I received a copy of this from the ConservativeNet mailing list; I haven’t seen it elsewhere yet.
As Republican appointees to the United States Commission on Civil Rights, we deplore Senator Trent Lott’s December 5, 2002 statement that if Strom Thurmond had been elected president in 1948 “we wouldn’t have had all these problems over all these years.”
The central issue on which Thurmond ran was support for racial segregation. Senator Lott thus lends credibility to the view that such civil rights advances as President Truman’s executive order mandating an end to racial segregation in the U.S. armed forces, the Supreme Court’s decision in Brown v. Board of Education, the Civil Rights Acts of 1957 and 1964, and the Voting Rights Act of 1965 were grave mistakes. Certainly, in 1948, Strom Thurmond opposed all of them.
This is a particularly shameful remark coming from a leader of the Republican Party, the party of Abraham Lincoln, and the party that supported all of these essential steps forward far more vigorously than did the Democratic Party, which at the time was the home of congressional southerners committed to white supremacy.
The civil rights era was a shining moment in American history. We believe Senator Lott agrees, and invite him to join us in celebrating the revolutionary change in the status of African Americans that flowed from a movement in which blacks and whites joined hands to make a better America.
Abigail Thernstrom
Jennifer C. Braceras
Peter N. Kirsanow
Russell G. Redenbaugh
Commissioners, U.S. Commission on Civil Rights
Also worth seeing: “Thanks A Lott,” in The Weekly Standard, and “Vacant Lott,” at the Claremont Institute.
I suppose it’s a subtle way of twisting the knife, but
We believe Senator Lott agrees, and invite him to join us in celebrating the revolutionary change in the status of African Americans that flowed from a movement in which blacks and whites joined hands to make a better America.
the part in bold face, it becomes increasingly apparent, is not at all true, or at the least, Lott has made many, many statements completely incompatible with its truth.