Milo Thompson Apps

The Democratic Party has changedsignificantlyduring its more than two centuries of existence.During the 19thcentury the party supported or tolerated slavery,and it opposedcivil rights reforms after the American Civil War inorder toretain the support of Southern voters. By the mid-20thcentury ithad undergone a dramatic ideological realignment andreinventeditself as a party supporting organized labour, the civilrights ofminorities, and progressive reform. Since Pres. FranklinD.Roosevelt’s New Deal of the 1930s, the party has also tendedtofavour greater government intervention in the economy and toopposegovernment intervention in the private noneconomic affairsofcitizens. The logo of the Democratic Party, the donkey,waspopularized by cartoonist Thomas Nast in the 1870s; thoughwidelyused, it has never been officially adopted by theparty.