Republican Congressman Byron Donalds clarifies that he never said ‘the Black family was together’ during Jim Crow era

Donalds said during a Black GOP outreach event in Philadelphia on Tuesday, “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,”as reported by The Philadelphia Inquirer.

“And then H.E.W., Lyndon Johnson — you go down that road, and now we are where we are,” he added.

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Donalds also commented on what he has recently seen “the reinvigoration of Black families”, noting the formation of nuclear family units and it is “helping to breathe the revival of a Black middle class in America.”

House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., the highest-ranking African American in Congress, rebutted, “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. That’s an outlandish, outrageous and out-of-pocket observation.”

“We were not better off when a young boy named Emmett Till could be brutally murdered without consequence because of Jim Crow. We were not better off when Black women could be sexually assaulted without consequence, because of Jim Crow. …” he continued.

“How dare you make such an ignorant observation? You better check yourself before you wreck yourself,” Jeffries added.

‘Biden’s campaign is lying’: Byron Donalds

Biden-Harris campaign spokesperson Sarafina Chitika criticized Donalds’ remarks and the Philadelphia event, stating, “Donald Trump spent his adult life, and then his presidency undermining the progress Black communities fought so hard for — so it actually tracks that his campaign’s ‘Black outreach’ is going to a white neighborhood and promising to take America back to Jim Crow.”

The Congressional Black Caucus also condemned Donalds’ statements, calling him a “mouthpiece who will say the quiet parts out loud that many will not say themselves” and demanding he should apologize.

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Donalds posted a video of his full remarks and accused the Biden campaign of “lying” and “gaslighting”: “What I said was that you had more Black families under Jim Crow and it was the Democrat policies under H.E.W., under the welfare state, that did help to destroy the Black family,” he clarified.