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 One of the most pernicious aspects of American slavery was the wanton destruction of the black family. While Southern Democrats preached moral purity and marital fidelity, they engaged in a wholesale annihilation of black marriages. Black men, selected for strength, health and build, were used as breeding studs to increase the slave population. They were then separated from their partners and offspring such that many child slaves grew up without knowing their fathers identity. The Democrat slaveholders knew that by destroying the family they eroded the generational bonds necessary for a strong community. The slave master became the surrogate father and was free not only to abuse, but also indoctrinate.
The remarkable historical fact is that following the Civil War, African Americans defied the legacy of social engineering and embraced the traditional family. Men and women sought out their spouses and their children and in so doing laid the fundamental fabric of the black community. For the next 100 years the black family, together with the Black Church, formed the backbone of the resistance. Men and women reared their children to respect themselves and their people. Despite overwhelming racism and the legal oppression perpetrated by the Democratic Party, the African American community continued to struggle upward towards the climactic events of the Civil Rights Movement. In 1965, a solid 82% of black families had a mother and a father.
In the late 1960s the Democratic Party endeavored to win over the black vote with the promise of benevolent social programs. Ignoring the words of their seminal leader, Frederick Douglas, who once said, We do not ask for pity or benevolence, we ask for simple justice, the African American community voted Democrat. The party that had denied them simple justice for over one hundred and fifty years now offered the benevolence of the welfare state.
 Sadly, welfare has presided over a second destruction of the African American family. Looking back, it is easy to see how the state co-opted the all important father role in black households. Men, said the state, were irrelevant; the government would take care of mothers and their children. In fact, welfare was constructed to prevent a man from moving in and marrying his childs mother. Women were therefore forced to choose between living with their husband and receiving welfare benefits. Furthermore, the benevolent state offered additional aid for every child born into a fatherless home. In 2005, 30% of children were born to single mothers.
The end result of the welfare state and its assault on the black family has been to entrap the black community. Many of the black leaders now lament the intolerable level of black-on-black crime and disproportionate prison representation. These dismal realities are the result of too many children raised without fathers and without hope. Young men especially need their fathers to instill in them the self-dignity and courage needed to overcome the hurdles still faced by African Americans in this country. The Democrats and their feminist cohorts of course will tell us that fathers are irrelevant and that the state should continue to promote single motherhood as an idyllic model. This propaganda will not help the black community to rise up and take its rightful place in American society.
The Chicago Republican Party supports traditional families and believe that government programs should encourage rather than punish them. We encourage all African Americans to reflect upon the history of Democrat social engineering in order that all might see with vivid clarity its sorry record, and thus hasten its end.
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