COLUMN: History or propaganda?

I was pretty disgusted by Syd Albright’s feeble attempt to explain why blacks vote Democratic. After a reasonable description of life post Civil War, he goes completely off the rails.

No, Syd there was no bi-partisan effort to bring blacks civil rights. The two parties had changed their spots. School desegregation came not from law but from a Supreme Court decision. The two most consequential laws went unmentioned by you. The 1964 Civil Rights Act and the 1965 Voting Rights Act both passed by a Democratic administration that knew they would cost the Democrats the South for a generation, in LBJ’s words.

If you doubt the import of these laws, look no further than the week following the Supreme Court’s gutting of the VRA to the sudden proliferation of voter suppression laws in repressive Republican regimes across the country. And the politicians who passed those bills (Republicans) proudly declared the intent to suppress the vote or “delivering Pennsylvania to Romney,” as one politician crowed.

Yeah, blacks, Hispanics, and other minorities know who gets them civil rights and it ain’t Republicans. Even the Republicans admit that it’s not Republicans. Please spare us the Republican propaganda disguised as a history lesson.

JEFFREY HARRISON

Worley