The official program book for the 1936 Democratic National Convention featured a circular emblem with the names Roosevelt and Jefferson running around it, as if the then-president and his long-ago predecessor Thomas Jefferson were running mates. In President Franklin Roosevelts famous speech accepting his partys nomination, he placed his fight against the economic royalists who had carved new dynasties and caused the Great Depression as a continuation of Americas historic opposition to tyranny, whether it be a British King or centralized wealth.

Our allegiance to American institutions requires the overthrow of this kind of power, Roosevelt said.

Today, the Democratic Party tells a different story of its place in American history. Speaker after speaker at the 2020 Democratic National Convention reached to the more recent, but increasingly distant history of the civil rights movement to explain its purpose in the 21st century. Democratic nominee Joe Biden opened his acceptance speech Thursday night with a quote from civil rights icon Ella Baker, and other leaders like Martin Luther King, Jr., C.T. Vivian, Fannie Lou Hamer, Diane Nash and the late Georgia congressman John Lewis were invoked during the week too. Lewis, the last living speaker at the March on Washington, who died on July 17, was repeatedly memorialized, including with a five-minute video eulogy that linked the party to the spirit of the movement through him.

When politicians and political parties reach into the past for historical reference they do so in order to tell a story about the present. But Americas racism, white supremacy and xenophobia pose a complicating problem for politicians looking to explain themselves in American history for nonwhite audiences. That is a task that the Democratic Party, as it has transformed itself since the mid-20th century into the party of minority groups that were left out of the traditional American mythos, must do.