Trump: Democrats Were The Party Of Slavery

At an Aug. 30 rally in Everett, Washington, Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump continued his appeal to African-American and other minority voters. Trump called out the Democratic Party as the party of slavery and blamed inner-city violence on Democratic leadership.

“I will not accept, and neither will you, a future in which children of color — any color — in this country are not fully included in the American Dream,” Trump began, notes Real Clear Politics.

“Remember, and many people don’t know this: the Republican Party is the Party of Abraham Lincoln — not bad!” Trump continued. “It is also the party of freedom, equality and opportunity. It is the Democratic Party that is the party of slavery, the party of Jim Crow, the and party of [oppression].”

While the Democrats were, in fact, the party of the South during the Civil War and the years that followed, much has changed in the century-and-a-half since.

By the 1930s, it is Democratic president Franklin Delano Roosevelt who expands the federal government to include social programs that aid all Americans, regardless of race. Democratic president Harry Truman desegregates the military in 1948. And it is the Democrats who support civil rights throughout the 1950s and 1960s, eventually leading to Democratic president Lyndon B. Johnson’s passage of the landmark Civil Rights Act of 1964 and then the Voting Rights Act of 1965 which, together, effectively end Jim Crow.

As the Democrats continued to combat segregation, the Republican Party fed on the fear of whites in the South and maintained an opposition to civil rights and integration, notes Vox. Ultimately, under Barry Goldwater and Richard Nixon, Republican leadership was able to flip the South from blue to red in what is known today as the Southern Strategy.

“Nothing makes me more honored and proud than to be the nominee of Abraham Lincoln’s Republican Party,” Trump said at his Aug. 30 rally, reports Real Clear Politics. 

Trump then spoke about crime in the inner cities.

“In The Wall Street Journal, Heather Mac Donald of the Manhattan Institute just wrote an important article about the soaring crime in our inner cities, and the responsibility of Democratic politicians for creating this problem,” Trump stated.

The Manhattan Institute is a conservative think tank. Furthermore, while crime rates for the year may be up when compared with a year or two ago, overall crime in America has been on a downward trend for over two-and-a-half decades, notes FactCheck.org. 

“Freedom from violence is one of the great civil rights issues of our time,” Trump said. “So, too, is the issue of school choice. We will fight for the right of parents to send their kids to the school that they believe gives their kids the best shot at success.”

Sources: Real Clear Politics, Wikipedia, Vox/YouTube, FactCheck.org / Photo credit: Gage Skidmore/Flickr