Civil Rights, Democrats, Jim Crow and Blacks

The famous Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama, is an inspiring place to stand and walk. Even on the most humid of August days, one gets a sense for the moment 46 years ago when 600 Civil Rights marchers were brutally attacked in March 7, 1965 for pursuing their right to vote.

And blacks had a great reason to march into the lines of Alabama state troopers armed with billy clubs and tear gas; the laws on the books at that time required discriminatory poll taxes and literacy tests. Blacks were disenfranchised and inhibited from voting.

But as I walked across the bridge spanning the Alabama River on Aug. 11, as well as through downtown Selma and a nearby Civil Rights museum, I couldn’t help but wonder: Why do blacks keep voting Democrat? It was Democrats who ordered the brutal attacks as well as enacting the laws that kept blacks from voting. Bull Conners? George Wallace? Robert Byrd? Al Gore Sr.? All Democrats.

I don’t get it.

The Democratic Party has traditionally been the party of big government, excessive regulation, less freedom, high taxes – and, in 1965, segregation and Jim Crow. The Republicans offered the inverse; namely, smaller government, less regulation and lower taxes – and, in 1965, more freedom.

Back then, Republicans didn’t exist in the South. Since the days of Abraham Lincoln, the utterance of “Republican” usually came with curse south of the Mason-Dixon Line.

President Lyndon Baines Johnson’s famed 1965 Civil Rights legislation -- the consequence of the bloody attack that occurred at the Edmund Pettus Bridge on March 7, 1965 -- was signed into law only after congressional Republicans sided with LBJ. The president overcame the resistance of congressional Democrats by reaching across the political aisle and siding with Republicans.

(Note to media: Do your homework the next time you report on the Civil Rights Movement.)

Even more of a head-scratcher was the National Voting Rights Museum, located at the foot of the Edmund Pettus Bridge and the site where the marchers encountered police and tear gas on a day that later became known as "Bloody Sunday."

That museum celebrated the marchers as well as tracing the causes that led to the clash. It never offered a hint why blacks have always been such hard-core Democrats since the Civil Rights era. The museum just glorified the Democrats – the same party that imposed and maintained segregation on blacks in the first place.

I don’t get it.