Georgia Democrat Rep. John Lewis refused to attend the opening of the Mississippi Civil Rights Museum because President Trump was there, yet he would have been the first to condemn Trump had Trump not gone.  The irony is that much of the brutality, oppression, and denial of civil rights the museum records was committed by the party of white racism – the Democratic Party.

Reps. John Lewis and Bennie G. Thompson issued a joint statement full of righteous indignation but little truth in explaining their absence from the ceremony:

President Trump's attendance and his hurtful policies are an insult to the people portrayed in this civil rights museum. The struggles represented in this museum exemplify the truth of what really happened in Mississippi.

What really happened in Mississippi and throughout the South is that Democrats, who never got over losing the Civil War, sought to move blacks to a new plantation of oppression and suppression.  As one wag put it, the reason Democrats hate Republicans so much is that the Republicans took away their slaves.  All the Democrats have succeeded in doing is moving blacks to the urban plantations of inner cities like Baltimore, Detroit, and Chicago, all run by Democrats, where black children are preyed upon by black gangs, are trapped in failing schools, and have little or no job opportunities.

It is hard to fathom what Rep. Lewis means by "hurtful policies."  Does he mean trying to rid the inner cities of gangs like MS-1; supporting school choice; fighting illegal immigration, which increases competition for entry level jobs; or just generally promoting economic growth, the rising tide President John F. Kennedy said lifts all our boats?

One would have thought the eight-year presidency of the first black president, Barack Obama, was an era of progress for blacks, but it decidedly was not:

[T]he seasonally adjusted labor-force-participation rate for black Americans across the board has slipped from 63.2 percent to 61.7 percent – down 2.4 percent.

The seasonally adjusted labor-force-participation rate for black teenagers also sagged from 29.6 percent to 28.8 percent – down 2.7 percent.

During Obama's tenure, the percentage of black Americans struggling below the poverty line has advanced, according to the most recent Census Bureau data, from 25.8 in 2009 to 26.2 in 2014 – up 1.6 percent.

Real median income among black households during those years, according to the Census Bureau, sank from $35,954 to $35,398 – down 1.5 percent.

The number of black food-stamp participants exploded across that time frame from 7,393,000 to 11,699,000, the U.S. Department of Agriculture reports – up 58.2 percent.

Also, from Obama's oath of office through the fourth quarter of 2015, the percentage of black Americans who own homes foundered from 46.1 percent to 41.9 percent, according to the Census – down 9.1 percent.

One can search in vain for John Lewis and his liberal brethren saying anything about Barack Obama's "hurtful policies."  Obama, like most liberal Democrats, blames the plight of blacks on racism when in fact the impediments to black progress are to be found in fatherless homes, out-of-wedlock births, gang crime, failing public schools, and cities run by Democratic socialists who blame racism but not their opportunity-killing policies.

John Lewis's historical amnesia omits, for example, the fact that it was not a Republican, but the honored and celebrated Senator Robert Byrd, Democrat of West Virginia and former "Grand Kleagle" with the Ku Klux Klan, who holds the distinction of being the only senator to have opposed the only two black nominees to the Supreme Court, Thurgood Marshall and Clarence Thomas, and led a 52-day filibuster against the Civil Rights Act.

Sen. Al Gore, father of the former vice president, voted against the act, as did Sen. J. William Fulbright, to whom Bill Clinton dedicated a memorial; former South Carolina senator Ernest Hollings; Sen. Richard Russell; and, of course, Sen. Strom Thurmond, who was a Democrat at that time.

John Lewis forgets that it was Democrats who unleashed the dogs and turned on the fire hoses on civil rights marchers.  It was Democrats who stood in the schoolhouse door and are still standing there by opposing school choice and trapping minority children in failing schools.  It was Democrats who blocked the bridge in Selma.

The Civil Rights Act of 1964 would never have been possible without Republican leadership.  Not only was that legislation a personal victory for Illinois Republican Sen. Everett Dirksen, then Senate minority leader, but Republicans in both the House and Senate supported the measure in far greater percentages than Democrats.  Only six GOP senators voted against the act, compared with 21 Democrats.  The party of Abraham Lincoln and Donald Trump beat back the fire hoses and dogs of the party of Robert Byrd and John Lewis.

As one pundit put it, the Democrats should know a lot about Jim Crow laws, since Democrats wrote them.  Condoleezza Rice, President George W. Bush's national security adviser, explained at the 2000 GOP national convention why a black college professor would be a Republican:

The first Republican I knew was my father John Rice. And he is still the Republican I admire the most. My father joined our party because the Democrats in Jim Crow Alabama of 1952 would not register him to vote. The Republicans did. I want you to know that my father has never forgotten that day, and neither have I.

Neither should we.  Lewis's colleague in the Senate, Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) badgered Attorney General Jeff Sessions about the awards he received from various groups whose founders or leaders have made politically incorrect statements Blumenthal found offensive.  Neither Blumenthal nor Lewis has any problem with Hillary Clinton, their 2016 presidential candidate, accepting the Margaret Sanger Award.

Back in March of 2009, Hillary Clinton accepted Planned Parenthood's Margaret Sanger Award, doled out by an organization originally called the American Birth Control League.  In accepting the award, the Weekly Standard noted, Hillary had high praise for the noted eugenicist:

Now, I have to tell you that it was a great privilege when I was told that I would receive this award. I admire Margaret Sanger enormously, her courage, her tenacity, her vision[.] ... And when I think about what she did all those years ago in Brooklyn, taking on archetypes, taking on attitudes and accusations flowing from all directions, I am really in awe of her.

As J. Kenneth Blackwell, writing in the Washington Times, notes, those who chant "black lives matter" obviously exclude the abortion rate of black babies that Planned Parenthood founder Margaret Sanger and the KKK could only dream of:

138,539 black babies, nearly one baby in three, were killed in the womb in 2010. According to the CDC, between 2007 and 2010, innocent black babies were victimized in nearly 36 percent of the abortion deaths in the United States, though blacks represent only 12.8 percent of the population. Some say the abortion capital of America is New York City. According to LifeSiteNews, the city's Department of Health reported that in 2012, more black babies were aborted (31,328) than born (24,758). That's 55.9 percent of black babies killed before birth. Blacks represented 42.4 percent of all abortions.

This is a disturbing and tragic situation that continues unabated and is the fulfillment of the dream of Hillary Clinton's heroine, Margaret Sanger.  As Blackwell also noted:

According to Sanger, "Colored people are like human weeds and are to be exterminated." She opened her first abortion clinics in inner cities, and it's no accident that even today, "79 percent of Planned Parenthood's abortion facilities are located in black or minority neighborhoods."

Rep. Chris Smith reminded Hillary Clinton of the nature of Sanger's belief that eugenics, something the Nazis would put into horrifying practice, was Margaret Sanger's solution to all our problems, particularly racial ones.  As LifeSite News reported at the time:

Addressing Mrs. Clinton, Smith said, "Are you kidding? In 'awe'' of Margaret Sanger, who said in 1921, 'Eugenics … is the most adequate and thorough avenue to the solution of racial, political, and social problems'. And who also said in 1922, 'The most merciful thing that a family does to one of its infant members is to kill it'?" ...

Highlighting the racist nature of eugenics, Smith further quoted Sanger, who said in 1939,  "We should hire three or four colored ministers, preferably with social service backgrounds and with engaging personalities[.] ... We don't want the word to go out that we want to exterminate the Negro population."

When Jeff Sessions was being crucified for his alleged racist past, Sen Ted. Cruz pointed out that Democrats had better look in the mirror of history:

The day after Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) was rebuked while making a speech critical of Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.), Sen. Ted Cruz blasted Democrats, saying their party is the one rooted in racism.

"The Democrats are the party of the Ku Klux Klan," Cruz (R-Tex.) said in an interview on Fox News on Wednesday. "You look at the most racist – you look at the Dixiecrats, they were Democrats who imposed segregation, imposed Jim Crow laws, who founded the Klan. The Klan was founded by a great many Democrats."

Cruz is right.  John Lewis is wrong.  Under President Trump, black Americans are finding work in greater numbers and are increasingly participating in an economy freed from oppressive taxation and regulation:

The unemployment rate, labor participation rate and overall employment for black Americans appears to be improving under President Donald Trump, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics employment data[.] ...

In the president's first 7 months in office, the unemployment rate for said group dropped from 8.0 in March 2017 to 7.4 in July.

The participation rate for black American workers is up one percent since March 2017, and the number of black Americans with a job is up roughly 700,000.

Black Americans were one of the hardest hit groups during the Great Recession and throughout much of former President Barack Obama's two-terms in office. The unemployment rate for this group was 13.7 when Obama took office in 2009, reaching a height of 16.8 in March 2010.

As libertarian commentator, investigative reporter, and host on TheBlaze TV Lawrence Jones notes:

Black unemployment is at a 20-year low. Under President Obama, it was double the national average. Black businesses are soaring right now. Food stamps for black folks are decreasing.

John Lewis doesn't remember the thrilling days of yesteryear, when Democrats stood in the schoolhouse door, wrote Jim Crow laws, and unleashed the dogs, or even the era of Barack Obama, when blacks were a source of votes, treated as victims, while trapped in urban plantations run by Democrats.

Trump asked blacks during the campaign, What do you have to lose?  The answer so far is that they have lost nothing and have gained and will gain much as they are freed to participate in and pursue the American dream.

Daniel John Sobieski is a freelance writer whose pieces have appeared in Investor's Business Daily, Human Events, Reason Magazine, and the Chicago Sun-Times among other publications.