By Jamie Lambert
Staff Write
It all started with a sincere speech to honor a man at his 100th birthday celebration. But then with one inappropriate comment, things got ugly.
Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott of Mississippi has recently turned in his resignation for the buzz generated about comments he made while paying tribute to the retiring Republican Sen. Strom Thurmond of South Carolina, who is infamous for his segregationist views.
Lott began his speech with light-hearted jokes and memories, but soon changed his tone when he said, “I want to say this about my state: When Strom Thurmond ran for president, we voted for him. We’re proud of it. And if the rest of the country had followed our lead, we wouldn’t have had all these problems for all these years, either.”
Did Lott say that America should have voted to continue segregation? That’s what it sounded like to me.
On Dec. 20, Lott did us all a favor by resigning from his office as Senate Majority Leader.
During the 1948 presidential election, Thurmond was the nominee of the newly formed Dixiecrat Party. The then governor of South Carolina declared during his campaign that “all the laws of Washington and all the bayonets of the Army cannot force the Negro into our homes, our schools, our churches.”
In July 1948, delegates from 13 southern states met in Birmingham to adopt a platform for the Dixiecrat party that stated, “We stand for the segregation of the races and the racial integrity of each race.”
Does Lott mean that he also stands for this? Does he still believe in “white” and “colored” bathrooms? That is what Thurmond supported in 1948.
This comment is certainly not the only instance where Lott’s white supremacy attitude has shown. While attending the University of Mississippi, he worked hard to keep his fraternity segregated.
More recently, Lott has supported the Council of Conservative Citizens, a well-known white supremacy group also known as the CCC. Lott is an honorary member of this group and had a regular column in the “Citizen Informer,” a publication of the CCC for several years.
Lott also fought to reinstate the citizenship of Confederate President Jefferson Davis. Davis was indicted for treason in 1866. Lott said in 1998 that, “Sometimes I feel closer to Jefferson Davis than any other man in America.”
We all know that there are some unsavory characters on Capital Hill, but this is ridiculous. Lott obviously does not believe in all that America stands for today so we should all be grateful to him for eliminating himself and his racist opinions from Senate leadership.
January 16, 2003