To the Editor:Re “Grab ’Em by the Passion,” by Charles M. Blow (column, nytimes.com, Nov. 14):As an African-American growing up in the rural South, I used to wonder how the party of Franklin D. Roosevelt, Adlai Stevenson and Hubert Humphrey could permit a minority of Southern racists like James Eastland, Herman Talmadge, Richard Russell and Strom Thurmond to exert so much political influence in Washington. The majority of the Democratic Party at that time knew how wrong those Southerners were but chose to remain silent. That “silent majority” and its descendants now recognize — and admit — how terribly wrong its members were. Shouldn’t today’s Republicans who remain silent while their leader winks “at the racists and Nazis ,” as Mr. Blow puts it, and demeans women be reminded of the shameful behavior of those “silent” Democrats while Jim Crow reigned in nearly half of our country? David L. EvansCambridge, Mass.

Source: New York Times November 30, 2018 19:30 UTC