In a guest column in the Clarion Ledger, Congressman Bennie Thompson describes Gov. Barbour’s remarks about desegregation in Yazoo City and writes:
That response left many of us doubting his knowledge of our state’s bloody history and his commitment to overcoming the effects of that history. Gov. Barbour later offered up two symbolic gestures – building a civil rights museum and welcoming the 50th anniversary celebration of the Freedom Riders.
Consider this: the governor and I were born three months and 40 miles apart. For those of us who attended segregated schools – in my case, Bolton Colored School – we remember outdoor toilets, two or three classes per room, hand-me-down textbooks and the other trappings of grade school life in the segregated South.
With these vivid memories, the governor’s symbols would be met with less skepticism if they were accompanied by public policies that sought to transform the symbols into something more meaningful.
Here is one thing of which I am sure: if we were to take the hundreds of men and women who brought civil and voting rights to black Mississippians in the 1960s and transport them into the world of today, they would not be lobbying for a museum or a celebration. They would be lobbying for decent health care, full funding of education and safe and affordable housing.
Later, he brings up the health care bill:
While I will be the first to admit that health care legislation passed by Congress and signed into law by President Obama is not perfect, it surely offers this country the first comprehensive attempt at covering people who need health care insurance and controlling the increasing costs of health care. If our governor had said this, had acknowledged that Mississippi has several hundred thousand of its citizens (black and white) who would benefit from this legislation, and had offered to sit down with the President and members of Congress to work out any problems, then we would have gone to battle for him and with him. But no, he filed a lawsuit, claiming the legislation was unconstitutional. This is, of course, the same course of action that Gov. Paul Johnson took when Congress passed the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Rather than acknowledge the moral rightness of allowing black Mississippians to vote, Gov. Johnson and his attorney general sued the federal government, claiming the legislation was unconstitutional, that it violated states’ rights (sound familiar).
As our governor is working as hard as he can to derail the federal health care legislation, he is simultaneously cutting Medicaid spending and creating obstacles that prevent qualified men, women and children from using the system. We would receive his offering of symbols with more sincerity if his pronouncements about Medicaid focused on the lives that are being improved by the program rather than the money that could be directed elsewhere. When we see Gov. Barbour behave in the same manner as his contemporaries did 45 years ago, we begin to believe The Weekly Standard article might be accurate.
The congressman is right on. The more things change, as they say, the more they stay the same.
Bennie Thompson isn’t saying much about just how it was the Democrats in Mississippi and the south that were the ones putting up the fight against integration. You know, the guys that were turning the dogs and water hoses on black folks, cloaking themselves in white hoods and terrorizing black folks and killing black folks and burying them under earthen dams. It was Thompsons democrat brothers who did this to black folks back in the 50s and 60s…not the Republicans.
Barber was a young Republican, as I recall. I wish there was at least a bit of honesty on the part of Bennie Thompson and others who want to act like the Republicans were responsible for the rein of terror in the South back in the 50-60s.
I was going to say something (well a lot, really), but why feed a troll? Enjoy your republican alternate reality.
Bennie Thompson is a smart guy. I think he is able to figure out where his natural allies are, and we can all tell how he resolved that question by noting his party allegiance.
It’s passing strange how Republicans want to keep bringing up a story that calls for reminding everyone of the shame of the party of Lincoln becoming the party of Strom Thurmond.
Bennie may be a smart guy. But he sure has forgotten who it was that was pushing him to the back of the bus when he was growing up.
As for shame, are you talking about the shame caused by Strom Thurmond fathering a child with a black woman? Or, that he was a grand Kliegal in the KKK?…oh wait, Thurmond was never in the KKK. That was the esteemed democrat Senator Byrd from West Virginia, wasn’t it? (My bad.) Sorry.
Bennie may be a smart guy. But he sure has forgotten who it was that was pushing him to the back of the bus when he was growing up.
You know … I’m confident he hasn’t forgotten a thing.
Discrimination has nothing to do with party allegiance. It was the majority whites oppressing the minority blacks. The people that cheered and celebrated when Medgar Evers, Martin Luther King, and Jack and Bobby Kennedy were shot were not from one party or the other. Were some Democrats? Sure. Republican? Certainly. Were they all bigots not worthy of the oxygen they were breathing? Absolutely!
Congrats to Congressman Thompson for a respectful and well argued piece. His column is all the more effective for its lack of incendiary rhetoric.
I agree with Congressman Thompson’s contentions, but…I’d ask what specifically he has managed to do for his district since being elected. He’s been in office much longer than Barbour and he’s casting stones at someones accomplishments while in office? WTF?
YLHL is absolutely right. There were no political parties that were immune then, or now, in showing both overt and covert racism in both policy and actions.
I call bullshit to the anyone attempting to take the moral high ground against racism of EITHER political party. Individuals in political parties, yes. Political parties as entities, no. Campaign platforms and party planks are a joke, at best.
Back to the peanut gallery I go.
Well, Stroud has certainly managed to deflect attention from the substance of Thompson’s remarks — in particular, the spectacle of a governor opposing health care for thousands of his state’s residents.
What has Barbour ever done or proposed to make health insurance affordable or to make health care obtainable in some other manner?
This coming from a congressman who, on taking office, refused to meet with white constituents unless they were accompanied by a black.
Thompson failed to note that more than half of the states have filed suit charing that the health care law is unconstitutional. By his logic, anyone who stands up for their constitutional rights is supporting segregation.
Who’s closer to the historical truth on civil rights: Gov. Barbour or Rep. Michele Bachmann?
This coming from a congressman who, on taking office, refused to meet with white constituents unless they were accompanied by a black.
I have heard this from enough people that I suspect it of being true, but it would be nice to find the sourcing.
Anderson,
I’ll give you some of the sourcing and what I understand to be the back story behind the refusal of Thompson to see anyone not accompanied by a black. This was told to me by someone who was knowledgeable about it and had talked to one person turned away.
A liberal Greenwood planter, and there was a name given to him when I was told this story, went to pay his respects to Thompson shortly after he was elected. I think the planter was in town to testify before an agricultural subcommittee. On presenting himself, the receptionist asked, “Who are you with?,” and on hearing that the planter was by himself, he was informed that the Congressman did not see anyone unless they were accompanied by a black. This apparently happened to several other people as well.
This may have been done in error. Thompson had apparently told his staff that he would not meet with any delegatioon or group of people that did not include at least one black. The staff interpreted this to include individuals, which may not have been Thompson’s intention. But it is a terrible policy, whether adopted for individuals or groups of individuals.
Anderson, if Benny’s intention was merely to put forth his concern that the governors actions where supposedly going to rip health care from thousands of state residents, why did he invoke the image of the segregationist Paul Johnson and the voting rights act? He did it precisely to cast the Gov. Barbour as a racist, black folk hater, pure and simple. It was a shameless cheap shot from a man who has made his career in MS politics playing the race card against anybody who dares to claim to be a fiscal conservative or aligned with the Republican party.
Those of you making excuses for this rhetoric would never tolerate it if the shoe were on the other foot. With all due respect, please get in touch with your duplicity,..it is showing.
I note that it would be hard to “get in touch with duplicity.” My opinion is that Bennie Thompson is too smart to put any such policy into effect, formally or informally.
why did he invoke the image of the segregationist Paul Johnson and the voting rights act?
He explains the analogy pretty well in the quotation in NMC’s post, I think.
He explains the rhetoric pretty well, I think, A Stroud. I made a pretty similar argument last year when the vote went down: That the Blue Dogs who were voting “no” were not going to save themselves at reelection time by this one vote, and would quite likely be sent home for a long retirement where they would eventually be able to contemplate having been on the wrong side of a historic vote, like those who voted against the civil rights acts in the 60s.
Maybe I’m in touch with my inner black man. After all, we all came out of Africa.
I hesitate to post this, but I am going to anyway.
Excuse me, but I have to call bullshit to those on this thread to those who are trying to tie the acts of terrorism of the 50′s and 60′s to the republican party (conservatives) with a small sampling of my family’s history. A bit of background: My parents were both catholics.
Crosses were burned in my mother’s father front yard, my father’s father front yard, and my parent’s front yard. I only know the details of the cross burned in my parents front yard. We were in the car (I can’t remember where we were going as I was around 4 years old, circa 1966 or 1967), my parents, me, and my next oldest sister. So, we come to the intersection of Terry Road and McDowell Road in south Jackson, and the Klan, in full robes and some in full facial hoods, are soliciting money from passerbys. And a klansman comes up to my father’s window and asks him to support the cause. This was the first time I ever heard the word “fuck” in my life. My father told him to go fuck himself. BAM. The klansman punched my father and started yelling to his fellows. In a second there were 4 or 5 klansmen around the car yelling at us, trying to hit my mother who was rolling up her windw, and beating on the car. Although I heard a bunch of other cuss words, I heard another couple of phrases: nigger-lover and you fucking republican. Daddy sped off, but a car started following us. We didn’t go to where ever we were going, but after the car quit following us we went home. The next night a burning cross was in our front yard.
The klansmen weren’t conservative. They were liberals. They supported the New Deal, Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security. They just didn’t want blacks to have access to any of those programs.
The klansmen weren’t conservative, they were racists. And, democrats.
I scoff at democrats. You don’t know from where you came. There is an apology owed by democrats to those they persecuted and still persecute most: republicans.
So, there is my little history lesson of my personal experience with terroristic democratic party behavior. Does anyone have a personal story of similar republican misdeeds? I admit that there exists bad behavior on the part of republicans, but I don’t think it rises to the level exhibited by democrats in Mississippi in the 50′s and 60′s.
Did republicans do enough in the 50′s and 60′s to decry the violence? No. In their defense, the republicans, in Mississippi, were just getting organized in the 50′s (NMC did a [slanted] post on the ‘Black and Tans’ versus the ‘Lily Whites’. The Black and Tans were a patronage organization while the Lily Whites wanted to elect republicans and compete with the democrats).
The klansmen weren’t conservative. They were liberals. They supported the New Deal, Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security.
How do you know this? All I ever heard them talking about where blacks and Jews. Are you saying these things are bad? They sure are popular; even among idiot conservatives.
The klansmen weren’t conservative, they were racists. And, democrats.
I can agree they were racist. That seems pretty obvious, but they weren’t conservative and they were democrats?
Once again, how do you know? I have met a few klan members. As a child, some were even my neighbors. They generally sound as conservative and self-righteous as you do. Every one of them I met was very religious. In fact, they used their religious beliefs to support their twisted ideology. The churches they attended were on the more fundamentalist end of the spectrum. Not a very popular spot for liberal thinkers. Democrats? Are you telling me they voted for KENNEDY?
So, there is my little history lesson of my personal experience with terroristic democratic party behavior.
No. That’s your little (and very limited) experience with the KKK. I’m pretty sure I can give you an exact number of them that voted for Obama. Zero! Drill baby drill got them all.