Contrary to its image as a heroic "party of the people, " the Democrats have simply evolved from a racist party sustaining slavery and oppressing African-Americans in the Jim Crow South to a party which has abandoned them in today’s inner-city ghettos to ongoing social and economic deprivation. The book traces the history of the party from its origins in the political philosophy of Thomas Jefferson to the end of Reconstruction, revealing a record quite different from common belief. A concluding chapter extends the narrative to LBJ’s Great Society in the 1960s, showing that the manifold failings of the party are not merely relics of a distant past but also illumine our politically contested present.