Rep. Byron Donalds slammed House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries again Friday for claiming the Florida Republican made remarks that Blacks in the U.S. were better off during the days of Jim Crow.
“I’m not going to stand here and listen to Hakeem Jeffries lecture me. When the truth of the matter is, if you want to talk about Jim Crow, Jim Crow was Democrat Party policies that led to the disenfranchisement, frankly, the terror against Black people in America,” Mr. Donalds said during an interview on Fox News.
“That’s one of the reasons why Black people during that time period were voting much more conservatively and have always been conservative-minded,” he added. “That’s the overall point — if we’re going to be technical about the history.”
Mr. Donalds noted that the marriage rate among Black Americans declined rapidly after the 1960s passage of many Great Society policies and called them “destructive.”
Mr. Donalds and Mr. Jeffries began sparring after the Floridian made comments at a Black GOP outreach event in Philadelphia recently about how the Black family during the 1950s and ’60s was held together with fathers, then became more dependent on government because of President Lyndon Johnson’s big-spending programs.
“During Jim Crow, the Black family was together,” Mr. Donalds said, as first reported by The Philadelphia Inquirer. “During Jim Crow, more Black people were not just conservative, because Black people always have been conservative-minded — but more Black people voted conservatively.”
Mr. Jeffries, New York Democrat, piled on Mr. Donalds.
“It has come to my attention that a so-called leader has made the factually inaccurate statement that Black folks were better off during Jim Crow,” Mr. Jeffries said during remarks on the House floor as he rattled off negatives from the Jim Crow era, including lynching and the intimidation of Black voters.
“How dare you make such an ignorant observation? You better check yourself before you wreck yourself.”
Mr. Donalds shot back on a video posted to X, saying Democrats are “trying to say I said Black people were doing better under Jim Crow. I never said that. They are lying.
“What I said was you had more Black families under Jim Crow, and it was the Democrat policies under [Health, Education and Welfare], under the welfare state, that did help to destroy the Black family.”
• Kerry Picket can be reached at kpicket@washingtontimes.com.