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LiquidPerson02 t1_ja9wbmu wrote

At least, she was a feminist and hasn't enslaved women. Girl boss power!/s

(To clarify: I'm a feminist, but I'm not a liberal one.)

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Conscious_Bend_7308 t1_jaa7dbk wrote

I live one state over in SC and did not know this, thanks for posting! I guess her racism and incitement to violence compensated for her gender. Not unlike a few current pols I can think of.

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JuzoItami t1_jaaajrg wrote

>She was also a white supremacist and Congress's last former slave owner, and spoke vigorously in favor of lynching.

I think it's safe to say to assume that this lady didn't refer to Brazil nuts as "Brazil nuts".

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ty_kanye_vcool t1_jaaaykl wrote

She barely counts. She was appointed for one day as a political publicity stunt.

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YouTheSexRealPervert t1_jaahrfr wrote

Is this the critical race theory that I'm supposed to be distraught by? It's hilarious in a "US history is sad" sorta way.

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p314159i t1_jaazm5e wrote

I also think the first women to be elected was basically called up from retirement by the America Firsters to vote against fighting in WW2.

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KindlyQuasar t1_jabiipg wrote

Replying to MSGT_Daddy (#2,081,883)

I know you're likely not posting in good faith, but for anyone else reading this, the US political parties basically swapped ideologies.

200 years ago Republicans were liberal and Democrats were largely conservative. Unsurprisingly, things changed over 200+ years. Also unsurprisingly, the Civil Rights Era played a big part in this

More info here: Democratic and Republican parties flip ideologies

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jfjacobc t1_jabl4mj wrote

Replying to addemup9001 (#2,084,620)

Because she was still the first woman senator of the US. Her racism and slaveholding past doesn't change that.

If anything, it makes it all the more important, as she reflected a large portion of society's views at the time. She was appointed as a political move to win points for a Democrat's re-election. Understanding the ugly parts of our past helps us avoid them in our present and future. If we ignore or disregard all the things that don't conform to our modern social standards, how can we critically analyze and grow from them?

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FuschiaKnight t1_jabmttn wrote

Replying to KindlyQuasar (#2,093,366)

fwiw neither party was around 200 years ago (tho Dems are close at like 195 or so years). The Republican started around 1860, so it’s closer to 160 years old.

Back during the Civil War, Republicans were union men who defeated the traitorous losers. As a result, white Southerners wouldn’t be Democrats for generations. Started to change around Wilson, especially FDR, though the final big push wasn’t really until LBJ passed civil rights and voting rights legislation during his huge Democratic-majority Great Society agenda.

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PreciousRoi t1_jabvmun wrote

Replying to FuschiaKnight (#2,094,416)

>As a result, white Southerners wouldn’t be Democrats for generations. Started to change around Wilson, especially FDR, though the final big push wasn’t really until LBJ passed civil rights and voting rights legislation during his huge Democratic-majority Great Society agenda.

Uh...what? The Republicans didn't get traction in the South until Nixon, in the wake of LBJ. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southern_strategy

Wilson was the intellectual godfather of the Lost Cause and all those Confederate statues put up around the turn of the century. He was quoted in the opening to Birth of a Nation and even screened it in the White House.

Republicans were Yankee Carpetbagger scum, before Johnson, and many a racist Democrat died and was honored by their Party upon their death.

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FuschiaKnight t1_jacr5wz wrote

Replying to PreciousRoi (#2,096,325)

After LBJ signed the Civil Rights Act, he predicted “We have lost the South for a generation.”

There was already strong Southern opposition to civil rights, going back to… well, always. But with FDR’s liberal Supreme Court majority desegregating the schools, the Southern delegation published The Southern Manifesto preaching opposition and non-compliance. These tensions kept floating throughout the Civil Rights Movement. Over time, Democrats became more aligned with civil rights (eg Dem majority passing CRA and VRA, appointing the first Black Justice, etc) and Republicans became more opposed (ie Nixon’s “law and order” campaign, which started while LBJ was president).

So, I agree that Nicon played an important role. But imo the soil was fertile for his Southern Strategy because of what was crystallized under LBJ: Dems became the party of civil rights (even if it took decades for most of the inconsistencies to gradually get pushed out)

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PreciousRoi t1_jadwaib wrote

Replying to FuschiaKnight (#2,105,406)

OK, but the way you word it, you make it sound like the Democrats didn't have the South on virtual lockdown after the Civil War until Nixon.

It is also a complete slander to say that the Republicans "gradually" became more opposed to Civil Rights...they were never opposed. It was Democrats vs. Other Democrats, until LBJ/Nixon. Republicans voted in favor of Civil Rights, and only two elected Democrats "switched" in the 60s.

Also, LBJ said plenty of other things about Civil Rights...the question isn't if he lied, the question is, which version was the lie? Was he lying to his closest friends and colleagues, or to everyone else? The "inconsistencies" (i.e. racists) in the Democratic Party were never "pushed out", they died and were honored as Democrats. The Democrats never attempted a purge of anyone (with any power they could use) just because they were a leader of the local KKK, for example. Even when I was a kid in the 70s/80s, the overt racists weren't relatively wealthy Republicans, they were working class Union Democrats, living through White Flight. Trump changed a lot of that, and post-Trump, everything looks different, but Republicans used to be less opposed to "Civil Rights" and other "Social Justice" issues and more utterly indifferent...they drifted from being the "Anti-slavery"/"pro-Union" party, to being the pro-business party, not because they "gradually opposed" Civil Rights, but because they were mostly powerless to do Civil Rights because racist Democrats were in control. Once enough racist Democrats became convinced by their friend LBJ that if they didn't pass Civil Rights, some Yankee Federal Judge would impose something worse and passed it, the Republicans voted overwhelmingly in favor.

You also allude to Wilson as a step towards Civil Rights...that is gross. Like disgusting. Wilson is like the poster child for Intellectual Racism at the turn of the century. Buy into Good Guy Lyndon OK, maybe it was all "locker room talk" (nah, fam, but you do you)...but Woody...come on, man!

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FuschiaKnight t1_jaemt12 wrote

Replying to PreciousRoi (#2,118,536)

I mentioned Wilson as a step towards Republican/Democrat realignment. The alignment wasn’t purely a civil rights thing, it was also about coalitions. And he laid some important foundations to what became the administrative state and progressivism. He did some horrible stuff & “progressive” doesn’t always mean correct (eg eugenics was considered a part of the progressive movement at the time), and it’s not something we should honor. I only mentioned him as part of the coalition shifting. It shouldn’t be surprising that a racist Democrat (who also did things for the administrative state) was a bridge between the two eras.

As for post-Nixon, when I say “gradual” I mean that we’ll into the 90s and even 00s, there were still conservative Southerners that identified with Democrats. I agree they weren’t pushed out & I didn’t say the people were. It’s the ideas that were the inconsistencies in the coalitions. As everyone sorted more, the parties became further and further polarized, culminating in the South becoming deep red in places it used to be deep blue.

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