08/11/2026
The K*K was started by Democrats and other atrocities
THE HISTORICAL RECORD IS NOT A MATTER OF OPINION
For more than a century, the political forces most determined to keep Black Americans enslaved, powerless, segregated, and unequal were found overwhelmingly within the Southern Democratic establishment.
The historical chain is unmistakable.
Democrats defended slavery.
Before the Civil War, Democrats defended the Fugitive Slave laws, demanded federal protection for slavery, and fought to expand slavery into new territories. Democratic leaders celebrated the Dred Scott decision declaring that Black people could not be American citizens and that Congress lacked authority to prohibit slavery in federal territories.
When Republican Abraham Lincoln was elected on a platform opposing slaveryâs expansion, Democratic-controlled Southern states seceded. Their own declarations explicitly identified the preservation of slavery as their reason.
Republicans fought and died to destroy slavery.
Under Republican President Abraham Lincoln, the Union defeated the Confederate rebellion, issued the Emancipation Proclamation, enlisted nearly 180,000 Black soldiers, and secured passage of the Thirteenth Amendment.
Many Republicansâalongside other loyal Union soldiersâgave their lives in a war that ultimately destroyed American slavery.
Every Republican in the House voted to abolish slavery permanently. Fifty Democrats voted against the Thirteenth Amendment; only fifteen supported it.
Democrats then attempted to replace slavery with government-enforced subjugation.
After emancipation, Democratic-controlled former Confederate states enacted Black Codes restricting where freedmen could live, travel, assemble, work, and learn. Vagrancy laws allowed Black men to be arrested for unemployment and forced into labor. Convict leasing and debt peonage became brutal substitutes for slavery.
Democrats opposed the Freedmenâs Bureau, which provided food, education, medical assistance, legal protection, and labor supervision for formerly enslaved people.
They opposed the Civil Rights Act of 1866. Democratic President Andrew Johnson vetoed it, but Republicans overrode his veto.
Democrats opposed the Fourteenth Amendment, which established citizenship and equal protection under the law. Congressional Democrats gave no votes to the Fifteenth Amendment, which prohibited denying Black men the vote because of race.
The original K*K arose from this same Southern Democratic political order.
Former Confederates created the Ku Klux Klan in the Democratic South. It quickly became the violent political muscle of the campaign to restore Democratic control.
Klansmen murdered, whipped, assaulted, and terrorized Black citizens and white Republicans. They burned homes, churches, and schools. They threatened Black men who attempted to vote and attacked Republicans who organized or held office.
The Klanâs political purpose was unmistakable: destroy Republican Reconstruction, eliminate Black political participation, and return Southern governments to Democratic control.
Republican President Ulysses S. Grant and the Republican-controlled Congress responded with the Enforcement Acts and the Ku Klux Klan Act of 1871. Grant used federal prosecutions and troops to suppress the organization and protect Black voting rights.
Southern Democrats then constructed Jim Crow.
Using violence, intimidation, election fraud, and organizations such as the K*K, White League, and Red Shirts, Democrats overthrew biracial Republican governments and established one-party Democratic control throughout the South.
They imposed:
* Poll taxes
* Literacy and âunderstandingâ tests
* Grandfather clauses
* Property requirements
* Racial gerrymandering
* Complicated registration procedures
* Threats of eviction or unemployment
* All-white Democratic primaries
Because Democrats controlled Southern politics, exclusion from the Democratic primary frequently meant exclusion from the only election that mattered.
Democratic governments segregated schools, trains, buses, restaurants, hotels, hospitals, parks, libraries, neighborhoods, prisons, courtrooms, and even cemeteries.
Black taxpayers were forced to support public systems that provided superior schools, roads, hospitals, and services to white citizens. Black citizens were excluded from juries, public offices, law enforcement, and meaningful legal protection.
Democrats protected lynching from federal intervention.
Local Democratic authorities frequently refused to prevent lynchings, arrest perpetrators, or prosecute members of mobs.
When Congress attempted to make lynching a federal crime, Southern Democratic senators repeatedly used filibusters and parliamentary obstruction to kill anti-lynching legislation.
The message was horrifyingly clear: Black citizens could be tortured and murdered while the political establishment responsible for protecting them prevented the federal government from intervening.
A Democratic president segregated the federal government.
In 1913, President Woodrow Wilsonâs administration imposed segregation throughout federal agencies. Black employees were separated in offices, cafeterias, and restrooms. Some were demoted; others were discharged on fabricated grounds.
Discrimination was no longer confined to Southern courthouses and statehouses. A Democratic administration placed it inside the federal government.
New Deal housing programs later helped institutionalize redlining, denying mortgages and investment to Black neighborhoods and contributing to enormous, long-lasting disparities in homeownership and generational wealth.
Southern Democrats fought the civil-rights movement.
After the Supreme Court ruled school segregation unconstitutional in Brown v. Board of Education, Southern Democrats answered with the Southern Manifesto and a campaign of âMassive Resistance.â
Democratic governors and legislatures closed public schools, redirected public money toward private white academies, obstructed court orders, and deployed state power to prevent Black children from attending formerly white schools.
Democratic state and local officials used arrests, clubs, police dogs, fire hoses, economic retaliation, and mob violence against peaceful civil-rights demonstrators.
Democratic Senator Strom Thurmond filibustered the Civil Rights Act of 1957 for 24 hours and 18 minutes.
The 1964 Civil Rights Act faced a roughly 60-working-day filibuster led by Southern Democrats. Republican Senate leader Everett Dirksen provided the decisive Republican support needed to break that obstruction.
By this point, many Northern Democrats and Democratic Presidents Truman, Kennedy, and Johnson had joined the cause of civil rights. The landmark laws of the 1960s were ultimately achieved through a bipartisan coalition. But the organized segregationist resistanceâthe Jim Crow legislatures, Dixiecrats, Southern governors, and congressional filibuster blocâremained overwhelmingly Democratic.
So let us state the record plainly:
Democrats defended slavery.
Republicans led the government that defeated the slaveholding Confederacy and abolished slavery.
Southern Democrats imposed Black Codes after emancipation.
Democrats opposed constitutional citizenship, equal protection, and Black voting rights.
The K*K served the campaign to restore Southern Democratic control.
Democrats constructed and enforced Jim Crow.
Democrats excluded Black citizens from elections through poll taxes, literacy tests, intimidation, and white-only primaries.
Democrats protected lynching by defeating federal anti-lynching laws.
A Democratic administration segregated the federal workforce.
Southern Democrats organized âMassive Resistanceâ against school integration.
Southern Democrats led the filibusters against landmark civil-rights legislation.
No, this does not mean that every individual Democrat supported every one of these policies. Political coalitions eventually changed, and courageous Democrats ultimately helped enact civil-rights protections.
But those later developments do not erase the record.
For approximately a century after the Civil War, the organized political machinery that defended white supremacy, suppressed Black voting, enforced segregation, and resisted civil rights throughout the South was overwhelmingly Democratic.
That is not partisan mythology.
That is documented American history.
Historical documentation: National ArchivesâDred Scott · National ArchivesâBlack Codes and voting rights · U.S. HouseâCivil Rights Act of 1866 · U.S. HouseâDemocratic violence during Reconstruction · U.S. SenateâEnforcement Acts · Library of CongressâJim Crow and white primaries · U.S. Senateâcivil-rights filibuster
