Letters to the Editor, Jan. 5

Modern Democrats should look to recent history

(Dec. 29 letter: RACISM, CONSERVATIVES OWN IT)

It’s interesting that the writer doesn’t believe KKK is related to the “modern” Democratic party. Recently as 2010, Senate’s President Pro Tem was former KKK Exalted Cyclops Robert Byrd (D). At his funeral, Hillary Clinton (D), praised her former mentor. Likewise, at the passing of KKK Senator Fulbright, Bill Clinton, had high praise for the man, even bestowing the Medal of Freedom on Fulbright. A pardon might have been more appropriate. In the recent election cycle, Bill Clinton, referring to the KKK, passed the clan off as “just a redneck thing.” Is this modern Democrat enough? Going back a few years, President Wilson (D), segregated the U.S. armed forces. Eleanor Roosevelt supported the Tuskegee Airmen of WW II while FDR (D), supported the segregated blacks as good enough to load ammo ships at Port Chicago, California, untrained, resulting in a massive disaster. President Harry Truman (D), in 1948 re-integrated the U.S. armed forces. In 1957 at Little Rock, President Eisenhower stood down Governor Orval Faubus (D), allowing persons of color to attend previously segregated schools.

Modern Democrats might also look up The Southern Manifesto of March 1956 and the signatories, a D’s who’s who. Lyndon Johnson did not sign. At time of the Little Rock incident, talk by the lunch bucket crowd was definition of a Southern Democrat. That’s a Democrat, who will make love to a person of color but won’t go to school with them.

The letter writer mentions blacks were reliably Republican into the 60s. For sure, in the Republican north, since blacks in the deep south were prevented from voting at all by poll taxes, KKK standing guard at polling sites and other threatening obstacles. I was in the Deep South in 1946-47 for six months, back again in 1949, returned to Alabama-Georgia in 1965, then occasionally in 1978-1990.

The transformation I believe can be credited to Harry Truman, Eisenhower, industrialization of the south, migrants from the north, dying off of KKK thugs and a great equalizer of men, the draft. For certain, folks of all colors are safer today in the deep south, than in Chicago, Baltimore, Detroit, Washington DC, Los Angeles, Tacoma or NYC. The writer obviously believes big banks are bad as well as big business and unions are Democratic. Obama has used big banks as an ATM for eight years, unions are in the money laundering business, and Big Business?

I wonder where Democrats invest their retirement funds.

This story was originally published January 10, 2017 at 11:18 AM with the headline "Letters to the Editor, Jan. 5."