President Trump recently said that he has done more for Black Americans than any President since Abraham Lincoln. A bit of campaign hyperbole? Sure.
On several occasions, Al Sharpton has used his appearances on MSNBC to push back against Trump by rhetorically asking if the former President had done “more than FDR … more than John Kennedy … more than Lyndon Johnson … more than Barack Obama?
Sharpton’s response reflects the Democratic Party’s long standing false narrative of civil rights advocacy. In answering Sharpton’s questions about Roosevelt, Kennedy, Johnson and Obama – as to whether they are better for Blacks than Trump — the respective answers are “no,” “no,” “yes” and “not really.”
Franklin Roosevelt
One of the greatest misrepresentations of American history in terms of race and civil rights is the claim that FDR was a proponent of civil rights. In fact, he was an avowed white supremacist – personally and in terms of policies. His appointments to the Supreme Court were largely hardened racists – most notably Hugo Black, a one-time Ku Klux Klanner.
Before going on to the High Court, Black was instrumental in structuring and implementing Roosevelt’s New Deal policies. They were all intentionally designed and administered to take jobs away from Blacks for the benefit of the Depression-desperate White workers. Prior to the Depression, Black and White unemployment numbers were about the same – approximately 4 percent. As the Depression rolled on, White unemployment rose to the 20 percent range, while Black unemployment hit as high as 50 percent. That is the result of job shifting. The NAACP at the time renamed the National Recovery Act (NRA) as the Negro Riddance Act.
(My book – due out in mid-August — covers in great detail how each New Deal program was intentionally racially crafted and administered to the disadvantage of Black Americans.)
FDR’s racism was deep and personal. Following the 1936 Olympics – in which Black track star Jessee Owens was the national hero who embarrassed Hitler – the President invited only the White athletes to the White House. When Owens was told how Hitler had snubbed him, Owens responded that it was not only Hitler who snubbed him, but his own President. “I didn’t even get a telegram,” he said.
FDR’s racist policies can be traced to the income inequality between Blacks and Whites that exists to this day.
(In a speech to a Black church audience, a woman said that Roosevelt brought Blacks out of the depression. I pointed out that statistically – unemployment rates — Black America had never yet recovered from the Depression.)
As a Navy official, FDR was an implementer of President Wilson’s order to segregate the military and the Executive Branch of the federal government. Though FDR promised to end that segregation, he never did so in his twelve-plus years in office. He repeatedly opposed Republican bills to make lynching a federal crime.
John F. Kennedy
Jack Kennedy was a racial hypocrite. He would speak in support of civil rights when campaigning and oppose civil rights legislation when in the Congress. He voted in lockstep with the southern Democrat segregationists. He voted against the 1957 Civil Rights Act passed by President Eisenhower and Republicans in Congress.
Kennedy voted for Eisenhower’s 1960 Civil Rights Act but as a political gambit during his presidential campaign – and only after he had voted with the Democrat’s racist southern bloc to strip out the enforcement provision – necessitating what became the 1964 Civil Rights Act.
In his 1960 presidential campaign, Kennedy proposed a civil rights bill. When elected, he had it assigned to the Senate Rules Committee headed by racist Chairman Howard Smith, who preemptively announced that it would never be given even a hearing. And it never was. In 1963, Kennedy again proposed his civil rights bill as a campaign promise. He had it sent to the same Committee with the same chairman and the same result.
Black civil rights leaders were constantly critical of Kennedy’s commitment to civil rights. The Kennedy Presidential Library website refers to Kennedy’s lack of serious support for civil rights legislation – even his own rather tepid proposals.
“But Kennedy’s narrow election victory and small working margin in Congress left him cautious. He was reluctant to lose Southern support for legislation on many fronts by pushing too hard on civil rights legislation.
This is where Trump falls short. For his long record of civil rights opposition, Johnson had an epiphany. There can be no disagreement with the fact that Johnson put his full influence and power behind the 1964 Civil Rights Act and the 1965 Voting Rights Act.
To gain passage of the civil rights legislation, Johnson had to rely on overwhelming support from congressional Republicans to overcome Democrat opposition in Congress — including the first-ever defeat of a filibuster of a civil rights bill. It is sad – but arguably true – that there would not have been any civil rights legislation at the time if it were not for Kennedy’s assassination, Johnson’s conversion and overwhelming GOP support in Congress.
Barack Obama
One cannot not put President Obama in the same hypocritical category as FDR and Kennedy, but his accomplishments regarding civil rights are few and far between. In many ways, he was a classic Democrat establishmentarian. As a product of the racist Democrat political machine, Obama was not one to make waves.
Even as a community organizer, state senator and U.S. senator, Obamae focused on getting welfare benefits into the community rather than challenging city hall on its pervasive institutional and systemic racism. He followed the longtime Democrat tradition of expanding welfare benefits in place of fundamental constitutional civil rights – making welfare the new civil rights.
While the liberal press fawned over Obama – making him a civil rights icon merely because he is Black — civil rights leaders and activists were less laudatory. Black journalist Lauren Victoria Burke summed up Obama’s legacy vis a vis Black America under the headline, “Is Black America Better Off Under Obama?” Her article covered several major areas – such as education, employment and income inequality – to show how the statistics were no better, or even worse, under Obama. In summary, she wrote:
“What planet African Americans are doing ‘better off’ on is unknown. What is known is that President Obama is about to leave office with African Americans in their worst economic situation since Ronald Reagan. A look at every key stat as President Obama starts his sixth year in office illustrates that.”
According to Burke, even Al Sharpton was critical of Obama’s efforts in terms of civil rights. She added:
“In 2011, when Al Sharpton told CBS’ 60 Minutes that, ‘Obama already said he won’t do anything for Blacks, duh,’ it signaled that Black civil rights leaders would not push the first Black president hard on Black issues. Sharpton has been in the White House 61 times since 2009, probably more than any member of Congress, including leadership, over that period. With that type of access to power, one has to ask: Where are the positive policy results?”
Burke’s report also reveals the hypocrisy of Sharpton, who is more the creature of the Democrat political establishment than a true civil rights leader in the spirit of Martin Luther King.
GOP Presidents
In proposing exceptions to Trump’s claim, Sharpton skipped over Republican presidents – who arguably had stronger civil rights records than Trump and the presidents Sharpton named – with the exception of Johnson.
Eisenhower completed the desegregation of the military that President Truman had dallied over for three years after his Executive Order integrating the armed forces. Ike also passed the first two civil rights bills since the Reconstruction Period of the 1860s and 1870s.
President Nixon proposed and passed the significantly important and successful Affirmative Action programs that opened job and other opportunities for the Black Community. He also pumped billions of dollars into the development of Black enterprises.
And if you go back to the post-Civil War era, President Grant’s administration oversaw the passage of constitutional amendments, laws, regulations and court cases giving meaning to the Emancipation Proclamation.
Summary
In terms of civil rights – and the respective role of the two major parties—there is lots of room for dialogue and debate. But one thing is clear, Sharpton’s spin on civil rights is prejudicial disinformation by both omission and commission. He is peddling a false narrative – a widely held misbelief — contrary to the facts of history.
He has been doing this sort of partisan race-baiting for most of his life for his own political and financial interests. That is evident in the fact that he has rarely confronted the Democrat establishment for its role in institutional racism in America’s major cities, in which millions of Black Americans remain segregated, oppressed, impoverished, under-educated, poorly housed and unsafe.
Sharpton’s most recent dishonest performance on television is just more of the same old Sharpton spewing out the same old lies.
As far as Trump is concerned, his statement can be said to be over the top … exaggerated … or typical campaign rhetoric. But he CAN fairly claim to be better than many past presidents in delivering for Black Americans –especially the millions trapped in modern day de facto segregation in Democrat-run cities. And he was most certainly better than FDR, and Kennedy. Not as accomplished as Johnson — and arguably better than Obama. And of course, better than President Biden. Which is why Black voters are trending to Trump and the GOP.
So, there ‘tis.