Since George W.C. McCarter ’71 claims to be “puzzled” about why the Democratic Party is not held accountable for the presence of the segregationist wing of the party primarily in the South during and before the civil rights movement, I thought I’d help clear it up for him. Mr. McCarter is correct that this segregationist wing existed and had significant influence in the Democratic Party, essentially since its founding in the early years of the Republic. What I’m fairly sure he is also aware of is that Lyndon Johnson’s decision to use the wave of support he received following the assassination of JFK to pass several Civil Rights and Voting Rights bills led to the mass exodus of Southern segregationists from the Democratic Party to the Republican Party, which accepted them with open arms and specifically built its national strategy around them for the next two plus decades (with great success). So the leadership of the Democratic Party chose to part ways with a wing of the party that was morally problematic, disrespectful of the rule of law, anti-democratic, and obsessed with refighting a lost contest to return to a past that members of that faction preferred relative to the changes occurring in society. And the leadership consciously made that choice at considerable political cost. Sounds like accountability to me — and something that would be welcome from the leaders of today’s Republican Party who face a very similar choice.
Since George W.C. McCarter ’71 claims to be “puzzled” about why the Democratic Party is not held accountable for the presence of the segregationist wing of the party primarily in the South during and before the civil rights movement, I thought I’d help clear it up for him. Mr. McCarter is correct that this segregationist wing existed and had significant influence in the Democratic Party, essentially since its founding in the early years of the Republic. What I’m fairly sure he is also aware of is that Lyndon Johnson’s decision to use the wave of support he received following the assassination of JFK to pass several Civil Rights and Voting Rights bills led to the mass exodus of Southern segregationists from the Democratic Party to the Republican Party, which accepted them with open arms and specifically built its national strategy around them for the next two plus decades (with great success). So the leadership of the Democratic Party chose to part ways with a wing of the party that was morally problematic, disrespectful of the rule of law, anti-democratic, and obsessed with refighting a lost contest to return to a past that members of that faction preferred relative to the changes occurring in society. And the leadership consciously made that choice at considerable political cost. Sounds like accountability to me — and something that would be welcome from the leaders of today’s Republican Party who face a very similar choice.