Editor, Gazette-Journal:

Jim Crow laws started taking shape during the Reconstruction era in the South (1865-1877) and the Ku Klux Klan was established in 1865 in the South to scare the Republicans from reforming the South. The KKK were all Democrats to keep things the way they were. The Democrats ruled the South until the 1970s. So, all the laws they always talk about against the blacks and the hangings were done by the Democrats.

The Dixiecrats were recognized in 1948, as 35 southern Democratic senators walked out of the Democratic Convention. They had been fighting the rest of the Democrats since reconstruction. Their campaign slogan was “Segregation forever.”

Once Lyndon Baines Johnson (Democrat) became president, he tried to get the Civil Rights Bill passed. LBJ tried to get the Civil Rights Act passed in 1957 and 1960 when he was the Majority Leader in the Senate. However, the Dixiecrats voted against the bill each time.

On May 13, 1964, Sen. Hubert H. Humphrey was p...