. I am just as opposed to Booker T Washington as a voter as I am to the cocoanut-headed, chocolate typical little coon who blacks my shoes every morning.” Another Senator Benjamin Tillman (SC), “The action of President Roosevelt in entertaining that nigger will necessitate our killing a thousand niggers in the South before they will learn their place again.”

• On October 17, 1901: The Memphis Scimita newspaper editorialized:

The most damnable outrage which has ever been perpetrated by any citizen of the United States was committed yesterday by the President, when he invited a nigger to dine with him at the White House. It would not be worth more than a passing notice if Theodore Roosevelt had sat down to dinner in his own home with a Pullman car [railroad] porter, but Roosevelt the individual and Roosevelt the President are not to be viewed in the same light.

• November 5, 2008: In a nation where many once considered it scandalous for an African-American to dine at the White House with a President, the President-elect is now an African-American. We never hide from history. We make history.

• May 29, 1902:

Virginia Democrats implement new state constitution, condemned by Republicans as illegal, reducing African-American voter registration by 86 per cent.

• February 12, 1909: On the 100th anniversary of Abraham Lincolnís birth, African-American Republicans and women suffragists Ida Wells and Mary Terrell co-found the NAACP. W.E.B. Dubois, a black elitist, began an unrelenting attack on Booker T. Washington in the organization’s newsletter, Crisis.

• May 21, 1919:

Republican House passes constitutional amendment granting women the vote with 85 per cent of Republicans in favour, but only 54 per cent of Democrats; in Senate, 80 per cent of Republicans would vote yes, but almost half of Democrats no.

• August 18, 1920: Republican-authored 19th Amendment, giving women the vote, becomes part of Constitution; 26 of the 36 states to ratify had Republican-controlled legislatures.

• January 26, 1922:

House passes bill authored by U.S. Rep. Leonidas Dyer (R-MO) making lynching a federal crime; Senate Democrats block it with filibuster.

• June 2, 1924:

Republican President Calvin Coolidge signs bill passed by Republican Congress granting U.S. citizenship to all Native Americans.

• October 3, 1924:

Republicans denounce three-time Democrat presidential nominee William Jennings Bryan for defending the Ku Klux Klan at 1924 Democratic National Convention.

Next week, we will continue with Margaret Sanger, Planned Parenthood and W.E.B. Dubois – Casper London’s hero – who wrote: The mass of ignorant Negroes still breed carelessly and disastrously, so that the increase among Negroes, even more than the increase among Whites, is from that part of the population least intelligent and fit, and least able to rear their children properly.