Say What?
Chris Dodd, senator from Connecticut, made this statement during the celebratory recognition of WV Sen. Robert Byrd's historic 17,000 Senate vote. The problem here, in case you can't see the trees for the forest, is that this statement is patently RACIST.
Mr. Dodd, would Sen. Byrd have been right for America during the Civil War because he hated blacks, and commonly referred to them as "niggers" and the "mongrel race"?
In a 1947 letter, after Mr. Byrd had been elected to the state senate, he wrote that he would "never submit to fight beneath that banner (the American flag) with a Negro by my side. Rather I should die a thousand times, and see old Glory trampled in the dirt never to rise again, than to see this beloved land of ours become degraded by race mongrels, a throwback to the blackest specimen from the wilds."
The New York Times reported in 1971 on a letter Mr. Byrd wrote in 1946, after leaving the Klan. Writing to the Klan's Imperial Wizard, Mr. Byrd identified himself as a former Kleagle and recommended a person to serve as state Klan coordinator. He wrote, "The Klan is needed today as never before and I am anxious to see its rebirth here in West Virginia. . . . It is necessary that the order be promoted immediately and in every state in the Union. Will you please inform me as to the possibilities of rebuilding the Klan realm of W.Va?"
Where's the outrage? Senator Trent Lott was raked over the coals for making a comment at birthday party that had possible overtones of racism, but the media is completely ignoring Chris Dodd's hate speech. To say that a known ex-KKK member, a vocal opponent to working beside blacks, would have been good for America in the Civil War is tantamount to expressing desire that the blacks were back in the same place they were in the early 1800s and before - in the cotton fields!