That's a bit misleading, those Democrats of whom you speak were conservatives. And Im more than happy to condemn conservatives. The Republicans of Lincoln's age were Progressive.
Republican Rutherford B. Hayes abandon Reconstruction because he could no longer count on Southern Conservative Democrats in congress to fund the military presence in the south. He withdrew and Jim Crow was established effectively removing the rights of Blacks, who were a majority Republican, as citizens.
Neither party until FDR did anything to alleviate the plight of blacks in this country, though FDR didn't do much, this is when the Democratic Party moved toward Progressivism and when the Black Republican voting block began moving wholesale to the Democratic Party,. It actually started with Hoover. It was when Truman integrated the Military that we see the black democratic voting block take shape and the Southern Conservative split from the party and form the Dixiecrats.
Moderate Republican Eisenhower to his credit forced the integration of schools, something Conservatives have been trying to undo every since. The civil rights stances of JFK and LBJ disenfranchised Democratic Southern Conservatives who then would support former Democratic Conservative and segregationist George Wallace, who ran as an Independent and won all of the Southerns states except Florida, Nixon won the South on his Conservative Law & Order/ anti busing platform, yet he expanded Affirmative Action. Despite this his appearance of standing up to the left and the fact that the left despised him made him and his party very appealing to Conservatives in the South and they began to change parties.
So in short, when you attribute those atrocities and misdeeds to Democrats its a distortion because you are ignoring the fact that the were Conservatives.
