Sure, let's take a look at the Republican Party's stance on the Confederacy

For starters, I'm not a "soi-disant historian."

Lots of places call me a historian, in fact -- the institutions that awarded me a BA, MA and PhD in History, the one that employs me as a professor of history, the OAH and AHA too.

Remind me: what are your qualifications again?

Now, luckily, there have been a considerable number of clashes over Confederate monuments, memorials, and symbols in recent years, clashes which have forced the two parties to state their positions clearly.

Let's take a look at who's defending the Confederacy and who isn't.

Man, I don't even know where to begin with this

First of all, yes, of course George Wallace was a Democrat. Most southern segregationists in the 1960s were.

If you think this is some kind of clever gotcha, you *really* should have paid more attention in history class.

Second, yes, George Wallace *did* stand in the schoolhouse door to keep African American college students -- who weren't really "kids" -- from going to the University of Alabama.

But, hey, who was standing on the other side? Different Democrats!

Here's the iconic photo.

That's Wallace standing off to the left. And on the right, trying to escort Vivian Malone and James Hood onto campus and sweating hard, that's Deputy Attorney General Nick Katzenbach from the Kennedy administration.

Kennedy was a Democrat, by the way.

The "stand in the schoolhouse door" illustrates the internal divide in the Democratic Party over racial issues in the 1960s.

On one side (literally!), the old Dixiecrats who used to control the party; on the other, the new northern, liberal Democrats who favored civil rights.

In case you missed it, my creepy stalker @DineshDSouza is back, repeating his bizarre claim that "progressive historians" never write about how the Democratic Party was the party of slavery, segregation and white supremacy.

Let's all dig in on this

It's a laughable claim, as anyone who took US history in college or even high school knows, but it seems D'Souza never did that.

He's been pushing it for years, and whenever I ask him for examples -- like this thread from July 2018 -- he runs away.

D'Souza has repeatedly promised he'll show examples of this trend he insists is incredibly widespread -- examples that are surely at his fingertips! -- but it's been years now.

(He *does* apparently have plenty time to tell everyone else in his replies how very important he is.)

Perhaps we can all help D'Souza out here by identifying any "progressive textbooks" that do, in fact, acknowledge the Democrats' past ties to slavery, segregation and white supremacy.

That way, he can rule those suspects out and move more quickly on to the others.

I'll start.

Howard Zinn probably looms large when people think of leftist histories of the US, so let's start there.

"Democrats were the party of slavery and segregation."

Huh, seems like Zinn gave up the secret. Well, he's probably the only one.