Commentary With the creation of June 19th (“Juneteenth”) as a federal holiday, Democrats have one more claim to be the party of civil rights and equal opportunity for African Americans, though most Republicans also voted for the holiday. That claim has been promoted for decades by a compliant media, academia, and high-profile politicians, but the facts say otherwise. From Abraham Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation in 1863 to the mid-20th century, members of the Democratic Party, dominant in the South due to its opposition to civil and political rights for African Americans, were on the wrong side of civil rights. Federal troops finally brought the news of emancipation to Galveston, Texas on June 19, 1865, meeting resistance from plantation owners. This is the same year the Ku Klux Klan was founded. Nathan Bedford Forrest, a Confederate Army general and a Democrat, was the first grand wizard of the KKK, though he tried disbanding it in 1869 after growing critical of its “excessive violence.” …