Tornado Alley (PROG)

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mr 40, Byrd renounced his rascist past, and apologized for his filibustering the Civil Rights Act

What About Byrd?

Unlike Thurmond, he renounced his racist past.
By Timothy Noah

Since posting an item .. http://www.slate.com/id/2075453/ .. pointing out that, contrary to Washington legend, Strom Thurmond never renounced his segregationist past, Chatterbox has been inundated with rude e-mails. The theme of these e-mails is: What about former Senate Majority Leader Robert Byrd? Byrd, a Democrat who still represents West Virginia, belonged to the Ku Klux Klan when he was a young man. Past membership in the Klan is heavier moral baggage than past advocacy of segregation. But Byrd, unlike Thurmond, renounced his youthful participation in a racist cause. See, for example, this exchange with CNN's Bernard Shaw in Dec. 1993:

Q: What has been your biggest mistake and your biggest success?

A: Well, it's easy to state what has been my biggest mistake. The greatest mistake I ever made was joining the Ku Klux Klan. And I've said that many times. But one cannot erase what he has done. He can only change his ways and his thoughts. That was an albatross around my neck that I will always wear. You will read it in my obituary that I was a member of the Ku Klux Klan.

Contrast that with an interview Thurmond gave Joseph Stroud of the Charlotte Observer in July 1998 to commemorate the 50th anniversary of his presidential bid on the segregationist Dixiecrat ticket. Asked if he wanted to apologize, Thurmond said, "I don't have anything to apologize for," and "I don't have any regrets." Asked if he thought the Dixiecrats were right, Thurmond said, "Yes, I do." Thurmond said this four years ago!

Chatterbox has not yet received any rude e-mails asking: What about Senate Democrat Ernest Hollings? Hollings ran for governor of South Carolina in 1958 pledging to protect "the Southern way of life," which in those days meant segregation. Once in office, though, Hollings switched sides and supported integration. When Howell Raines of the New York Times asked Hollings in 1983 about his brief career as a segregationist, Hollings didn't just say he knew it was wrong now. He said, "I knew it was wrong" then.

Have Byrd and Hollings atoned sufficiently for their previous views and policies? Probably not. But they have renounced them. Thurmond never will.

http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/chatterbox/2002/12/what_about_byrd.html

Your video misrepresents history.

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A Senator's Shame

Byrd, in His New Book, Again Confronts Early Ties to KKK

By Eric Pianin
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, June 19, 2005

In the early 1940s, a politically ambitious butcher from West Virginia named Bob Byrd recruited 150 of his friends and associates to form a chapter of the Ku Klux Klan. After Byrd had collected the $10 joining fee and $3 charge for a robe and hood from every applicant, the "Grand Dragon" for the mid-Atlantic states came down to tiny Crab Orchard, W.Va., to officially organize the chapter.

As Byrd recalls now, the Klan official, Joel L. Baskin of Arlington, Va., was so impressed with the young Byrd's organizational skills that he urged him to go into politics. "The country needs young men like you in the leadership of the nation," Baskin said.

The young Klan leader went on to become one of the most powerful and enduring figures in modern Senate history. Throughout a half-century on Capitol Hill, Sen. Robert C. Byrd (D-W.Va.) has twice held the premier leadership post in the Senate, helped win ratification of the Panama Canal treaty, squeezed billions from federal coffers to aid his home state, and won praise from liberals for his opposition to the war in Iraq and his defense of minority party rights in the Senate.

Despite his many achievements, however, the venerated Byrd has never been able to fully erase the stain of his association with one of the most reviled hate groups in the nation's history.

"It has emerged throughout my life to haunt and embarrass me and has taught me in a very graphic way what one major mistake can do to one's life, career, and reputation," Byrd wrote in a new memoir -- "Robert C. Byrd: Child of the Appalachian Coalfields" -- that will be published tomorrow by West Virginia University Press.

The 770-page book is the latest in a long series of attempts by the 87-year-old Democratic patriarch to try to explain an event early in his life that threatens to define him nearly as much as his achievements in the Senate. In it, Byrd says he viewed the Klan as a useful platform from which to launch his political career. He described it essentially as a fraternal group of elites -- doctors, lawyers, clergy, judges and other "upstanding people" who at no time engaged in or preached violence against blacks, Jews or Catholics, who historically were targets of the Klan.

His latest account is consistent with others he has offered over the years that tend to minimize his direct involvement with the Klan and explain it as a youthful indiscretion. "My only explanation for the entire episode is that I was sorely afflicted with tunnel vision -- a jejune and immature outlook -- seeing only what I wanted to see because I thought the Klan could provide an outlet for my talents and ambitions," Byrd wrote.

While Byrd provides the most detailed description of his early involvement with the Klan, conceding that he reflected "the fears and prejudices I had heard throughout my boyhood," the account is not complete. He does not acknowledge the full length of time he spent as a Klan organizer and advocate. Nor does he make any mention of a particularly incendiary letter he wrote in 1945 complaining about efforts to integrate the military.

Byrd said in an interview last week that he never intended for his book to provide "finite details" of his Klan activities, but to show young people that there are serious consequences to one's choices and that "you can rise above your past."

He suggested that his career should be judged in light of all that he did subsequently to help lift his state out of poverty, and to bring basic and critically needed services and infrastructure to West Virginia.

"I grew up in a state where we didn't have much hope," Byrd said. "I wanted to help my people and give them hope. . . . I'm just proud that the people of West Virginia accepted me as I was and helped me along the way."

Byrd's indelible links to the Klan -- the "albatross around my neck," as he once described it -- shows the remarkable staying power of racial issues more than 40 years after the height of the civil rights movement. Sen. Trent Lott (R-Miss.) learned that lesson the hard way at a birthday party in December 2002, when his nostalgic words about Sen. Strom Thurmond (R-S.C.), who ran for president as a segregationist in 1948, caused a public uproar and cost Lott the majority leader's post.

Klan Issue Raised in House Contest .. continued .. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/06/18/AR2005061801105_pf.html