House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., took to the House floor on Wednesday morning to denounce reported comments made by Florida Rep. Byron Donalds — a top Trump campaign surrogate and possible vice presidential contender — claiming Black families were stronger during the Jim Crow era of segregation in the United States.

What You Need To Know

  • Florida Rep. Byron Donalds — a top Trump campaign surrogate and possible vice presidential contender — claimed Black families were stronger during the Jim Crow era of segregation in the United States at a Trump campaign event 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,” Donalds said, as reported by the Philadelphia Inquirer 
  • “Jim Crow was the name of the racial caste system which operated... between 1877 and the mid-1960s” in the U.S., according to the Jim Crow Museum at Michigan’s Ferris State University
  • Biden’s campaign publicized the comment and a Democratic National Committee spokesperson said it was “absurd to suggest” the Jim Crow-era “was anything but a horrific stain on our country’s history”

“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. We would not better off when people could be systematically lynched without consequence because of Jim Crow,” Jeffries, who is Black, said Wednesday. “How dare you make such an ignorant observation? You better check yourself before you wreck yourself.”

Donalds, who is also Black and grew up in the same area of Brooklyn that Jeffries now represents, made the comments during a Trump campaign event in Philadelphia on Tuesday aimed at recruiting Black voters there to former President Donald Trump’s camp, according to the Philadelphia Inquirer. 

“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, as reported by the Inquirer. At the “Congress, Cognac, and Cigars” event, Donalds denounced government programs aimed at helping the poor and enforcing civil rights as hurting Black Americans and eroding family values.

Biden’s campaign publicized the comment and a Democratic National Committee spokesperson said it was “absurd to suggest” the Jim Crow-era “was anything but a horrific stain on our country’s history.” The NAACP’s president, Derrick Johnson, denounced the remark.

“Jim Crow was the name of the racial caste system which operated primarily, but not exclusively in southern and border states, between 1877 and the mid-1960s,” according to the Jim Crow Museum at Michigan’s Ferris State University, explaining it was both a legal framework to oppress Black Americans and a cultural one that relegated them to the lowest social status enforced by systemic violence. “All major societal institutions reflected and supported the oppression of black people.”

“The Jim Crow laws and system of etiquette were undergirded by violence, real and threatened. Black people who violated Jim Crow norms, for example, drinking from the white water fountain or trying to vote, risked their homes, their jobs, even their lives,” the museum continues in its summary of the Jim Crow era.

In a video posted on social media responding to Jeffries, Donalds accused the Biden campaign of lying about his comments.

“Now they're trying to say that I said Black people were doing better under Jim Crow. I never said that. They are lying. But why would you be surprised? Because they always lie,” Donalds said. “What I said was, is that you have more Black families under Jim Crow and it was the Democrat policies under [the former Department of Health, Education and Welfare], under the welfare state, that did help to destroy the Black family. That’s what I said.”

“I know what I said and I'll say it straight to camera. They got to run to the Philadelphia Inquirer to use their lies. Joe Biden does not care about Black people. He never has. He cares about power,” Donalds continued.

The Inquirer did not immediately return a request for comment.

“I grew up in the Jim Crow era. I went to school in the Jim Crow era. I traveled in the Jim Crow era. I know what life was like under Jim Crow,” Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee, D-Texas, wrote on social media. “For one of my colleagues to say life is worse now than under Jim Crow is absolutely absurd and unconscionable.”