Watching political history unfold and sanitized in the Black community   E. Ablorh-Odjidja, Ghanadot September 20, 2014   Just when you think you have heard it all about why Blacks vote Democrat a new theory turns up: Republicans opposition to the Voter Registration Act of 1965 and matters emanating from it!   Before this, the justification was that Blacks turneded against the Republicans party because Barry Goldwater, their presidential candidate for 1964, had voted against the Civil Rights Bill of that year, together with the Southern Democrats.   Now, in the lexicon of the revisionists these days, Southern Democrats have become Southern Conservatives since 1965; a perfect hook to pull the conservative Republican party into the racism void and blame.   But note that there never was "Southern Republicans" in the political arrangement of the South back in the 60s because the South was solidly Democrat party controlled.   But gradually, racism has become the traditional taint and propaganda tool for Democrats to use on Republicans.    As a result, Blacks have been voting overwhelmingly for the Democrats for the past 50 years and more.    On the basis of the Black vote alone, Democrats have managed tobe highly viable political power over the years, as Malcolm X once noted.   In 1965, Malcolm X asked Blacks, “The fact that you threw 80% of your votes behind the Democrats that put the Democrats in the White House…. but …. what do you get out of it?”   As recent as the last presidential election of 2012, the Black vote increased to 95% for the Democrat presidential candidate, Barack Obama.   This one-way trend in voting for Democrats has not changed for years.    And the rationale  remains the same: Republicans were the villains who opposed the Civil Rights Bills.  Not true.   The accusation is just so brazenly a contradictory analysis of what actually happened in the Civil Rights march of the 60s through the halls of Congress.,   But worse, this analysis creates derogatory perception for Blacks in its assumptions and assertions.   To think that Black loyalty can shift on a dime, on a perception gained over a mere three months of legislative debate in Congress, is to imply a fickle minded constituency that was willing to go blind in one political eye for nothing!   Possibly so, only if by this view Blacks are willing to sanitize history so as to prevent Democrats from ever being called racists, even though they have had a far richer history of racism than Republicans.   So now,  Democrats, with white power structure and the party of Jim Crow, are no longer racist!   As contended now, Republicans are the racists!   The 1964 Civil Rights Act, the more historic Bill, could not have passed without the majority Republican support vote. But don’t wait to hear this today.   This is a historical fact that has been twisted.  Accordingly, Blacks hardly give Republicans credit for passing it.   The 1964 bill was passed under President Lyndon B. Johnson, a Democrat, who admitted at the signing that it wouldn’t have been possible without the Republican majority vote.     Eighteen Democrats senators and a lone Republican filibustered the 1964 legislation.  But only Strom Thurmond, the Republican in the filibuster, would turn up as the villain on the roster of Black politics.   Same roster list had many illustrious Democrats.  Senator Robert C. Byrd (Democrat) led the filibuster attack on the 1964 bill. Senator Richard Russell of Georgia (Democrat) closed the argument in opposition.   The opposition for both the 64 Civil Rights and 65 Voting  Rights Acts was dominated by Democrat names, whose progenies are prominent in the party’s affairs of today – Albert Gore, Richard Russell, William Fulbright, Robert Byrd and more.    None of these Democrats changed polital parties after 1965.   But learn today that in Black politics only Republicans can be racists.  And even if some Democrats were, they are all imagined to have moved en mass to the Republican side.  Not true!   In 1965, there were both bi-partisan support and opposition for the Voting Registration Act. it was first and jointly proposed in Congress by then Senate majority leader Mike Mansfield (Democrat) and Minority Leader Everett Dirksen (Republican).   In the House, two committee leaders, William McCulloch (Republican) and Howard W. Smith (Democrat) opposed it and sought to delay or dilute the bill.    Note the bi-partisan nature in oppositions and support for the Bill.   In the end, the Bill was passed in the Senate by a 79-18 vote (Democrats 49-17), (Republicans 30-1) on August 4, 1965.   The support rate for the Bill was a 97% on the Republicans side versus 65% on the Democrat side. Seventeen Democrats opposed the Bill while only one Republican was against it . Surprisingly, the moral victory for this historic Bill now belongs to Democrats after 1965.   And this seemingly moral victory is what is used by revisionists to justify the seismic shift in Black votes to the Democrat party.    In the process, all the good works on the Republican side, from the Civil War years to the signing of the Civil Rights Bill of 1964, would be spun to nothing.   The Democrats are the heroes.   Conveniently, the part played by Senator Sam Irvin (Democrat) in opposing the 1964 Act would be forgotten.   Sam Irvin is lionized today. He had been an ardent supporter of the pro Jim Crow document, the Southern Manifesto, signed in Congress in 1956 by 96 Democrats and Four Republicans.   Sam Irvin became an instant hero during the Watergate trials of President Richard Nixon.   Nixon, together with Martin Luther King Jr,  was one of the architects of the 1957 Civil Rights Act, after a trip to Ghana to Celebrate the country's independence.   "The Civil Rights Act of 1957 was the act that kick-started the civil rights legislative programme that was to include the 1964 Civil Rights Act and the 1965 Voting Rights Act," wrote The History Learning Site.   There was serious opposition to all the acts proposed in the bill by key Democrats.   "Committed to the filibuster (1965) effort were the powerful Senators Richard Russell, Thurmond, Robert Byrd, William Fulbright and Sam Ervin," wrote the Constitution Daily.   Twenty years later, Sam Irvin became the Civil Rights hero and Nixon, the villain!   Richard Russell (Democrat) was on the Southern Manifesto roster too but but about a decade later, he had the Senate office Building named after him.    Strom Thurmond had only Trent Lott to speak for him on his 100-year birthday.  For this, Lott (Republican} was driven from his Senate leadership office mostly by Black outcry.   The myth about racist Republicans persists. Mention any electoral reform proposed by them and you would hear the refrain “Republicans want to suppress the Black vote”!   The controversy surrounding the law requiring voters to show photo identification before casting ballot in an election is an example.   And true enough; opposition to the “photo id” law had since scored some legal victories in a number of states.   But whose rights are the litigants seeking to protect, the illegal alien from across the border, and the fraudster within state or the law abiding Black citizen at home?   And how much of the Black vote can be suppressed, since Democrats already own 90% of that vote!   Meanwhile, the Black vote is being suppressed or diluted to make room for a Hispanic majority.   Each year thousands of undocumented “immigrants, “mostly Hispanic whites, walk across the Southern border to live and work in America.    Unsurprisingly, Hispanic now forms the lead minority group; with growing, exclusive economic and political clout in America.  And thanks to the opposition to photo identification, many more non-citizens can vote.   Blacks were the dominant minority group. The decline to second place happened while all attention was on racist Republicans!     This one way voting pattern has produced little gains for Blacks but a lot more for others.  A discerning person might think that the whole racist scheme was designed to keep Blacks down and under.   Now consider the case of the frog in a boiling pot.  Even though the frog didn’t volunteer for service in the ever more boiling pot, its problem now becomes how long it will choose to stay to be cooked.    But just in case you are offended by this frog imagery, please remember Malcolm X called us  "A POLITICAL CHUMP!" in 1965 just because we had stayed too long in the Democrat camp.   E. Ablorh-Odjidja, Publisher www.ghanadot.com, Washington, DC, September 20, 2014 Permission to publish: Please feel free to publish or reproduce, with credits, unedited. If posted at a website, email a copy of the web page to publisher@ghanadot.com . Or don't publish at all.