Honoring Juneteenth!

June 19, 2020

 

Juneteenth, also known as Freedom Day, Jubilee Day, and Liberation Day, is an
unofficial American holiday and an official Texas state holiday, celebrated
annually on the 19th of June in the United States to commemorate Union army
general Gordon Granger's reading of federal orders in the city of Galveston,
Texas, on 19 June 1865, proclaiming all slaves in Texas were now free. Slavery
had legally ended in 1863 but wasn’t announced in Galveston until 1865.

 

Background of African Americans and Texas Politics

 

Did you Know?

 

• The Republican Party was formed in 1854 after the Democrats voted to protect
and to extend slavery.

 

• The 1860 Democrat platform declared its support for the Supreme Court’s
infamousDred Scott decision.

 

• The 13th Amendment passed without a single Democrat vote in Congress for
civil rights for African Americans.

 

• The Republican Party of Texas emerged in Houston on July 4, 1867 with 150
African Americans and 20 Anglos. The same year, the Ku Klux Klan actively began
to attack African Americans and Republicans.

 

• Two of the first three statewide leaders of the Republican Party of Texas
were African Americans.

 

• The first 42 African Americans elected to the Texas Legislature were all
Republicans.

 

• From 1865-1869, Texas Democrats passed “Black Codes” to prohibit African
Americans from voting, holding office, and serving on juries. They also refused
to acknowledge Juneteenth and even drafted a new State constitution requiring
that State Representatives and Senators only be “of the white race.”

 

• When the Republicans gained the Texas Legislature in 1869, they established
a system of free public schools to educateall the children of the State
(something Democrats had refused to do) and started a Texas State Militia and a
Texas State police in which African Americans proudly served.

 

• When Democrats recaptured Texas government in 1872, Democrat Governor
Richard Coke’s election was described as “the restoration of white supremacy
and Democratic rule.”

 

• Texas Democrats engaged in bizarre gerrymandering specifically to prevent
African American members from being re-elected to the Legislature. When African
American Republican legislator Robert L. Smith departed in 1897, no African
American was elected in Texas until 1966, when the U.S. Supreme Court ordered
Texas Democrats to redraw districts.

 

• Texas Democrats enacted a poll tax that reduced African American voter
turnout in Texas from 100,000 to only 5,000 and passed white-only primary laws
as well as Jim Crow segregation laws.

 

• As victims of Democrat racism and segregation, African Americans were loyal
to the Republican Party they started. In fact, Republican President Herbert
Hoover received more than three-fourths of the African American vote over his
Democratic challenger Franklin D. Roosevelt.

 

• Republican President Dwight D. Eisenhower was the first president to appoint
an African American to an executive position on the White House staff.

 

• A higher percentage of Republican Members of Congress voted for the Civil
Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965 than did Democrats.

 

• African Americans made their most significant political and civil rights
progress while affiliated with the Republican Party, and only in recent decades
have African Americans become a principal constituency of the Democrat Party.

 

As Chairman of the Republican Party of Texas, I am committed to re-claiming
our party’s historical prominence with black voters in Texas. Our party
understands the difference betweensymbolism and substance and between politics
and policy.  As we move toward the November 2020 Election and continue to
engage African American voters in Texas, we will remember our past and find the
best, principled path forward to more liberty and equal justice under the law
for all.        

 

Happy Juneteenth!

 

James R. Dickey

Chairman, RPT

 

 

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