Lou Ransom, Chicago Defender
- When Pittsburgh Courier publisher Robert L. Vann suggested in 1932 that Black voters should no longer pledge allegiance to the Republican Party, it started an unhealthy relationship between Black voters and Democrats that has reached obsessive proportions.
Since Vann exhorted Blacks to “turn (Abraham) Lincoln’s face to the wall,” (in favor of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s) the Democratic Party has enjoyed almost fanatical support from Black voters. We voted Democratic even when it was clear that Democrats were not operating in our best interests. We voted Democratic even when the Democratic candidate insulted us and took us for granted. We voted Democratic even when it was Democratic governors in the South (George Wallace, Orville Faubus and Ross Barnett) not Republicans, who defied the federal government and vowed not to allow integration to force white children to share classrooms with Black children.
Which brings us to Democrats in 2009.
I’m not sure when the national Democratic Party decided that it would try to divest themselves of the Black vote. It became clear that was an objective during the Democratic presidential race, when Democrats seemed to be stacking the deck against Barack Obama. It was Democrats who sharpened their knives on Obama long before John McCain and Sarah Palin took aim at him. In fact, some of the most telling political jabs that McCain and Palin landed were simply recitations of some of the jabs Democrats threw at him.
