Here’s what the former president of the United States had to say when he eulogized his mentor, an Arkansas senator:
“We come to celebrate and give thanks for the remarkable life of J. William Fulbright, a life that changed our country and our world forever and for the better. … In the work he did, the words he spoke and the life he lived, Bill Fulbright stood against the 20th century’s most destructive forces and fought to advance its brightest hopes.”
So spoke President William J. Clinton in 1995 of a man who was among the 99 Democrats in Congress to sign the “Southern Manifesto” in 1956. (Two Republicans also signed it.) The Southern Manifesto declared the signatories’ opposition to the Supreme Court’s decision in Brown v. Board of Education and their commitment to segregation forever. Fulbright was also among those who filibustered the Civil Rights Act of 1964. That filibuster continued for 83 days.
Speaking of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, let’s review (since they don’t teach this in schools): The percentage of House Democrats who supported the legislation? 61 percent. House Republicans? 80 percent. In the Senate, 69 percent of Democrats voted yes, compared with 82 percent of Republicans. (Barry Goldwater, a supporter of the NAACP, voted no because he thought it was unconstitutional.)
The Democratic Party’s history is pockmarked with racism and terror. The Democrats were the party of slavery, black codes, Jim Crow, and that miserable terrorist excrescence the Ku Klux Klan. Republicans were the party of Lincoln, of Reconstruction, of anti-lynching laws, of the civil rights acts of 1875, 1957, 1960 and 1964. Were all Republicans models of rectitude on racial matters? Hardly. Were they a heck of a lot better than the Democrats? Without question.
As recently as 2010, the Senate president pro tempore was former Exalted Cyclops Robert Byrd, D-W.V. Rather than acknowledge their sorry history, modern Democrats have rewritten it.
You may recall that when MSNBC was commemorating the 50th anniversary of segregationist George Wallace’s “Stand in the Schoolhouse Door” stunt to prevent the integration of the University of Alabama, the network identified Wallace as “R-Ala.”
The Democrats have been sedulously rewriting history for decades.
Is it unforgivable that Clinton praised a former segregationist? No. Fulbright renounced his racist past, as did Byrd and Gore Sr. It would be immoral and unjust to misrepresent the history.
What is unforgivable is the way Democrats are still using race to foment hatred. Remember what happened to Trent Lott when he uttered a few dumb words about former segregationist Strom Thurmond? He didn’t get the kind of pass Bill Clinton did when praising Fulbright. Earlier this month, Hillary Clinton told a mostly black audience, “What is happening is a sweeping effort to disempower and disenfranchise people of color, poor people and young people from one end of our country to another. … Today Republicans are systematically and deliberately trying to stop millions of American citizens from voting.” She was presumably referring to voter ID laws, which, by the way, 51 percent of black Americans support.
Racism has an ugly past in the Democratic Party. The accusation of racism has an ugly present.
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