Incivility During the Civil Rights Movement

Today on Martin Luther King Day, during a time when many are calling for more 'civility' in America, let us reflect back on who was actually "un-civil" during the Dr. King-led Civil Rights movement....

"Troublemaker"

-Senator Robert Byrd, Democrat, West Virginia

Though some may not be aware of it, King was a Republican, and those who opposed the Civil Rights movement were predominantly Democrats.

"It was the Democrats who fought to keep blacks in slavery and passed the discriminatory Black Codes and Jim Crow laws. The Democrats started the Ku Klux Klan to lynch and terrorize blacks. The Democrats fought to prevent the passage of every civil rights law beginning with the civil rights laws of the 1860s, and continuing with the civil rights laws of the 1950s and 1960s.

During the civil rights era of the 1960s, Dr. King was fighting the Democrats who stood in the school house doors, turned skin-burning fire hoses on blacks and let loose vicious dogs....

Given the circumstances of that era, it is understandable why Dr. King was a Republican. It was the Republicans who fought to free blacks from slavery and amended the Constitution to grant blacks freedom (13th Amendment), citizenship (14th Amendment) and the right to vote (15th Amendment). Republicans passed the civil rights laws of the 1860s, including the Civil Rights Act of 1866 and the Reconstruction Act of 1867 that was designed to establish a new government system in the Democrat-controlled South, one that was fair to blacks. Republicans also started the NAACP..."

-Why Martin Luther King Was Republican, by Frances Rice

History that some would rather not discuss....