I N S T I T U T E F O R S O U T H E R N S T U D I E S
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: Wednesday, December 11, 2002
LOTT’S STATEMENT ONLY LATEST INSTANCE
OF SENATOR'S SUPPORT FOR RACIST CAUSES
*** Southern Institute says Lott’s recent praise for Strom Thurmond’s
segregationist platform echoes previous statements
and support for racist organizations ***
DURHAM, N.C.—-Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott's recent statements
praising Senator Strom Thurmond’s 1948 segregationist presidential campaign
is only the latest instance in a political career riddled by racially
offensive statements and close associations with bigoted organizations,
according to a statement released today by the Institute for Southern Studies.
“This isn’t the first time,” said Chris Kromm, director of the Institute, a
research and education center based in Durham, N.C. “Lott’s claim that he’s
guilty of merely a ‘poor choice of words’ would be more convincing if the
Republican Senator didn’t have a long association with bigotry and
intolerance.”
Lott has drawn widespread criticism for his comments at a 100th birthday
party for Sen. Thurmond last week, in which he said the United States would
be better off if the anti-integration Thurmond had won his 1948 bid for the
presidency. At the event, Lott stated “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 over all these years, either.”
“Our research finds that Lott’s recent statements, far from being a
one-time gaffe, are in line with a political career filled with close
connections to racist people and causes,” Kromm said. For example:
*** Senator Lott has had close ties to the Conservative Citizen’s Council,
an openly racist and anti-semitic group which grew out of the terrorist
White Citizen’s Councils, and which today calls interracial marriage “white
genocide.” In 1992, Lott was keynote speaker at the group’s national board
meeting, ending his speech by saying “the people in this room stand for the
right principles and the right philosophy.” In 1995, Lott addressed the
Carrol County (Miss.) chapter of the CCC, and in 1997, Lott hosted a
private meeting with CCC leaders. Despite these close associations, when
confronted with his membership in the group in 1998, Lott claimed he had
“no firsthand knowledge” of the CCC. CCC officials responded by saying he
was a “friend” and “paid-up member.”
*** In 1984, Lott addressed the Convention of the Sons of Confederate
Veterans in Biloxi, Mississippi by saying “the spirit of Jefferson Davis
lives in the 1984 Republican Platform.” The statement was covered in the
Winter 1984 issue of the right-wing Southern Partisan magazine, in which
Lott also explained that he opposes civil rights legislation, and said that
the Martin Luther King Jr. national holiday is “basically wrong.” In the
1970s, Lott led a campaign to have the citizenship of Jefferson Davis, the
President of the Confederate States of America, retroactively restored.
*** In a statement directly echoing his comments last week, in 1980
Lott—then a Mississippi House member—announced to a Republican political
rally that if the country had elected Strom Thurmond on the segregationist
Dixiecrat ticket “30 years ago, we wouldn’t be in the mess we are today.”
The rally, at which Thurmond was a keynote speaker, and Lott’s statement
were covered by the Jackson Clarion-Ledger on Nov. 3, 1980.
“Trent Lott has done more than flirt with racism-—there’s a long-term
relationship,” said Kromm. "Across the world, people are no doubt wondering
how the President, Congress and the Republican Party can tolerate having a
man with such convictions hold the most powerful position in the U.S. Senate."
Founded in 1970, the Institute for Southern Studies is a non-profit
research and education center based in Durham, N.C. The Institute is
publisher of Southern Exposure, the award-winning journal of politics and
culture.
FOR MORE INFORMATION: Chris Kromm: 919-419-8311 x26
Louis Proyect, Marxism mailing list: http://www.marxmail.org
- Re: Trent Lott, not the first time Louis Proyect
- Re: Trent Lott, not the first time Michael Hoover
- Re: Re: Trent Lott, not the first time Michael Perelman
- Re: Re: Trent Lott, not the first time Michael Perelman