Which political party has historically supported civil rights and liberty?

Here's an image I posted on FB, 'shared' from the RepublicanRevolution's page:

Many Americans think of the Republican Party as bigoted and racist -- an image foisted on the public, I believe, by the media.  For its own agenda.  To make the Democrat Party look good in comparison. Or whatever reason.  But media bias is not the point.  Rather, I'd like provide some FACTUAL and historical basis as to why the GOP is the party of civil rights and equality, while the Democrat Party is the one of bigotry and racism.

First, here is a comment on the above post from my nephew, a law school graduate and soon-to-be licensed lawyer:

[quote]  

Strum Thurman [sic] filibustered the civil rights act.  Are you telling me he was a democrat?  LBJ passed the civil rights act.  Was he a republican?  Upon passing the civil rights act, LBJ confessed he had just lost the south for the democrats for the next 40 years... It might be longer.

Let's go through this list...

‎1. Democrats; 2. No clue, but I'll believe democrats; 3. Ditto; 4. Republicans: Strum Thurman was a democrat until 1964, when he switched to republican, LBJ passed the legislation, I'm chalking this up to republican; 5. democrats I guess; 6. both parties, what was Wallace?; 7. Both world wars were under democrats and Vietnam under LBJ, which Nixon escalated, gulf war=bush, Iraq and afghan war=bush, democrats win again.
I guess Obama is responsible for all of this? 

[unquote]

My reaction:  Wow, don’t they teach ANYTHING in colleges or even law schools these days?? 

It's sad when the shortcomings of our public education system are so obvious when brought to light.  It's not my nephew's fault; he was fed a pile of mush.  For that matter, I wasn’t taught most of this either but had to learn it on my own. 

To begin with, “Dixiecrats” were a remnant of the segregationist Southern bloc of the Democrat Party, going back to the Reconstruction Era, and they were indeed racist -- an anachronism by the 1960s.  Yes, the following were ALL racist Democrats:  Strom Thurmond (Sen., SC), John Stennis (Gov., Miss.), George Wallace (Gov., Ga.), Eugene “Bull” Connor (Birmingham Ala., police commissioner) and Orval Faubus  (Gov., Ark.)  Most won’t know that last name: He was governor during the 1957 Little Rock High School integration crisis – when he threatened to use the state’s National Guard to block  9 black students from entering the all-white school.  President Eisenhower (a Republican you know) nationalized the Arkansas Guard so Faubus couldn’t order them into place.  Read up on Gov. Faubus – he was a piece of work.

Other factoids:

• The last acknowledged (past) member of the KKK in the Senate?  Robert Byrd, a Democrat.
• Who segregated the federal civil service?  (After it was integrated under Grant, a Republican.)  Woodrow Wilson, a Democrat.
• Who integrated the armed services again?  Eisenhower, as supreme commander of European forces, later of course a Republican president.
• What started the Civil War?  The election of Lincoln on an anti-slavery platform.  Seven states seceded between Election Day in 1860 and Lincoln’s inauguration in March 1861.  The South knew its days as a slave-holding civilization was doomed if they stayed in the Union. 
• The “Jim Crow laws” were created by Southern Democrats to keep the former slaves “in their place.”  Reconstruction exacerbated the split between the GOP and Democrats over the freed slaves. 
• Every black elected to Congress from the southern states from 1865-1880 was a Republican.
• The Constitutional Amendments proposed immediately after the Civil War (the 14^th 15^th and 16^th) were passed and ratified by GOP legislatures.
• The NAACP was formed in 1909 by a group of whites and one black to fight the Jim Crow laws passed and protected by Democrats. In 1913, the NAACP organized opposition to President Wilson (remember, a Democrat) as he introduced racial segregation into federal government policy and hiring.   

One of my heroes is Frederick Douglass, esp. after reading his Narrative (his first autobiographical work.)  After escaping slavery, he was first something of an anarchist – calling for the dissolution of the Republic rather than letting slavery exist -- from the time he arrived in the Northern states until he read the US Constitution for himself about 1850 and found it to be an ANTI-slavery document.  Thereafter he declared himself to be a Republican and eventually became friends with Lincoln.

The Republican Party was formed from the remnants of the Whig Party and a rising anti-slavery movement in the Northern states during the 1850s.  Lincoln was the VP candidate to John Fremont’s candidacy on the first Republican presidential ticket in 1856.  Democrat James Buchanan won in a three-way race, but the Lincoln-Hamlin GOP ticket won in 1860.  (Andrew Johnson was the VP in 1864.  As a Democrat president -- Lincoln chose him as VP to try to placate southerners -- Johnson vetoed the Civil Rights Act of 1866, which led in part to his impeachment.

It is not generally known there were SEVERAL “Civil Rights Acts” after WW2.  The least known was the Civil Rights Act of 1957, supported by President Eisenhower and the Republicans in Congress.  It passed easily in the House (80% of GOP voted for; 40% of Dems voted against.)  In the other chamber, however, the Senate Majority Leader deliberately sent the bill to the Judiciary Committee where his friend, a Southern Dixiecrat from Mississippi named James Eastland, rewrote it beyond recognition, effectively watering it down.  Oh, and the Senate Majority Leader’s name?  Lyndon Johnson.  After LBJ became president and the CRA of 1964 was coming to a vote, he did not stand in the way but instead signed it.  The Senate Leader by then was Mike Mansfield (D-MT) who was decidedly more moderate and less bombastic than the showboating Johnson, and much less racist as well.  Mansfield manuevered around the obstructionist Sen. Eastland, who was still chairman of the Judiciary Committee. 

The Civil Rights Act of 1964 was passed in the House by a vote of 270-97.  The split by party was 80% of GOP voted for, while about 40% of Dems voted against.  The “myth” that the several Civil Rights Acts were opposed by the GOP is scurrilous.  The overall record shows that since 1933, Republicans had a more positive record on civil rights than the Democrats.  In the 26 major civil rights votes after 1933, a majority of Democrats opposed civil rights legislation in over 80 percent of the votes.  By contrast, the Republican majority favored civil rights in over 96 percent of the votes. 

Interestingly, the Democrat Party has encouraged the myth that it is the party that consistently supported civil rights in every case.  Not so at all.  See: http://www.black-and-right.com/the-democrat-race-lie/.  Rather, the Dems are “Johnnies-come-lately” to the civil rights arena.  As an example, the Nineteenth Amendment (women’s suffrage) was supported largely by Republicans.  NONE of the southern states (those in the defeated Confederacy) approved the amendment until after it was ratified by the requisite 38 states.

Strom Thurmond is an interesting case.  He filibustered the Civil Rights Act of 1964 as a Democrat.  He was angered by Democrat senators compromising to pass the bill (the vote was 60-15 – many abstained) and he then switched parties.  You might say he was "conservative" because he favored “states’ rights.”  Unfortunately, that term has forever been linked to segregation.  Many of the Dixiecrats did NOT join the GOP but instead formed their own caucus, walking out from the 1948 Democrat National Convention when a civil rights plank was added to the platform, to the credit of Hubert Humphrey.  Thurmond was selected as presidential candidate of the “States’ Rights Democrat Party” in 1948 election.  (Part of their platform was “We call upon all Democrats and upon all other loyal Americans who are opposed to totalitarianism at home and abroad to unite with us in ignominiously defeating Harry S Truman, Thomas E. Dewey and every other candidate for public office who would establish a Police Nation in the United States of America.”  Wow, and they say today’s TEA Party is extreme!)  The break-away Dixiecrats later returned to the Democrat party.

[As an aside here, it always rankles Dems when someone points out that environmental protection has long been part of the GOP’s platform, starting with Teddy Roosevelt’s proposals to protect the great Western forests and natural wonders through a National Park system, and continuing to Richard Nixon’s establishment of the Environmental Protection Agency.  Hey, “conservation” is part of “conservatism”!]

[Another aside, regarding which party's presidents took the nation into war the most often.  They were Wilson, FDR, Truman and Kennedy for the Dems.  George H W Bush  and George W Bush involved the US in Iraqi wars with the approval of the Senate.  There is were the latest foray into Libya and that would be a Democrat again.]

All of the above is fact.  In summary, the Republicans have been a protector of civil rights; the Democrats historically opposed statutory protections.  Somehow, the perception of those roles was reversed and it occurred about 1964, which was the real awakening on civil rights and the initial roll-out of LBJ’s “Great Society.”  For whatever reason, call it laziness on the part of the GOP or the unfair demonization of Barry Goldwater about that time, the Dems under HHH, LBJ, JFK and RFK grabbed the high ground on civil rights.  The Democrat-held House and Senate of the 60s also pushed through massive largess to the poor in the form of welfare, food stamps and Medicaid.  Heck, even I was leaning Democrat from 1960, when my 5^th grade class wanted JFK to beat Nixon, until 1976 when I voted for Carter.  (Yes, it’s true: I was suckered by a politician who offered 'hope and change' – 36 years ago!)

My theory on how the Democrat Party became champions of the black and Hispanic voters -- and thereby won a large majority of their votes -- came about through those Great Society programs.  The votes were basically ‘bought.’  Pretty simple, but the simplest explanations are usually the right ones.

The Democrat Party has been the party where voters just feel it’s on the right side of issues; there’s no rationale behind it.  Three prime examples:

1. Everyone “needs” medical care so let’s have the government provide it and everyone will pay into the system, and voila the nation is healthier! 
       That couldn’t be farther from the truth.  The nation will be poorer, certainly, but healthier?  Not possible.  Spending more money isn’t the answer because prices will certainly rise as patients ignore the costs since the government is footing the bill, OR prices will be clamped down -- as is currently happening -- and physicians will decline to cover those under the government's plan, resulting in rationed care in order to treat as many critically-ill patients as possible.  Those on the plan will have  long waits to see a doctor, if they can find one.
2. Everyone “needs” an education to succeed, so the government should finance college for anyone who wants it! 
       Two problems with this:  No, everyone does not need an education to succeed – people succeed in different areas, which could be as an air conditioning technician or truck driver.  Hey, we need plumbers in addition to lawyers and doctors!  Secondly, there is no cost containment when the government just funds whatever the private market demands, in this case universities.  The price of a college semester has skyrocketed, just as the federal government assumed funding of ALL college loans.  It's not a coincidence.
3. Collective bargaining is a right of every worker so therefore all government workers should be organized and represented by unions! 
       This is a path to ruin where one side of the ‘bargaining’ is management -- also known as “politicians” – whose campaigns for reelection are funded by the very same unions who sit across the table!  There is a serious conflict of interest right off the top.  The voter is hardly represented in the ‘bargaining.’  Even that great liberal FDR wanted federal employees barred from organizing.

The tide is turning as more people find out the Liberal mantra of “more, give us more” is costing too much.  The poverty level has not budged in a span of 50 years under a Great Society of high taxes and high spending.  The poor have remained poor.  Schools have not prospered or succeeded under a wash of money.  As an example, the Washington DC school district is one of the highest spending per student districts and has one of the lowest graduation rates.  Where does the money go and how come it isn’t being converted to educational success?  Most will say more money isn't the answer to the question of how to improve schools.  The real answer lies in innovation, school choice and recognizing and rewarding good teachers.

In general, the answer to EVERY problem isn’t "more government."  The answer will usually be "more individual responsibility," both to build your own success and to help others where there is a need.  The Federal Government should do what it does best, such as coin money, provide defense and roads, operate national postal and judicial systems, and protect our freedoms.  It should leave education, health care and poverty programs to state and local governments and agencies.  Those will in turn relegate or defer to local agencies and organizations.  We will get along just fine looking after ourselves and each other in our communities.  Thanks, Congress, but no thanks.

So finally, Dear Reader, after all that, if anything above doesn’t ring true then please research it for yourself.  Never take anyone’s word on anything.  Could professors have been incorrect on at least one or two points?  Did the student check out what they said to verify most of it?  My opinion is the universities today are turning out graduates who think just like their liberal professors -- not altogether a good thing. 
Some “food for thought.”

And no one said “Obama is responsible for all of this.”  No one blames the current administration for creating the current situation.  He didn't improve things much or bring together all Americans as we'd hoped. 

At this point, people should be thinking for themselves -- at least some of the time.

JDE