The Blue Origin of the Red States

A lot is made of how the U.S. Democratic party needs to restore its connection with the South. How it has to win over the Red States, and win back its Dixiecrat base. Well once upon a time, waaay back during the American Civil War, the Republican Party of Lincoln, not Bush, was anti-slavery pro union (as in labour unions), pro-sufferage for blacks, workers and women and federalist. The Democrats were the party of corruption and white supremacy as this news story shows. My how times have changed.

Report Calls 1898 N.C. Riot an Insurrection

WILMINGTON, N.C. - Violence in 1898 that resulted in the only known forceful overthrow of a city government in U.S. history has historically been called a race riot but actually was an insurrection that white supremacists had planned for months, a state commission concludes.

The violence in Wilmington, which resulted in the deaths of an unknown number of black people, "was part of a statewide effort to put white supremacist Democrats in office and stem the political advances of black citizens," the 1898 Wilmington Riot Commission concludes in a draft report.

Afterward, white supremacists in state office passed laws that disfranchised blacks until the civil rights movement and Voting Rights Act of the 1960s.

The irony in this story is that the researcher for this project is Jeffery Crow and the White Supremacist laws that he was researching are called Jim Crow.

It took the Voting Rights Act and the Civil Rights Act to restore blacks' voting rights, Jeffrey Crow said. But he noted that Congress argues about the Voting Rights Act every time it comes up for renewal.

"More than a hundred years later, we're still trying to resolve the issues," Crow said. "It's extremely important that people understand history."

On the Net:

Riot Commission:

http://www.ah.dcr.state.nc.us/1898-wrrc/