Word: segregationists
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Trent Lott has long tried to have it both ways in the battle over civil rights, speaking in a code that signaled his support for segregationist groups but in words so vague that he could later deny that they meant anything at all. The Senator from Mississippi appeared as recently as the 1990s before a white-supremacist group, the Council of Conservative Citizens, telling its members that they stand for "the right principles and the right philosophy." When confronted over the remarks later, he denied any "firsthand" knowledge of the group's beliefs. For years, the tactic worked for Lott...
...100th-birthday celebration for retiring Senator Strom Thurmond. Former majority leader Bob Dole had set the stage nicely with a tribute to the wizened, wheelchair-bound Thurmond, a South Carolinian born when "America had yet to honor the promise of equal opportunity for all our citizens." A fiery segregationist for most of his career, Thurmond eventually embraced the extension of the Voting Rights Act and the holiday honoring Martin Luther King Jr. and thus came to symbolize, Dole said, a country that "outgrew old prejudices...
...Crow segregation was denounced as "fundamentally racist" by former Vice President Al Gore. In a terse written statement, Lott apologized to "anybody who was offended" by his "poor choice of words." But the Washington Post reported that Lott had used almost identical words in praise of Thurmond's segregationist campaign during comments in Mississippi in 1980. A slip of the lip suddenly looked like a pattern and opened a public exhumation of Lott's long record of votes and statements hostile to the civil rights movement...
After college, Lott returned to Pascagoula and practiced law. But within a year, he was offered a top staff job in Washington by the district's veteran Congressman, William Colmer, who chaired the powerful Rules Committee. Colmer was a staunch segregationist, in the mold of other legendary Southern Democrats of the time, including Senators Richard Russell of Georgia and William Fulbright of Arkansas. When Colmer announced his retirement in 1972, Lott declared his candidacy for the seat--as a Republican--and eventually won his mentor's endorsement...
...rights movement…Now terms like “equal playing field,” “racial justice,” “equal opportunity,” and, most ominous, “color-blind” drip from the lips of formerly stalwart segregationist politicians…and intellectually hired guns.” Similarly, many are seeking to apply this “perverse ingenuity” to broader national opinion as they preside over what they hope will be a societal funeral for black self-determination and African identification. Unfortunately, recruitment...