Opinion

Op-Ed: GOP Stopped Being ‘Party of Lincoln’ Long Before Trump

Published

10 years ago

March 20, 2016

Last week, House Speaker Paul Ryan denounced Donald Trump for playing footsie with David Duke and the Ku Klux Klan, saying Republicans are “the party of Lincoln.”

The speaker is to be applauded for denouncing Trump’s dog whistle racial politics, but he’s got his history wrong. Today’s Republican Party is a far remove from the party of Abraham Lincoln.

Lincoln fought to save the Union, and after the Confederate surrender he moved to reconcile warring states in order “to build a more perfect Union.”

Lincoln’s party introduced and ratified the 13th Amendment, legally ending slavery. Today, 20 percent of Republicans who voted for Donald Trump in South Carolina disapprove of Lincoln’s executive order freeing the slaves, according to a YouGov poll, and 70 percent want the Confederate flag to fly over the State House.

The Republican Party in Lincoln’s day introduced and ratified the 14th Amendment, guaranteeing equal protection under the law. Today’s Republican Party — the party that Trump, Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio are fighting so hard to lead — opposes any steps that actually promote equal protection or fairness.

They oppose affirmative action, economic set-asides and special consideration for programs for the needy. They oppose equal pay for women. They oppose equal rights for the LGBT community.

The Republican Party in Lincoln’s day introduced and ratified the 15th Amendment outlawing discrimination in voting on the basis of race, color or previous condition of servitude. Today’s Republican Party introduced literally hundreds of legislative bills in 49 states after 2011 to enforce new voting restrictions that would disproportionately impact minorities, women, workers, young people, seniors and the disabled.

Today’s Republican Party praises the conservatives on the Supreme Court who gutted the Voting Rights Act in Shelby County v. Holder, and won’t hold hearings or allow a vote on legislation to fix the damage done.

The Republican Party in Lincoln’s day built the national railroads, even as the Civil War raged. It created the land grant colleges, helping to open access to millions to higher education. Lincoln constantly called for “internal improvements” and championed the rights of free labor, as opposed to slave labor.

Today’s Republican Party has systematically favored tax cuts for the rich while slashing investments in areas vital to our future from infrastructure to education.

In Lincoln’s day, Democrats were the party of the South, the party of Jefferson Davis, leader of the Confederate revolt. Democrats were slaveholders. Democrats flocked to the Confederacy and opposed the Reconstruction after the Civil War.

Democrats became the party of segregation, opposing the civil rights movements. Orville Faubus, Lester Maddox, George Wallace and Bull Connor were all Democrats.

But after national leaders of the Democratic Party began to support civil rights for African-Americans, blacks began to switch parties.

When Lyndon Johnson worked with Dr. King and others to pass the Civil Rights Act, the Voting Rights Act and the war on poverty, blacks flooded the Democratic Party. And in 1964, Republicans nominated Barry Goldwater, who opposed the Civil Rights Act.

Strom Thurmond led Dixiecrats out of the Democratic Party. Richard Nixon’s Southern strategy sought to consolidate Republican gains in the South. Ronald Reagan opened his campaign in Philadelphia, Miss., infamous for the murders of civil rights workers Schwerner, Goodman and Chaney, talking about states’ rights. The heirs of Jefferson Davis joined the Republican Party en masse. And Democrats became the party of diversity, the heirs to Abraham Lincoln.

Trump’s dog whistle racial signaling is not new to today’s Republican Party. This is that party that fostered the nonsense about Barack Obama’s birth certificate.

It is the party that waged a campaign of relentless obstruction to everything Obama proposed as president. Trump shocks Republicans because he is cruder than most but also because he’s revealed their dodge.

Republicans have used racial signaling to get those whose jobs are being shipped abroad to embrace the party run by those who are shipping them abroad. It brings together the workers who are being shafted with the billionaires who are getting the gold.

Trump has used the same dog whistle racial signaling, but he has also challenged the lousy trade deals and the big money special interest politics. That has made him a hero to many angry blue-collar Republican voters but anathema to the Republican country club set.

But the reality is inescapable. Today’s Republican Party is no longer the party of Lincoln. It is the party of Jefferson Davis, the Southern-based, increasingly white party of states’ rights and racial division.

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Arts and Culture

COMMENTARY: Black Music is the Sound of Black Freedom: Let Us Reclaim Both This Juneteenth

Black Music Month started when Black Music Association members Ed Wright, Kenny Gamble and his wife, journalist and radio host Dyanna Williams were able to persuade President Jimmy Carter to establish the observation on June 7, 1979.

Published

3 days ago

June 9, 2026

Oakland Post

Robert Johnson (1911-1938) is thought of as the godfather of blues music, especially Delta blues. The 29 songs recorded by him during his short life have been of massive inspiration to guitarists and musicians over the last 80 years. Public domain photo.

By Wanda Ravernell

Black Music Month and Juneteenth are inextricably linked – Black music is the sound of our freedom.

From the plaintive moans of the enslaved Africans’ ‘sorrow songs,’ to the fields of Civil War battle where Black soldiers picked up abandoned bugles, to the upright piano played in juke joints on Saturday night and churches come Sunday morning, our ancestors’ innovation in the face of want, fear, degradation, and hopelessness has yielded genres of music imitated ’round the world.

In 2000, Congress made it official. In 2009, Pres. Barack Obama changed the name to African American Music Heritage Month and in 2023, Pres. Joe Biden changed it back to Black Music Month, two years after he declared Juneteenth a national holiday, the result of a movement led by Opal Lee.

Our ancestors battle for freedom over these last 400 years and the music that allowed them expression of their humanity deserved to be honored.

But we may be losing sight of the value of their sacrifices.

‘Sing a Song Full of the Faith That the Dark past Has Taught Us…’

Along with the long-known exploitation of Black musicians whose recordings were stolen by record companies, the commercialization of Juneteenth feels like another kind of theft.

I had never heard of Juneteenth until I moved to the Bay Area from my hometown of Philadelphia. I didn’t know it was one of many freedom festivals celebrated by descendants of enslaved people in the United States.

Emancipation Day was Jan. 1 in Pennsylvania, April 16 in Wash., D.C., May 20 in Florida, and Aug. 8 in Kentucky. But Juneteenth, June 19, has the most renown, known in Texas as the ‘colored peoples’ Fourth of July.’

It was marked by parades, beauty pageants, rodeos, backyard barbecues and church picnics.

Yes, church.

The formerly enslaved began the day praying in thanks for their freedom just as they had prayed for Jubilee – the day of freedom – when they had chains on their feet and hands. They ‘testified’ about their past suffering and how they had managed to overcome.

And they sang.

Although, we will not hold it this year, Omnira Institute’s Juneteenth Ritual of Remembrance recalled this part of Juneteenth with prayers in the languages of the African captives. In the middle of the ceremony, a soloist would lead us in singing “Many Thousand Gone” while we took turns reciting portions of the Emancipation Proclamation, the news of freedom that took more than two years to reach Texas – two months after the Civil War ended.

“Many Thousand Gone” was famously recorded by Black luminary Paul Robeson in 1947:

“No more auction block for me,

No more, no more

No more auction black for me

Many thousand gone.”

Other verses refer to the ‘pint of salt’ and the ‘driver’s lash,’ the realities of enslavement that they had survived.

‘Sing a Song Full of the Hope That the Present has Brought Us’

All of the genres of African American music have at their root songs like that, the essence being, as Stevie Wonder, wrote, “the joy inside our pain.” So Black music is not just music. It is our story, our history, our very strength.

During the Civil Rights Movement, which peaked 100 years after slavery ended, the people testified that it was the freedom songs – based on spirituals – that gave them the heart to march, face attack dogs, fire hoses, beatings, and shootouts with vigilantes.

The music reminded them that power was in the people. That music, our music, can do so again. We don’t have to accept the commodification of the products of our culture.

The power of those songs is showing a resurgence across the South as we battle again for the right to self-determination through the ballot box.

Those songs are the voices of our ancestors, voices forged in their blood, their sweat, their tears, joy and, above all, faith. Those songs, those prayers live in our blood and our very breath.

This Juneteenth, let us reclaim those holy voices expressed in Black music for ourselves. It is our birthright. It can neither be bought nor sold. No more. Never again.

Wanda Ravernell is the executive director of Omnira Institute, sponsor for 18 years of the Juneteenth Ritual of Remembrance and Oakland’s 11^th Annual Black-Eyed Pea Festival, which will take place on Sept. 12.