REPUBLICANS AND DEMOCRATS DID NOT SWITCH SIDES ON RACISM By Frances Rice - From the time of its inception in 1854 as the anti-slavery party, the Republican Party has always been the party of freedom and equality for blacks. The Democratic Party is the party of the four S's: slavery, secession, segregation and now socialism. Democrats have been running black communities for the past 50+ years, and the socialist policies of the Democrats have turned those communities into economic and social wastelands. Democrats first used brutality and discriminatory laws to stop blacks from voting for Republicans. Democrats now use deception and government handouts to keep blacks from voting for Republicans. In his book, "Dreams From My Father," Obama described what he and other Democrats do to poor blacks as "plantation politics."

The racist Democrats of the 1950's and 1960's that Republicans were fighting died Democrats. One racist Democrat who survived until 2010 was US Senator Robert Byrd, a former recruiter for the Ku Klux Klan. Notably, the Ku Klux Klan was started by Democrats in 1866 and became the terrorist arm of the Democratic Party for the purpose of terrorizing and lynching Republicans—black and white. Byrd became a prominent leader in the Democrat-controlled Congress where he was honored by his fellow Democrats as the "conscience of the Senate."

Byrd, Hillary Clinton's "Mentor", was a fierce opponent of desegregating the military and complained in one letter: "I would rather die a thousand times and see old glory trampled in the dirt never to rise again than see this beloved land of ours become degraded by race mongrels, a throwback to the blackest specimen of the wilds."

Democrats denounced US Senator Trent Lott for his remarks about US Senator Strom Thurmond. However, there was silence when Democrat US Senator Christopher Dodd praised Byrd as someone who would have been "a great senator for any moment." Thurmond was never in the Ku Klux Klan and, after he became a Republican, Thurmond defended blacks against lynching and the discriminatory poll taxes imposed on blacks by Democrats.
While turning a blind eye to how the Democratic Party embraced Byrd until his death, Democrats regularly lambaste the Republican Party about David Duke, a former Grand Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan.

Ignored are the facts that the Republican Party never embraced Duke and when he ran for the Republican Party presidential nomination in 1992, Republican Party officials tried to block his participation.

President Lyndon Johnson feared that the racist Democrats would again form a third party, such as the short-lived States Rights Democratic Party. In fact, Alabama's Democrat Governor George C. Wallace in 1968 started the American Independent Party that attracted other racist candidates, including Democrat Governor Lester Maddox.