Letter: Democrats ignore dark history

Many Democrats that I know like to take the moral high ground, but at the same time, never seem interested in taking responsibility for their actions in the past. What they miss is a deep understanding of important facts of their own history. For example:

The Civil War was initiated by Southerners, yes, but 99 percent of those Southerners voted Democrat in the 1860 election, the election that brought Abraham Lincoln, a Republican, to the presidency. These Southern Democrats went to war to preserve slavery.

The Ku Klux Klan was created by Democrats - former Confederate officers, in Pulaski, Tennessee, in 1865.

Segregation, aka separate but equal, was codified in law by the 1896 Supreme Court decision, Plessy vs Ferguson, in which seven Democrats voted down the one Republican on the court, Harlan of Kentucky, (a former Democrat). Of course 60 years later, Democrats worked to correct segregation, a vicious problem that they themselves had created. Nevertheless, in passing the 1964 Civil Rights Act, a greater percentage of Republicans voted for it (this is because there were more Democrats in Congress at the time).

Given these ugly facts, it is no wonder that Democrats try to distance themselves from their responsibility for some of the most reprehensible aspects of the history of the country. Unfortunate as it is that most Democrats know little of their own dark history, if they learn, then perhaps they can stop their self-righteous blame game.

Wayne Swanson

Central City