Yes, history matters - all of it

Eleanor Hesse's letter to the editor, published on Sept. 15, is right about one thing: History matters. Unfortunately for Ms. Hesse, so does context.

So I'd like to point out that the Democratic Party's history of opposition to racial progress is not, as Ms. Hesse claims, a "dirty little secret." It's well-established history. Equally well established is the key point that Ms. Hesse leaves out: After the passage of Civil Rights legislation in the 1960s, the mostly white, mostly Southern voters who had driven Democratic resistance to racial progress for over a century left the party in droves.

Guess where they went: the Republican Party. Electoral maps bear this out. After decades as a Democratic stronghold, the Deep South turned Republican in the 1964 presidential election and has remained that way ever since (with the exception of 1968, when noted segregationist George Wallace, running as an independent, won five states). In other words, today's Democratic and Republican parties share the names of their 19th century predecessors - but almost nothing else.

Arguing that the modern Democratic Party remains the party of Andrew Jackson, Woodrow Wilson and the Ku Klux Klan requires a willful ignorance of the past 50 years of political history.

History matters - all of it, not just the milestones Ms. Hesse has cherry picked to support her own preconceived bias.

Tim Kennedy

Arlington Heights