Democrats, once Party of Slavery, has Much to Prove During Convention Week
Daily Democratic National Covention Opinion Coverage in Sepia
Monday, August 17, 2020
The democratic party infamously came to prominence in American politics on the wrong side of history in support of slavery. Before the Civil War, the party was decidedly pro-slavery, and favoring those states wanting to embrace the peculiar institution in perpetuity. After slavery and during Reconstruction Era, the democratic party then began behaving like a petulant child — bucking up against black rights ostensibly conferred by the Constitution, creating the Jim Crow system, which was a form of slavery, but with just another name.
It wasn’t until the Franklin Roosevelt administration in the 1930s that the party began its glacial thaw on the issue of race wherein it no longer publicly upbraided notions of black equality. The southern coalition of Democrats — for a longtime called the Dixiecrats — held on tenaciously to their racialist proclivities and the abundant political muscle they flexed in the Congress well into the 1980s.
The democratic party that will showcase itself this week in Milwaukee during its national nominating convention would be barely unrecognizable to political observers who participated among its ranks at the dawn of slavery. It is a party now professedly more progressive around race issues, outflanking the Republican Party, which, ironically, was founded on an anti-slavery platform in the 1850s and 1860s. The democratic party will nominate the first African-American woman (include Indian American here, too) for vice president in its history. Coming off 8 years of party led by Barack Obama there is much to celebrate about how far blacks have come up the leadership ranks in a party that once despised them. We should all marvel.
Or, should we really?
Despite the leadership roles now being played by blacks in the democratic party, there remains doubt as to how apparent power translates into real clout and support for rank-in-file black democrats — those who are expected to pledge overwhelming allegiance at the ballot box for the party in November. What convinces black voters that their apparent power within party is real? Black Hollywood personalities will make cameo…
