--- Wirt Atmir wrote:
> > As someone who grew up in the South, I know (and probably you do too) that
> > "states rights" is merely a code phrase for a Southerner's claim to
> bigotry,
> > racism, segregation, prejudice, ignorance and intolerance.
~~~~ Other nonsense
> > Eisenhower but most especially later by Kennedy and Johnson
> administrations, and they
> > have formed the basis of the "Solid South" on which the Republican Party
> has so
> > heavily depended ever since.
> >
> > Wirt Atmar


Wirt,

You continue to amaze me.  I am beginning to think you are a walking, writing
savant.

As Mr. Mc Coy pointed out Abraham Lincoln, issued the Emancipation Proclamation
on Jan. 1, 1863, the height of the Civil War. But let' look at history and not
fantasy.

Soon after the war ended, it was a Republican-controlled Congress that rammed
through the 13th, 14th and 15th Amendments to the Constitution that, among
other things, abolished slavery, guaranteed equal protection and due process
and addressed blacks' right to vote.

In the late 19th century, Democrat governors and Democrat-controlled state
legislatures in the South couldn't pass Jim Crow laws fast enough. Those
Democrats created a nearly century-long, legal racial caste system that
relegated blacks to the lowest educational, political, economic and social
strata.

And let us not forget that during the same period it was Democrats throughout
the United States who organized and ran America's premier terrorist
organization – the Ku Klux Klan.

Before we move on, one more thing about President Wilson. He was the president
who led our nation into WWI with the ringing declaration that it was to make
the world "safe for democracy."

It was left to Wilson's successor, Republican Warren G. Harding to scrap the
segregation policy. And Warren G. didn't stop there. In 1922, Harding delivered
a bold speech in Birmingham, Ala., (A Democrat stronghold that was later known
by blacks as "Bombingham") in which he called for black equality. Up to then,
no U.S. president had ever spoken so forcefully about civil rights.

Harding was elected in 1920. Funny thing about the Republican Party platform
that Harding ran under. It called for federal anti-lynching legislation. Guess
which party didn't? If you said Democrat, go to the head of the line.

In 1957, Orval Faubus, the governor of Arkansas, called out his state's
National Guard to prevent the integration of Central High School in Little
Rock. In response, President Dwight D. Eisenhower sent U.S. troops to the city
to escort nine frightened black teens into the school past riotous mobs
inflamed by Faubus' defiance of a federal court order. Faubus was a Democrat.
Eisenhower was a Republican.

On June 11, 1963, Alabama Gov. George Wallace stood in the doorway of the
University of Alabama to block its integration. Wallace was a Democrat. Now, I
grant you, John F. Kennedy was the Democrat president who federalized the
Alabama National Guard and ordered its units to the university to force its
doors open to black students. But it's not generally known that the then-Sen.
Kennedy – with an eye on the Democrat presidential nomination for 1960 – voted
against the Civil Rights Act of 1957, the law that really got the ball rolling
on federal civil rights legislation.

As far as other important civil rights legislation, the 1964 Civil Rights Act
and the Voting Rights Act of 1965 would never have became law if not for
Republican senators and congressmen whose overwhelming support offset extreme
Democrat opposition

Wirt, you probably were to busy or not old enough to remember history.

Regards,

-Craig











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