Democrats dominated Alabama's 1901 constitutional convention, and its chairman was a Democrat. In his opening address, he said: "If we would have white supremacy, we must establish it by law -- not by force or fraud... The negro is descended from a race lowest in intelligence and moral precepts of all the races of men."

Alabama's African-American citizens would not vote in appreciable numbers again until the 1950s.

It was a Republican federal judge, Frank Johnson, who in 1956 ruled in favor of Rosa Parks and who in 1965 ordered the Democrat governor, George Wallace, to permit Martin Luther King's voting rights march from Selma to Montgomery.

At the 2000 Republican National Convention, Condoleezza Rice said: "The first Republican I knew was my father and he is still the Republican I most admire. He joined our party because the Democrats in Jim Crow Alabama of 1952 would not register him to vote. The Republicans did. My father has never forgotten that day, and neither have I."

Democrats want Americans to forget that Republicans supported the 1964 Civil Rights Act much more than did the Democrats.

Republicans today would benefit tremendously from appreciating the true heritage of our Grand Old Party.

This Republican heritage article and others are available on the Grand Old Partisan blog -- http://grandoldpartisan.typepad.com -- each day celebrating 154 years of Republican heroes and heroics.