Posted by
Rich on Monday, March 24, 2008 12:19:09 PM
According to Time magazine,
"In a [1956] special session of the [Democratic controlled] Florida
legislature, the state house of representatives passed four bills to
circumvent a state supreme court ruling that the Florida school
segregation laws are invalid. The bills would enable county boards of
education to assign pupils and teachers to schools on the basis of
intelligence, ability, and "cultural background.'' One representative
objected that "some Negro pupils have higher IQs than some white
pupils." Snapped a backer of the bill: "But who is going to give the
tests?"
The Governor of Florida in 1956 was Democrat Thomas
LeRoy Collins (pictured to the left). Democratic Governor Collins publicly
condemned the U. S. Supreme Court's decision in Brown v. Board of
Education of Topeka.
As a side note you should also know about
The Florida Legislative Investigation Committee (known as the Johns
Committee) established by the Democratic Florida Legislature in 1956,
during the era of the Second Red Scare and the Lavender Scare.
The
Florida committee undertook a wide-ranging investigation of potentially
subversive activities by academics, civil rights groups, and suspected
communist organizations, and also attempted to eliminate homosexuals
from state government and public education.
The Johns Committee was named after Democratic Governor of Florida Charley Eugene Johns.
In the Sarasota Herald-Tribune article by Carol E. Lee, "Reconciliation of racist past stirs in Captital", there is a lot Carol does not tell you about the role of Democrats and the racist past of Florida.
For example, not mentioned in the article is that the all white Florida state legislature of 1956 was also all Democrat and that the Democrats and their KKK "friends" had eliminated Republicans from elected office in Florida by the early 1900s.
The
article mentions that there were 63,000 slaves in Florida before the
Civil War, but fails to mention that the slave owners were Democrats
and fails to mention that the Republican Party was founded in 1854 as
the anti-slavery party, that it won the Civil War against the
pro-slavery Democratic Party and that the Republican Party passed the
13th, 14th, and 15th amendments to the U.S. Constitution that ended
slavery, provided the vote for black men, and outlawed racial
discrimination. Almost every Democrat voting NO.
Of the almost 3,000 people lynched by the KKK: 2,000 were black, 1,000 were white, and almost all were Republicans.
Really,
it ought to be the white Democrats who apologize to all Republicans and
all black residents of Florida for the many historic crimes of the
white Democratic Party. The rehabilitation of the Democratic Party
begins with it acknowledging its extensive racist history.