Theodore Bilbo

New Mississippi Civil Rights Museum Besmirched By Presence Of Donald Trump, And Absence, Therefore, Of John Lewis, Civil Rights Icon

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Today, in Jackson, Mississippi, a new Civil Rights Museum opens, to commemorate the sufferings of African Americans in the history of Mississippi discrimination and violence.

Mississippi is the state of the lynching of Emmett Till in 1955; of James Meredith needing National Guard intervention ordered by President John F. Kennedy in 1962-1963 to be able, safely, to attend the University of Mississippi; and of the three civil rights workers (Andrew Goodman, Michael Schwerner, James Chaney) murdered in 1964 by Ku Klux Klansmen, simply for the act of trying to register black voters. Also, the murder of Civil Rights leader Medgar Evers in 1963 stands out as a deplorable moment in Mississippi history.

It is the state which has the worst image of all 50 states on racism, bloodshed, and violence in the Civil Rights Era, but also of its members of Congress historically, including Theodore Bilbo, John Stennis, and James Eastland, and Governor Ross Barnett, infamous for racism and advocating prejudice and denial of equal rights to African Americans.

The opening of this new museum is a wonderful event, but is besmirched by the presence of President Donald Trump, who has a long history of promoting discrimination, racism, prejudice, and hatred in his own life experience, and his promotion of setting back civil rights during his Presidency, including his appointment of former Alabama Senator Jeff Sessions to be his Attorney General, and setting back civil rights enforcement as a policy.

Just as Donald Trump is advocating Roy Moore for the Alabama Senate seat, with his long record of racism, along with the record of Moore involved in sexual abuse of young women, including girls under the age of 18, now he is coming to an event which is pure hypocrisy on his part, and only promotes racial division ever more.

Therefore, civil rights icon John Lewis, Georgia Congressman, who was involved in the major events of the civil rights movement, and is much respected and honored by all decent people, will not be attending the opening of this museum on principle, a regrettable but understandable reaction by this great man.

Racism Accusation Against Democrats By Cain Pastor Supporter: Is It Valid?

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A new controversy has developed around a pastor supporting Herman Cain, an African American pastor to boot, that it is the Democratic Party which historically has been racist and segregationist and prejudicial, while the Republican Party is the party of opportunity and liberation of blacks.

How true is this interpretation of the past and the present?

It is literally TRUE that for a long time, the South was solely Democratic, the “Solid South” from the time of Reconstruction through the mid 1960s, including such outrageous figures as Theodore Bilbo of Mississippi, Tom Watson of Georgia, Harry Byrd Sr. of Virginia, Strom Thurmond of South Carolina, Russell Long of Louisiana, Richard Russell of Georgia, George Wallace of Alabama, James Eastland of Mississippi, Jesse Helms of North Carolina and many others, all of whom promoted racism, segregation, prejudice, and in many cases, were members of or endorsed actions of the Ku Klux Klan. This also included the openly racist Presidential campaigns of Strom Thurmond in 1948 and George Wallace in 1968.

However, during this period from Reconstruction through the 1960s, the Republican Party, which had once stood for racial equality, and had promoted the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments during Reconstruction, abandoned blacks to the white Democratic South after 1877, and did not resist the loss of the right to vote for African Americans in the South. When blacks migrated north, and started to vote in substantial numbers, they switched over to the Democratic Party in a massive wave in the time of Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal.

Beginning with President Harry Truman promoting civil rights by executive order in 1948 and calling for civil rights legislation in his term of office, and the activities of Northern liberal Democrats led by Senator Hubert Humphrey of Minnesota, and later leading to civil rights legislation under President Lyndon B. Johnson in the mid 1960s, Southern whites migrated in massive numbers to the Republican Party, with the first political move being Senator Strom Thurmond’s switch in 1964, endorsing Barry Goldwater for President.

The Republican Party ever since the New Deal has shown little interest or support of the advancement of civil rights as a party, although individual moderate to liberal Republicans have supported such reforms.

So the statements of this pastor supporting Herman Cain are true in the long run of history, but saw a massive change beginning slowly with the New Deal, but culminating with the Great Society, and nothing has changed that dynamic since the 1960s.