North Carolina - A Parallel Universe?

A largely-black Republican Party. A White Supremacist Democrat Party. Sound like a parallel universe? A sick joke perhaps? No folks - welcome to North Carolina, circa 1900. It plays with ones mind when trying to picture members of the clan as 'democrats' and african americans out moose hunting with Palin and Cheney. I have always believed that any real sense of Black equality and liberty came with Dr King and the Panthers in the 60's and beyond - but in 1896, the largely-black Republican party built a fusion ticket with the poor white man's Populist party and took control of the state capitol and most of the relevant governing offices. Why then was Rosa Parks ordered to give up her seat in Montgomery, Alabama, more than 50 years later? Cos white men don't take so kindly to black folks stickin' their noses in, ya hear? Or something to that effect. Within two years, through fraudulent and violent conduct, the Supremacist Democrats had taken control of the state government. Poll taxes ($1 to vote), residency requirements and literary tests were introduced by the 'Democrats' to cut blacks out of the voting registrar. The voice of Black North Carolina was silenced. Real classy, makes you proud to be white. When Lyndon Johnson's democratic government overturned black disenfranchisement in 1965 with The Voting Rights Act, Black folks naturally sided with their saviours-elect. So here we are in 2010, Fox News is Fox News (I wouldn't have it any other way), and Rumsfeld and Cheney are the noble descendants of the once black Republican Party. Things have truly been turned on their head.