Newsday columnist Less Brains Les Payne wrote one of the more outrageous pieces of race-baiting hate-mongery that I've ever encountered. And to do it, he has to tarnish a victory for racial justice over the hatred of the KKK.

The conviction of the 80-year-old Mississippi racist for a 41-year-old murder reminds us that the new Republican Party, the GOP that gave us Nixon, Ford and Reagan, Bush 41 and his unspeakable son, rode into power on the backs of the Ku Klux Klan.

This triple murder in June 1964, to sum up for the attention-deficient, hastened the passing of the first Civil Rights Act in July of the same year. By promising blacks the vote, this act stampeded white Southerners into the arms of the national GOP and provided the margin needed to dominate Congress and the White House. These party-switchers would, of course, demand their pound of flesh and along the way, pay homage to the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan who made it all possible.

The Civil Rights Act was first introduced by President John F. Kennedy, who was assassinated before its enactment. This historic reform prescribed the initiation of equal rights for blacks in voting, education, public accommodations, union membership and in federally assisted programs. Passage of the law fell to President Lyndon B. Johnson, who was a protege of Sen. Richard Russell of Georgia, who led the filibuster against it, declaring: "We will resist to the bitter end any measure ...which would ... bring about social equality and intermingling and amalgamation of the races in our states."

After signing the bill into law, Johnson reportedly told close associates that "I am afraid we have lost the South for a hundred years."

Payne, of course, forgets the minor detail that the 1964 Civil Rights Act and the 1965 Voting Rights Act passed precisely because the GOP threw its weight behind the laws that brought about equality for blacks, while the Democrats took the credit for the passage of the legislation that its own Klan-ridden party could never have passed alone. Furthermore, he fails to acknowledge that those who came over to the GOP at the time left behind an equal number of colleagues who continued to oppose civil rights from inside the Democrat party, while the GOP remained a fundamentally pro-civil rights party -- as it is to this day.

Payne also fails to not ethat the only member of Congress with a history of KKK involvement is Democrat Senator Robert Byrd, a Klan organizer, recruiter, and supporter. The "Conscience of the Senate's" recent autobiography still fails to deal forthrightly with facts that are on the historical record regarding his relationship with the KKK years after he quit. On the other hand, whenever a Klansman pokes his head above the hedges in the GOP, he is quickly repudiated by the party -- as can be seen with the GOP response to David Duke. But somehow it is the GOP, in Payne's view, that pays homage to the Klan.

So what has the recent conviction of Klansman Edgar Ray Killen in Philadelphia, Miss., to do with the modern GOP? More than the party would openly admit.

The white South as a touchstone for success has not been lost on the GOP. It was no accident that Ronald Reagan launched his 1980 presidential campaign by trekking to Philadelphia in search of symbol and Mississippi blessings. It was at this terrible place, so sacred then to Cowboy Reagan, that, on the night of June 21, 1964, the Klan abducted and murdered Andrew Goodman, James Chaney and Michael Schwerner.

Actually, I'll argue it is very much an accident that the campaign began in that place. I've read the transcript of that day's speech (I cannot find it on the web, though) -- it doesn't speak to issues of race or civil rights at all. Here is a key chunk of it, the section that uses the dreaded term "states rights".

What we have to do is bring back the recognition that the people of this country can solve its problems. I still believe the answer to any problem lies with the people. I believe in state's rights and I believe in people doing as much as they can for themselves at the community level and at the private level. I believe we have distorted the balance of our government today by giving powers that were never intended to be given in the Constitution to that federal establishment.

As you can see, this is not an appeal to themes of race and racism, but rather to the hallmark of Reagan's campaign -- reducing governemnt and decentralizing federal power. Those are themes that resonated tehn and resonate now, but which are clearly race neutral. And while folks like Payne make much of the Philadelphia speech, they do not often have the integrity to mention that the next speech he gave was one devoted to the traditional Republican theme of support for civil rights -- at the convention of the National Urban League.

Les Payne wants to paint every southern Republican -- including those of us transplanted here from northern locales -- as unreconstructed Confederates, night-riding Klansmen, and black-hating Dixiecrats. He is wrong, for the GOP continues to support the principles of equal opportunity that have always animated it. What his column does show is that he is animated with the very racial bias that he thinks propels us.

Posted by: Greg at 03:22 PM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
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