The republican party was the original party of the black community.

With financial and other support from Karl Rove and Cheney, Steele formally announced his candidacy for the U.S. Senate on October 25, 2005. Polling in February 2006 showed the Lieutenant Governor lost significant ground against Cardin, although he remained statistically even with Mfume. He was endorsed by Mike Tyson during the campaign. Steele's television ads for the election never stated that he was the Republican candidate. Cardin won the primary election on September 12, 2006.

Steele's campaign hit several speed-bumps. Just prior to formally announcing his candidacy, Steele took flak for his defense of former Gov. Bob Ehrlich's decision to hold himself a $100,000 fund-raiser at a country club which had a whites-only membership policy, saying these policies were "not an issue" because "I don't know that much about that club and its membership...nor do I care, quite frankly, because I don't play golf."

Steele lost the general election to Cardin on November 7, 2006, getting 44% of the vote to Cardin's 55%. The Washington Post reported that on election day the Steele campaign arranged for buses of low income and homeless people from Philadelphia to distribute fliers at polls. The flyers contained incorrect information, including a statement that Michael Steele was endorsed by prominent state Democrats and African American leaders who had not, in fact, endorsed him. The homeless people were falsely identified as volunteers although they were paid, and the campaign funds used for this purpose of hiring the homeless were not timely or properly reported or attributed to the campaign.

Come on Frank...do you actually think the DEMONCRATS care about the blacks, Hispanics or anyone else? If they did they would not hold them back with welfare, making them a dependent class ...voter base for the Demons...you bet...all politicians care till they get your vote...

Got any proof there Kev...back it up with an unbiased report...Our taxes go thru the roof...more welfare...more entitlement programs...this is what happens when the DEMONCRATS are in power. Show me other wise....

Kevie...Kevie...
It is your job to post the facts...not run your mouth[or keyboard]...back up your posts...show the proof. You can stop flaming and baiting ...your not doing much for your credibility here bub!

The democratic party is not pure. They were once known as the dixiecrats …

The Dixiecrat party was a segregationist, populist, socially conservative splinter party of the Democratic Party in the mid-20th century who were determined to protect what they saw as the Southern "way of life" against what they perceived as an oppressive federal government.

Disaffected Democrats formed the nucleus of today’s GOP
Black Americans were beneficiaries of Democratic policies, including President Truman's 1948 signing of Executive Order 9981, committing the U.S. government to integrating a long-segregated military.
Civil rights programs under President Kennedy and, more dramatically, under President Johnson (the Great Society program and his role in the passage of the 1965 Voting Rights Act) further cemented the relationship between blacks and Democrats.
But by then, the split that started between the Democrats and many of their white southern counterparts — who bristled at Truman's 1948 desegregation order and the Democrats' subsequent support of the civil rights movement — had widened into a chasm.
The Dixiecrats — those disaffected Democrats who bolted to the Republican party in 1964 — were pivotal to the success of Richard Nixon's “southern strategy” in 1968, and formed the nucleus of what would ultimately become the modern GOP.

I do think more blacks will eventually move toward the republican party because they align themselves with many of their core beliefs (religion, gay marriage, etc.)

The Democratic Party was formed in 1792, when supporters of Thomas Jefferson began using the name Republicans, or Jeffersonian Republicans, to emphasize its anti-aristocratic policies. It adopted its present name during the Presidency of Andrew Jackson in the 1830s. In the 1840s and '50s, the party was in conflict over extending slavery to the Western territories. Southern Democrats insisted on protecting slavery in all the territories while many Northern Democrats resisted. The party split over the slavery issue in 1860 at its Presidential convention in Charleston, South Carolina. Northern Democrats nominated Stephen Douglas as their candidate, and Southern Democrats adopted a pro-slavery platform and nominated John C. Breckinridge in an election campaign that would be won by Abraham Lincoln and the newly formed Republican Party. After the Civil War, most white Southerners opposed Radical Reconstruction and the Republican Party's support of black civil and political rights.

The Democratic Party identified itself as the "white man's party" and demonized the Republican Party as being "Negro dominated," even though whites were in control. Determined to re-capture the South, Southern Democrats "redeemed" state after state -- sometimes peacefully, other times by fraud and violence. By 1877, when Reconstruction was officially over, the Democratic Party controlled every Southern state.

The South remained a one-party region until the Civil Rights movement began in the 1960s. Northern Democrats, most of whom had prejudicial attitudes towards blacks, offered no challenge to the discriminatory policies of the Southern Democrats.

One of the consequences of the Democratic victories in the South was that many Southern Congressmen and Senators were almost automatically re-elected every election. Due to the importance of seniority in the U.S. Congress, Southerners were able to control most of the committees in both houses of Congress and kill any civil rights legislation. Even though Franklin Delano Roosevelt was a Democrat, and a relatively liberal president during the 1930s and '40s, he rarely challenged the powerfully entrenched Southern bloc. When the House passed a federal anti-lynching bill several times in the 1930s, Southern senators filibustered it to death.

-- Richard Wormser

http://www.pbs.org/wnet/jimcrow/stories_org_democratic.html

... it was more like half of the democratic party

Since when is the "South" considered 1/2 of the United States?

I know you are from "The South"

Since when does it make up most the democratic party?

Northern Democrats, most of whom had prejudicial attitudes towards blacks, offered no challenge to the discriminatory policies of the Southern Democrats.