“Black Reparations from the Democrats”

 Monterey Herald, sent May 21, 2025—Not Published.

Thomas Elias, in his “Reparations are unlikely to advance throughout the year” (May 20), avoids the painful truth about both blacks and native Americans. California had no slave laws because it was populated mainly by Republicans, northern Whigs, the Free Soil Party, and abolitionists. In fact, John C. Fremont of California fame ran as the first Republican candidate for U.S. President. It was Andrew Jackson, the first Democratic Party President, who championed the Indian Removal Act of 1830, the deadly “Trail of Tears,” and promoted the cause of slavery.

By the 1820s-30s, slavery was dying in the South. The slave state of Virginia almost banned slavery in 1832. By 1836, the Democrats became more determined to bolster “slavery as a positive good,” mainly under the banner of paternalism. Eventually, they ignited a bloody Civil War, created the KKK, and enacted anti-voting and segregation laws.

If anyone should pay Black reparations, it should be the Democrats, and not the ancestors of families and communities who lost so much fighting to end slavery.

Lawrence Samuels. Carmel