Byron Donalds Says 'During Jim Crow, The Black Family Was Together'

Rep. Byron Donalds (R-Fla.) suggested on Tuesday that Black American families were more “together” during the era of legal segregation known as Jim Crow.

Speaking with Rep. Wesley Hunt (R-Texas) during a Black voter outreach event for Donald Trump’s presidential campaign in Philadelphia, Donalds said 20th-century welfare policies supported by Democrats hurt Black families.

“You see, during Jim Crow, the Black family was together. During Jim Crow, more Black people were not just conservative — Black people have always been conservative-minded — but more Black people voted conservatively,” Donalds said, according to the Philadelphia Inquirer.

“And then HEW, Lyndon Johnson — you go down that road, and now we are where we are,” Donalds said, referring to the former Department of Health, Education and Welfare and the “War on Poverty” programs championed by Johnson, a Democrat, as president in the 1960s.

President Joe Biden’s reelection campaign highlighted Donalds’ remarks on Wednesday, and House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) rebuked Donalds on the House floor, calling his commentary outlandish and outrageous.

“It has come to my attention that a so-called leader has made the factually inaccurate statement that Black folks were better off during Jim Crow,” Jeffries said.

“We were not better off when a young boy named Emmett Till could be brutally murdered without consequence because of Jim Crow,” Jeffries said. “We were not better off when Black women could be sexually assaulted without consequence because of Jim Crow. We were not better off when people could be systematically lynched without consequence because of Jim Crow.”

More than 4,000 Black people were lynched from 1877 to 1950, according to the Equal