I like Nick cannon. He’s a really talented host, but a terrible historian. Saying the Democrats are the party of the KKK is like saying Star Wars is about a guy who cuts off his son’s hand: It’s technically true, but you haven’t really finished the story.
Let’s start. When the KKK was founded in 1865 in Tennessee, over the next five years, Congress and the non southern states added three amendments to the Constitution banning slavery, establishing equal protection of the laws, and giving voting rights to African Americans.
Southern states and their associated paramilitary organizations—not just the KKK, but the Red shirts, the White League, and the Knights of the White Camellia and others—fought this progress as hard as they could. But this 12 year period of progress came to a blistering end. In the election of 1876, a Democrat won the popular vote, but the Republican won the electoral vote.
The Democratic candidate was winning the electoral vote after election day, but four states had yet to send in their electoral votes. When they did, and they all went to the Republican, it gave them a one electoral vote victory. The Democrats were pissed, and the Democrats even planned a parallel inauguration to try to take control of the government.
Amidst the chaos, Congress created a commission to try to handle this transition. What ended up happening was a backroom deal where the Republican, Hayes, promised that if he was allowed to take power, he would take the remaining federal troops out of the South that were busy enforcing the civil rights amendments.
In exchange, Democrats would stop their parallel inauguration and support Hayes becoming president. In other words, Black people across the South who had just voted for Hayes saw him turn around and abandon them by taking away their federal protection. Those southern states were then taken over by white supremacists who had no federal government in their way, in terms of terrorizing and disenfranchising Black people for the next 87 years.
This is the birth of Jim Crow laws, the lynching era, the resurgence of the KKK and other terrorist organizations. So until 1964, the Democrats were the party of the KKK and racial violence in the South. But what happened in ‘64? Civil rights leaders successfully pressured Congress to pass a law ending Jim Crow.
The signing of the Civil Rights Act infuriated white Democrats across the South. As a result of LBJ signing the Civil Rights Act, white people in the South began to abandon the Democratic Party.
In 1976, white Southerners thought they’d finally elected another of their own, Jimmy Carter. But that didn’t last long because he supported racial progress. So they went back to the Republicans in 1980 and in ‘84 and in ‘88 and basically every election since.
Look, I’m not here to say the Democratic Party has all the answers. Far from it. But if you’re going to use your celebrity to go on a big show and talk about history, you should know what you’re talking about. But I don’t blame Nick cannon.
History and civics have largely been taken out of our schools by design. That way, we don’t know how we got here, and we don’t know what tools and power we have at our disposal to change things for the better.
Ben Sheehan is a political commentator and digital creator. He specializes in civics education, which is showcased in his latest book, What Does the Constitution Actually Say?: A Non-Boring Guide to How Our Democracy Is Supposed to Work. Check out his Substack, Politics Made Easy.
