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December 12, 2002

Racist Praise for Lott's Opposition to Voting Rights

Josh Marshall has the whole interview Trent Lott did with the racist Southern Partisan magazine back in 1984. See the comments by Lott comparing voting rights legislation to "Reconstruction legislation" and opposing a national holiday for Martin Luther King Jr.

Posted by Nathan at December 12, 2002 03:59 PM

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Are you saying we should have a national holiday for him? What about W.E.B. Dubois, founder of NAACP, surely it has done more good to blacks and more harm to whites than any other organization. Or Booker T. Washington, founder of Tuskegee Institute, which has helped many poor blacks gop to college when they would not have been able to otherwise, including W.E.B. Dubois. How about White men who agreeded with MLK years before he said anything, they are not remembered. We are not choosey enough about whom we honor these days, and MLK should not have a national holiday when there are others that are far greater. What if Truman hadn't dropped the bomb? Japan would control us now, and there would be no chance to oppose the government and get blacks the right to vote. Just think about it.
And Mr. Newman, you still haven't responde to my other post on the Trent Lott racist on the 8th.

Posted by: Donald Brewer at December 13, 2002 05:36 AM

You really are a KKKer, aren't you Mr. Brewer-- every gain for blacks is "more harm to whites." A holiday for DuBois might be fine with me but a bit too much for those who might find it hard to honor a card-carrying member of the Communist Party. As for Booker T. Washington, many others find a man who collaborated with Jim Crow to be a poor model.

Martin Luther King deserves a holiday because he led the movement that redeemed the Constitution of the post-Civil War period, making the words meaningful rather than a mockery. To quote Bush from yesterday (eloquent if late), "Every day our nation was segregated was a day that America was unfaithful to our founding ideals."

As for white men (and women) who agreed with MLK, many remember them, but few were willing to risk their lives in the same way and none took on the leadership as effectively as King did in the period from 1956 to 1968 when the civil rights laws of this nation were transformed and formal Jim Crow was dismantled.

Admitted, those who pave the way are often forgotten. A. Phillip Randolph, the labor leader who forced through the first federal civil rights agencies in the context of World War II (denounced by Strom Thurmond in his 1948 campaign) and who planned the 1963 Civil Rights march, it largely forgotten despite his monumental role. Such are the vageries of history but King is not honored just for himself but for the movement he led-- and that is a movement to redeem not blacks but the ideals of all Americans.

Posted by: Nathan Newman at December 13, 2002 06:02 AM

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