1) The 13th Amendment to the Constitution abolished slavery in 1864. Of the 118 Republicans in Congress at the time, all voted in favor, while only 19 of 82 Democrats did.
2) The 14th and 15th Amendments guarantee rights of citizenship and voting to black males. Not a single Democrat voted in favor of either of them.
3) The latter half of the 19th century, and for much of the early half of the 20th century, the Republican Party was preferred by blacks because, formed in the late 1850s, it was an oppositional force to the pro-slavery Democratic Party.
In almost every southern state, the Republican Party was formed by blacks not whites.
The first seven black Americans elected to the U.S. Congress during the Reconstruction period of 1865 to 1877 were Republicans.
4) Forty-two blacks were elected to the Texas legislature, 112 in Mississippi, 190 in South Carolina, 127 in Louisiana, and many more elected in other states — all Republicans. Democrats didn't elect their first black American to the U.S. House until 1935.
5) This prompted the Democratic Party in 1866 to form the KKK, whose sole purpose was to help gain control of the electorate through intimidation of Republicans — black and white.
A 13-volume set of congressional investigations dating from 1872 details the Klan's connection to the Democratic Party.
When Democrat Sen. Wade Hampton ran for the governorship of South Carolina in 1876, in support, the Klan stated: "Every Democrat must feel honor bound to control the vote of at least one Negro by intimidation …. Democrats must go in as large numbers … and well-armed." Sound familiar?
According to the University of Missouri-Kansas City School of Law, between 1882 and 1964 an estimated 3,446 blacks and 1,279 whites were lynched at the hands of the Klan.
This information and more can be found at https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2016/05/the_secret_racist_history_of_the_democratic_party.html
JOHN A. LEONATTI, LAKE TOWNSHIP