The Fox News headline quoting Massachusetts Democrat Rep. Ayanna Pressley was hilarious. Quite unintentionally. The headline: “House Dems reintroduce reparations legislation: ‘We refuse to be silent.’ Progressive Rep. Ayanna Pressley says ‘reparations are a necessary step in achieving justice.’” Over at Pressley’s own website was this headline: “Amid Onslaught on DEI, Pressley, Booker, Colleagues Reintroduce Historic Reparations Bill During Black History Month. H.R. 40 Would Form Commission for Develop Reparations Proposals for African Americans.” In fact? In fact, Pressley, New Jersey’s Democrat Senator Cory Booker, and Democrat colleagues supporting this reparations movement are curiously decidedly silent about the only major political party in American history that fervently supported not only slavery but segregation and, yes indeed, the Ku Klux Klan. That would be, of course, Pressley and Booker’s own Democratic Party. In the past, I have detailed the close ties of Pressley’s party on this score. Let’s review. Pressley, Booker, and colleagues are not demanding reparations from the Democrat Party for the number of Democratic Party platforms supporting slavery. There were six from 1840 through 1860. Pressley, Booker, and colleagues are silent on Democrats paying reparations for the number of Democratic Party platforms that either supported segregation outright or were silent on the subject. There were 20, from 1868 through 1948. Pressley, Booker, and colleagues are not demanding their party pay reparations for its staunch support of “Jim Crow” — as in the laws. These were the post-Civil War laws passed enthusiastically by Democrat legislators of the day. These laws segregated public schools, public transportation, restaurants, restrooms, and public places in general (everything from water coolers to beaches). The reason Rosa Parks became famous is that she sat in the “whites only” front section of a bus in Montgomery, Ala., the “whites only” designation the direct result of Democratic local officials. Pressley, Booker, and colleagues are silent on Democrat reparations for the support of the Ku Klux Klan, which, according to Columbia University historian Eric Foner, became “a military force serving the interests of the Democratic Party.” They are also silent on reparations from the Democrat Party for, in the words of University of North Carolina historian Allen Trelease, using the Klan as the “terrorist arm” of the Democratic Party. Terrorism as in terrorizing black Americans. Pressley, Booker, and colleagues are silent on reparations from their party for the fact Democrats opposed the 13th, 14th, and 15th amendments to the Constitution. The 13th banned slavery. The 14th effectively overturned the infamous 1857 Dred Scott decision (made by Democratic pro-slavery Supreme Court justices) by guaranteeing due process and equal protection to former slaves. The 15th gave black Americans the right to vote. Pressley, Booker, and colleagues are silent on reparations from their party for opposing the Civil Rights Act of 1866. It was passed by the Republican Congress over the veto of Democrat President Andrew Johnson, who had been placed on Republican Abraham Lincoln’s winning 1864 ticket as a unifying gesture when the Civil War was winding down. The law was designed to provide blacks with the right to own private property, sign contracts, sue, and serve as witnesses in a legal proceeding. There is more silence from Pressley, Booker, and colleagues on Democrat reparations for the party’s opposition to the Civil Rights Act of 1875. It was passed by a Republican Congress and signed into law by Republican President Ulysses Grant. The law prohibited racial discrimination in public places and public accommodations. Pressley, Booker, and colleagues are silent on Democrat reparations for passing its 1904 platform, which devoted a section to “Sectional and Racial Agitation,” claiming the GOP’s protests against segregation and the denial of voting rights to blacks sought to “revive the dead and hateful race and sectional animosities in any part of our common country,” which in turn “means confusion, distraction of business, and the reopening of wounds now happily healed.” Pressley, Booker, and colleagues are silent on the Democratic Party paying reparations for four Democratic platforms, 1908-1920, that are silent on blacks, segregation, lynching, and voting rights as racial problems in the country mounted. By contrast, the GOP platforms of those years specifically address “Rights of the Negro” (1908), oppose lynching (in 1912, 1920, 1924, 1928) and, as Democrat FDR’s New Deal kicks in, speak out about the dangers of making blacks “wards of the state.” Pressley, Booker, and colleagues are silent on reparations from their party for the Democratic Convention of 1924, known to history as the “Klanbake.” The 103-ballot convention was held in Madison Square Garden. Hundreds of delegates were members of the Ku Klux Klan, the Klan so powerful that a plank condemning Klan violence was defeated outright. To celebrate, the Klan staged a rally with 10,000 hooded Klansmen in a field in New Jersey directly across the Hudson from the site of the convention. Attended by hundreds of cheering convention delegates, the rally featured burning crosses and calls for violence against African Americans and Catholics. There is no demand from Pressley, Booker, and their colleagues for the Democratic Party to pay reparations for Democrats segregating the federal government at the direction of Democrat President Woodrow Wilson upon taking office in 1913. There is no demand from Pressley, Booker, and colleagues for Democratic Party reparations for creating the Federal Reserve Board, passing labor and child welfare laws, and creating Social Security with Wilson’s New Freedom and FDR’s New Deal. There is no mention that these programs were created as the result of an agreement from Democrats to ignore segregation and the lynching of blacks. Neither is there a demand for reparations by their party for the thousands of Democrat local officials, state legislators, state governors, U.S. congressmen, and U.S. senators who were elected as supporters of slavery and then segregation between 1800 and 1965. Nor are they demanding the party pay reparations for the deal with the devil that left segregation and lynching as a way of life in return for election support for three post-Civil War Democratic presidents, Grover Cleveland, Woodrow Wilson, and Franklin Roosevelt. There is no demand from Pressley, Booker, and colleagues for Democrat reparations for the three-fourths of the Democrat opposition to the 1964 Civil Rights Bill in the U.S. House that came from Democrats, or the 80 percent of “nay” votes in the Senate that came from Democrats. Last but certainly not least, there is no demand from Pressley, Booker, and colleagues that the Democratic Party pay reparations for allowing Birmingham, Ala., Public Safety Commissioner Bull Connor — who in 1963 infamously unleashed dogs and fire hoses on civil rights protestors — to serve as a member of both the Democratic National Committee and the Ku Klux Klan. In short, the recent headlines from Rep. Pressley, Senator Booker, and their Democratic colleagues demanding the issue of reparations for slavery opens up a pandora’s box of vivid history that their Democrat Party should finally face up to. Will Pressley, Booker, and colleagues demand reparations from their own Democratic Party for its horrendous treatment of black Americans as a matter of official Democrat Party policy? Silence. Shocking. Not. Hypocrisy? Plenty. READ MORE from Jeffrey Lord: Time to Cut Off Security Clearances for Ex-Gov Officials Elizabeth Warren and Democrats’ Hypocrisy Three Cheers for Kash Patel The post Pressley, Booker, and Colleagues: Silent on Dems Paying Reparations for Party’s Support of Slavery appeared first on The American Spectator | USA News and Politics.