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The rise of the Lilly White Movement in Texas Republican Politics · Health and Healing Dealing with Trauma and Addictions

• 0:08
  SPEAKER_00: Hey guys, once again it's your man Mike D, and I just want to share a little bit today about a conversation I had in reference to the Texas Republican politics.
• 0:18
  SPEAKER_00: Don't do a whole lot of politics, but I just had to share some information with some people who thought they knew history.
• 0:26
  SPEAKER_00: And so we're going to look at the rise of lily white movement in Texas Republican politics.
• 0:34
  SPEAKER_00: The Lily White Movement, and so what is the Lily White Movement?
• 0:38
  SPEAKER_00: It began within the Republican Party after the Civil War, from the first days of Reconstruction.
• 0:44
  SPEAKER_00: A fight developed not only in Texas, across the South between the white and black factions for control of a newly formed party, as white GOP leaders sought respectability among Southern voters and a conviction grew that continued black and tan involvement towarded expansion of the party.
• 1:05
  SPEAKER_00: The lily white Republicans began an organized effort to drive blacks from positions of party leadership.
• 1:14
  SPEAKER_00: Those Texas blacks appealed to Northern Party managers to halt the movement.
• 1:19
  SPEAKER_00: Lily Whitism flourished because Republican presidents after 1865 wanted approval from the Southern White Masses.
• 1:29
  SPEAKER_00: The term lily white apparently originated at an 1888 Republican State Convention in Fort Worth, Texas, when a group of whites attempted to expel a number of blacks and tan delegates.
• 1:42
  SPEAKER_00: Norris Wright Cooney, the black Texas leader who controlled the state party from 1883 until his death in 1896, promptly labeled the insurgents lily whites, and the term was soon applied to similar groups throughout the South.
• 2:01
  SPEAKER_00: Actually, an organized Lily White movement had begun in Texas during the eighteen seventies, when the party was dominated by former governor Edward J.
• 2:10
  SPEAKER_00: Davis, but once Cooney gained the national committeymanship in eighteen eighty four until the death of Davis, the Lily Whites started a concerted drive for mastery.
• 2:22
  SPEAKER_00: Though Cooney was reappointed to the National Committee at the 1892 Republican National Convention, the black and white struggle in Texas resulted in a fractured party and the first GOP state convention without a black and tan delegate in the attendance.
• 2:40
  SPEAKER_00: In 1892, elections proved a turning point for both the GOP fraction as Cooney aligned the black and Tans behind George Clark, a conservative Democrat, in his fight with James Hogg and a Lilly White's nominated Andrew Jackson, Houston for the governorship.
• 3:00
  SPEAKER_00: Houston, son of Sam Houston and the future United States Senator, received only thirteen hundred votes in the November election, while Cooney suffered a dual setback.
• 3:12
  SPEAKER_00: Not only did Clark go down in defeat, but the Democrat governor, Grover Cleveland, won the presidency, so that Cooney lost all federal patronage.
• 3:22
  SPEAKER_00: Southern GOP leaders, black and white, relied upon the dispensation of federal jobs to maintain their state organizations, and when Cooney lost out under Cleveland, the doors was opened for a Lily White takeover.
• 3:36
  SPEAKER_00: Though Cooney was replaced as national committeen as well as state chairman during the 1896 campaign, other black and tan leaders emerged to lead the state's party.
• 3:47
  SPEAKER_00: Edward H.R.
• 3:48
  SPEAKER_00: Green, son of the multimillionaire H.R.
• 3:52
  SPEAKER_00: Green, who arrived in Texas to oversee his mother's railroad empire, captured the party after Cooney's downfall by forming a political alliance with William Grossneck Bill McDonald, a black banker from Fort Worth.
• 4:07
  SPEAKER_00: The Green McDonald partnership, however, was unable to stem the Lillywhite insurgents.
• 4:13
  SPEAKER_00: And after Green's withdrawal as state chairman in 1902, Cecil Lyon, a white businessman from Sherman, took control.
• 4:22
  SPEAKER_00: Lyon generally spearheaded the party and the movement in Texas until his death in 1915.
• 4:29
  SPEAKER_00: By 1904, Lyons was Theater Roosevelt's agent in the state as well as national committeeman and state chairman.
• 4:37
  SPEAKER_00: Though black and tan delegates appeared at the 1904 and 1908 national conventions, they were pushed aside by Lyons forces.
• 4:46
  SPEAKER_00: To avoid criticism, one or two blacks were usually seated with Lily White delegations to the national gatherings.
• 4:54
  SPEAKER_00: The Lily Whites gained new momentum with the adoption of the poll tax and the passage of the Terrell election law.
• 5:02
  SPEAKER_00: The Lily White Republicans appealed the racism to establish their party as a viable alternative for Southern Democrats.
• 5:10
  SPEAKER_00: As a result, blacks increasingly lost influence and power in the Republican Party.
• 5:16
  SPEAKER_00: The Southern Democrat leadership greatly discouraged black members, and many blacks felt they had no political party in which to participate.
• 5:25
  SPEAKER_00: When the Republican faction split during 1906 and both made gubernatorial nominations to oppose Democrats Thomas Mitchell Campbell, the Lily White candidate A.C.
• 5:37
  SPEAKER_00: Gray outpole his black and tan challenger, Alexander Askon, by a fourth to one margin.
• 5:44
  SPEAKER_00: Lyons supported Roosevelt in the 1912 during his famous fight with William Howard Taft, and he later organized a progressive or bull moose party in Texas, which resulted in the loss of his party post to Henry Frederick McGregor, a Houston businessman.
• 6:02
  SPEAKER_00: Roosevelt's Bull Moose campaign finished shattering Republicans' harmony in the state, with the Lillywhites generally supporting the new movement calls for a white opposition party to the Democrats and the Black and Tan alleying themselves with Taft.
• 6:19
  SPEAKER_00: After omogliation of the GOP for the 1916 presidential campaign, Renfro Krieger, a Brownsville lawyer and 1916 gubernatorial candidate, soon became the party leader.
• 6:35
  SPEAKER_00: Though McDonald attempted to come back in 1920 and proclaim the color should predominate because 95% of all Texas Republicans were Negroes.
• 6:45
  SPEAKER_00: The Lily Whites under Krieger retained firm control after the upheaval in 1912 through 1916.
• 6:52
  SPEAKER_00: The Lily Whites regained supreme under the Republican President Warren G.
• 6:57
  SPEAKER_00: Hardin, Calvin Coolidge, and Herbert Clark Hoover.
• 7:02
  SPEAKER_00: Despite threats of blacks throughout the 1920s to vote Republicans, the Republicans folded for the Democratic Party, and despite efforts by Republican Congressman Harry McLeary Warshbach to court the Black and Tans in his fight for ascendancy with Krager.
• 7:20
  SPEAKER_00: When Black and Tan factions appeared at the 1920, 1924, and 1928 Republican National Conventions, they were shutted aside by Krieger and his followers.
• 7:31
  SPEAKER_00: Lily White domination of the state GOP became academic during the 1930s.
• 7:38
  SPEAKER_00: The Texas Blacks joined the black exodus into the Democrat Franklin D.
• 7:43
  SPEAKER_00: Roosevelt's New Deal Coalition.
• 7:47
  SPEAKER_00: So Republican versus Democrats, it's different in where does the individual's policies lay?
• 7:54
  SPEAKER_00: And when it comes to people who are representing their constituents, are they helping or are they harming?
• 8:01
  SPEAKER_00: What agenda will be of that to people of color?
• 8:04
  SPEAKER_00: It will not be under the current administration.
• 8:07
  SPEAKER_00: If you mention the Dems created the KKK, what is the context?
• 8:13
  SPEAKER_00: It was the Southern Democrats who created the KKK.
• 8:17
  SPEAKER_00: Then you have to mention the Lily White Movement, which is Republican.
• 8:21
  SPEAKER_00: And if you're mentioning that, then you must mention the Redeemers.
• 8:25
  SPEAKER_00: If you mention the Redeemers, then you have to mention John Burke Society.
• 8:30
  SPEAKER_00: These are all facts.
• 8:32
  SPEAKER_00: Then you better mention the Tea Party, and then you better mention the Turning Point USA.
• 8:37
  SPEAKER_00: It's not about left or right, Republicans or Democrats, blacks or whites.
• 8:43
  SPEAKER_00: However, it is about facts and the facts are policies.
• 8:47
  SPEAKER_00: The policies will affect everybody, but they're not in everybody's best interests.
• 8:54
  SPEAKER_00: You can't get this information from TikTok College.
• 8:56
  SPEAKER_00: You can't even check your Instagram university or your YouTube junior college.
• 9:01
  SPEAKER_00: You can get it though from the Southern Manifesto of nineteen sixty five.
• 9:08
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, it is true that the African Americans andor blacks were a major part of the Republican Party back in those times.
• 9:16
  SPEAKER_00: Yet because of them being pushed out of the party by Lily Whites, they went over to the Democratic Party.
• 9:26
  SPEAKER_00: Hence you have a majority of Democrats, blacks, and tan people of color today.
• 9:32
  SPEAKER_00: Now we see a shift back towards the Republican Party because people are saying, well, the blacks were Republicans.
• 9:40
  SPEAKER_00: Sure they were, but under different conditions, you have to keep it into context in order to understand it.
• 9:45
  SPEAKER_00: Under the current administration, my response is just vote.
• 9:50
  SPEAKER_00: And vote policy.
• 9:52
  SPEAKER_00: You have to do your homework.
• 9:54
  SPEAKER_00: Policies brings about change for everyone.
• 9:57
  SPEAKER_00: I'd recommend um taking a look at a book that is familiar, and it's called Black Skin White Mass by Franz Fanon, F-A-N-O-N, King of the North.
• 10:10
  SPEAKER_00: MLK not only fought for the South, he fought for the North.
• 10:14
  SPEAKER_00: So let's not get it twisted.
• 10:15
  SPEAKER_00: Also, check out when Affirmative Action Was White by I R A Ira Cat Nelson.
• 10:23
  SPEAKER_00: Understanding the wealth gap.
• 10:25
  SPEAKER_00: Hope something was said here, guys, that will educate you about the left, the right, the Republicans, the Democrats, the history of it.
• 10:32
  SPEAKER_00: All right.
• 10:33
  SPEAKER_00: Take care.
• 10:33
  SPEAKER_00: Bye now.