Right-wing pastor Andrew Wommack dedicated all of his “Gospel Today” television programs this week to covering Black History Month and decided that the best authorities to discuss the subject were religious right pseudo-historian David Barton and his son Tim.
David Barton used the opportunity to once again make the argument that white people simply do not get enough credit for ending slavery in America, as he explained on Thursday’s broadcast.
“We have a constitutional amendment passed in 1865 to abolish slavery,” David Barton said. “In 1868, we passed another constitutional amendment to make sure all former slaves had equal civil rights in their states and the nation. In 1870, we passed a civil rights amendment to make sure that all former slaves, regardless of race, were able to vote and participate fully in the civil process.”
“At that point, the only people who could vote in America were whites,” he continued. “So when Congress passes the amendment to end slavery and to grant civil rights and to grant equal status, it’s only whites voting. So you have two-thirds of the whites in the House, two-thirds of the whites in the Senate saying, ‘We want blacks to have the same rights we do.’ Then it goes to the states where whites in three-fourths of the states—[whites] were the only ones that could vote—so it really is whites saying, ‘This is wrong for us to have status different from everybody else.'”
“It’s the whites who gave up the rights to say, ‘We want equality,’ because they were the only ones that could vote,” David Barton said.
Tim Barton immediately jumped in to note that whites “did not give up rights” by ending slavery, but rather “opened it up for everybody to have rights.”
