Democratic Party’s Boss Tweed and Byrds

New York to the Virginias

T

ammany’s Boss Tweed, or Boss Tweed’s Tammany

Tammany Hall (1789 – 1967), the Tammany Society, infamously “at the center for Democratic-Republican Party politics in New York City

In the early 19th century, the machine controlled New York City and New York State politics, helped immigrants, most notably the Irish, rise in American politics.

Under the leadership of the notorious lower east side Manhattan-born William Magear “Boss” Tweed, this Democratic Party political machine, was “an engine for graft and political corruption”; its key instrument, patronage.

Tammany Hall took advantage of the rising number of immigrants, Irish immigrants, to create relationships and gather votes. Whatever was needed, Tammany provided—from food to financial assistance, in exchange for votes and support of the party machine—assisting drunks facing jail time by appealing to the judge, paying people’s rent to avoid evictions, handing out money and food, securing employment, attending funerals and weddings (also courted Jews and Italians).

The Byrds
Post-bellum Democratic Machines
Power Diminishing Access  

In the early period following the American Civil War, former Confederates were denied the vote, and factions of newly enfranchised Negro voters joined the electorate. Negroes, Republicans, and populist Democrats formed the “Readjuster Party” with the aim of “‘breaking the power of wealth and established privilege” of the planter class elites who had controlled Virginia politics since the colonial era, and to promote public education.”

Influence of the Readjuster Party is undone by the “Martin Organization,” predecessor to the Byrd Organization, its rise aided by the enactment the poll tax (1902) that effectively disenfranchised Negroes and poor whites. 

B

yrd Organization

Harry Flood Byrd Sr. rose in this period, having served the Woodrow Wilson administration. Byrd’s Organization benefited from poll taxes and literacy tests that limited the political participation of poor people (Negroes and whites).

To its advantage, the Byrd Organization manipulated and played on the fears and aspirations of both poor whites and Negroes. 

Its massive resistance to desegregation or integration “worsened race relations by convincing Negroes that white politicians would not treat them fairly and that the courts were the only branch of government they could trust.

The Byrd organization also “pandered to the worst instincts in white voters,” stoking fear, and promising safety as segregation forever.

Byrd Organization founder Harry Flood Byrd Sr., had been Virginia’s state senator, governor and U.S. senator who had solidified his power by currying support from members of the courts, the office of the state attorney, and law enforcement.

In the Virginia governorship, Byrd Sr limited the number of government offices and “effectively stripped Negroes and poor whites of the vote, making “the electorate the smallest relative to population in post-bellum United States.”

In the 1950s, Harry Byrd Sr

• “authored and signed the ‘Southern Manifesto’ condemning the 1954 U.S. Supreme Court decision in Brown v. Board of Education,”
  
• called for “‘massive resistance’” to public school desegregation, and
• caused massive closings of public schools.

Harry Flood Byrd Sr. was born in Martinsburg, West Virginia; and died in Berryville, Virginia (June 10, 1887– October 20, 1966). His Democratic Machine a/k/a/ Byrd Machine “dominated Virginia politics for much of the 20th century.”

“

Massive Resistance”

Heir  

Byrd Sr.’s son, Harry Flood Byrd Jr., was born and died in Winchester, Virginia (December 20, 1914 – July 30, 2013). He was another U.S. Senator segregationist Democrat, who turned “Independent,” believing that the donkey was moving too fast. 

In 1956, Byrd Jr supported “the Stanley Plan” (named for a Byrd Organization member) that “required the closing of all desegregating schools, even those desegregating pursuant to court order.” Consistent with the Byrd Organization brand, this cult carried out or otherwise promoted “racially-based school closures and funding disruptions,” wherever possible, through 1964.

H

eir in Name not blood

Carolina-born, West Virginia bred Cornelius Calvin Sale Jr. of North Wilkesboro, North Carolina, was orphaned by deceased mother in the 1918 pandemic. Adopted by members of his extended family, Sale Jr. became Robert Carlyle Byrd of Stotesbury, West Virginia (November 20, 1917 – June 28, 2010).

In a 1944 letter attributed to Robert Byrd are these words reflecting his Byrd organization nature:

“‘I shall never fight in the armed forces with a [N]egro by my side … Rather I should die a thousand times, and see Old Glory trampled in the dirt never to rise again than to see this beloved land of ours become degraded by race mongrels, a throwback to the blackest specimen from the wilds.’”

Two years later, Byrd reportedly wrote to the Grand Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan:

 “‘The Klan is needed today as never before, and I am anxious to see its rebirth here in West Virginia and in every state in the nation.’”

Robert Byrd rose through West Virginia public office into Washington politics, and remained entrenched in the U.S. Senate for fifty-one years, until his departure by death.   

W

e cannot know where we are and where we are tending unless we know where we’ve been — better said by Lincoln, our 16th President: 

“If we could first know where we are, and whither we are tending, we could then better judge what to do, and how to do it.”

Sources

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Byrd_Machine 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harry_F._Byrd

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harry_F._Byrd_Jr.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Byrd

 

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