Paul LePage: John Lewis Should Thank Republican Presidents For Ending Slavery, Fighting Jim Crow

[h1]Paul LePage: John Lewis should thank Republican presidents for ending slavery, fighting Jim Crow[/h1]
By Chris Massie, CNN
Updated 11:28 AM ET, Tue January 17, 2017

(CNN) Paul LePage, the Republican governor of Maine, said Tuesday that civil rights icon and Georgia Rep. John Lewis should "look at history" and say "thank you" to 19th century Republican presidents for fighting for the rights of African-Americans.

LePage's comments come after Lewis said on NBC News that Donald Trump was not a "legitimate" president. Trump responded by tweeting that Lewis was "All talk, talk, talk - no action or results."

"How about John Lewis last week?" LePage said on WVOM Maine radio's George Hale and Ric Tyler Show. "Criticizing the president. You know, I will just say this. John Lewis ought to look at history. It was Abraham Lincoln that freed the slaves. It was Rutherford B. Hayes and Ulysses S. Grant that fought against Jim Crow laws. A simple 'thank you' would suffice."



Grant was president from 1869 to 1877, prior to the start of Jim Crow, while his successor Hayes was the president who oversaw the end of Reconstruction and the beginning of the Jim Crow era.

Lewis was a civil rights leader who was badly beaten in 1965 in Selma, Alabama, by Alabama state troopers during the march to Montgomery.

LePage made the comments after saying that Maine congresswoman Chellie Pingree, who said she wouldn't attend Trump's inauguration, should resign if she boycotted Friday's ceremony.

"For some reason, the left has become so hateful and so, they are trying to bully us out of believing our constitution," he said. "Chellie Pingree, if she won't attend on Friday, I would advise her to resign."

http://www.cnn.com/2017/01/17/politics/kfile-paul-lepage-john-lewis/

Click to expand...

SFC415 said:

Typical inbred that conveniently leaves out the fact that the Republican Party of those years was NOT the same Republican Party of the modern United States. I find it hard to believe that people don't know that the racists from the Democratic Party left and joined the Republicans not too long ago. People who keep citing the Republican Party's actions from the 1700-1800s are racists that pretend that they're not; there's nothing more to it.

Click to expand...

"And I pointed out to the students: when someone sticks a knife into my back nine inches and then pulls it out six inches they haven’t done me any favor. And if they pull that knife which they stuck in my back all the way out they still have not done me any favor. They should not have stabbed me in the back in the first place.

Likewise, it was pointed out to them that when you take a man and frame him up, an innocent man and frame him up, and put him in prison—and because he rebels against this illegal and unjust framing and imprisonment he then is placed in solitary confinement within the prison to keep him from rebelling against the laws of the penal institution—after his spirit is broken in solitary confinement—why, the warden isn’t doing that man any favor by taking him out of solitary confinement and then giving him more freedom within the confines of the prison wall. He shouldn’t be imprisoned in the first place. And if they break down the prison walls completely and let that man out they still aren’t doing that man any favor because they imprisoned him illegally and unjustly in the first place."

                                                                                                    - Malcolm X, 1963 "The Old Negro and the New Negro"

Click to expand...