When you think about racial equality and civil rights, which political party comes to mind,

the Republicans, or the Democrats? Most people would probably say the Democrats, but this answer

is incorrect. Since it's founding in 1829, the Democratic Party has fought against every major

civil rights initiative and has a long history of discrimination. The Democratic Party defended

slavery, started the Civil War, opposed reconstruction, founded the Ku Klux Klan in post-segregation,

perpetrated lynchings, and fought against the Civil Rights Acts of the 1950s and 1960s.

In contrast, the Republican Party was founded in 1854 as an anti-slavery party. Its mission was to stop

the spread of slavery into the new Western territories with the aim of abolishing it entirely.

This effort, however, was dealt a major blow by the Supreme Court in the 1857 case,

Dreads God vs. Sandfoot. The court ruled that slaves aren't citizens, their property.

The seven justices who voted in favor of slavery? All Democrats, the two justices who dissented

both Republicans. The slave-requested was, of course, ultimately resolved by a bloody Civil War.

The commander-in-chief during that war was the first Republican president Abraham Lincoln,

the man who freed the slaves. Six days after the Confederate Army surrendered, John Wilkes Booth,

a Democrat, assassinated President Lincoln. Lincoln's vice president, a Democrat named Andrew

Johnson, assumed the presidency. But Johnson adamantly opposed Lincoln's plan to integrate

the newly freed slaves into the South's economic and social order. Johnson and the Democratic Party

were unified in their opposition to the 13th Amendment, which abolished slavery, the 14th Amendment,

which gave Black citizenship, and the 15th Amendment, which gave Blacks the vote. All three

passed only because of universal Republican support. During the era of reconstruction,

federal troops stationed in the South helped secure rights for the newly freed slaves.

Hundreds of Black men were elected to Southern State Legislatures as Republicans,

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