Googling Bull Connor

Recent charges by the Democrats about Republican voter intimidation of minorities have used the terms "fire hoses" and "dogs" to invoke memories of Bull Connor, the former police commissioner of Birmingham, Alabama. The famed racial provocateur, Jesse Jackson, used just these terms on the steps of the Cuyahoga Ohio County Courthouse steps in his bid to reverse the legal interpretations of Kenneth Blackwell, the black Republican Secretary of State. But who was Bull Connor?

A modern technique for learning about the past is to Google it. Careful choice of the search terms yields some interesting results! If you type "Bull Connor" you get about 6520 results. Change it to "Bull Connor"+Republican and it now becomes 1750 results. Make it "Bull Connor"+Democrat and you get 601 results. What party affiliation did he have? From the numbers above, you might guess Republican. Reviewing the first 10 results of the basic search does not provide a definitive answer. The word "Democrat" only appears in the title of a reference work, "Dixiecrats and Democrats". But further searches and investigation prove he was a Democrat listed under his given name, Eugene. But it is clear that the Democrats have waged an effective disinformation campaign to hide his record and paint Republicans with the taint of racism. Future posts will delve more deeply into the estrangement of blacks from their natural ally, the Republican Party. Obviously, Allan Keyes is not the answer!