Republican Rep. Byron Donalds got into a heated exchange Thursday night with MSNBC’s Joy Reid over comments that seemingly suggested black families had it better during the Jim Crow era than they do under President Joe Biden.
At an event in Philadelphia Tuesday, the congressman – who’s been floated as a VP pick for former President Donald Trump – said ‘during Jim Crow the black family was together’ and noted that ‘more black people voted conservatively.’
Reid asked how that time period – which started in 1867 and stretched until the 1960s, when black people in the South were diminished to second class citizens – was a ‘golden era for black families.’
The two talked in raised voices over each other, as Donalds told Reid it was ‘gaslighting’ and ‘twisting my words,’ after he was criticized by a number of black Democratic and civil rights leaders, as well as President Joe Biden’s campaign.
‘I never said that it was better for black people in Jim Crow. I have never said that. And even my own words say that,’ Donalds told the MSNBC host.
‘If you’re talking about the importance of black fathers in the home or frankly all fathers in the home it is always for the betterment of children to have leadership,’ he continued.
Throughout the interview, Reid pressed, ‘What was the authority of the black father in the family during Jim Crow?’
She read to the Florida Republican a grisly tale from 1943 of 15-year-old Willie James Howard, a black Florida boy, who was forced by a group of white men to jump off a bridge after a love note Howard had written to a white girl was discovered.
‘Willie jumped into the cold water below and drowned while his father was forced to watch at gunpoint. Willie’s dead body was pulled from the river the next day,’ Reid read from an Equal Justice Initiative account.
Reid also read a quote from a Mississippi segregationist who wrote about the ‘policy of crushing out the manhood of the Negro citizens was to be carried out with success.’
‘So the man during Jim Crow had no rights, could not protect his wife from rape, could not protect his son from lynchings,’ Reid said. ‘So, again, why would you quote that era and say at that time the family all being in the home together was something we should think about as a good thing?’
Donalds relented and said Howard’s story was a ‘tragedy – one of the great tragedies of the Jim Crow era’ adding that it was ‘disgusting and distasteful.’
At this point the interview devolved into the Reid and Donalds talking over each other, with Reid telling the congressman, ‘It’s my show.’
Overall, Donalds pushed that during the Jim Crow era the ‘marriage rates of black Americans was significantly higher than any other time since then.’
‘They have plummeted. And what we’ve seen recently in America, which is a very good thing we should all celebrate is that the marriage rates in the black community are rising again,’ the Florida Republican said. ‘That’s good for black families, that’s definitely good for black children.’
‘It’s something I want to see, I’m quite sure you want to see it as well,’ the congressman added.
On Wednesday, Fox News reported that Trump has narrowed down his vice presidential search to seven hopefuls – they include Donalds, North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum, Florida’s Marco Rubio, Ohio Sen. JD Vance, South Carolina Sen. Tim Scott, New York Rep. Elise Stefanik and former Trump HUD Secretary Ben Carson.
Of that group, three are black men – and if picked and elected would serve as the nation’s first male black vice president.
President Barack Obama was the country’s first black president and the current vice president, Kamala Harris, is both the first female and first vice president of color.