In the 1960s, we saw the passage of landmark civil rights legislation, designed to end the racial divide and provide equal opportunity in America!
Senator Strom Thurmond of South Carolina, who had run as a segregationist Presidential candidate in 1948 on the States Rights Party, voted against it, and switched from the Democratic to the Republican Party!
Governor George Wallace of Alabama was defiant in the face of civil rights advancements, and exploited the issue of race in his several presidential campaigns, including his third party American Independent Party candidacy in 1968!
In the same era, Lester Maddox, a restaurateur in Georgia, who gave his white patrons little pick axes as a symbol of what would happen if any African American dared to enter his chicken restaurant, was elected Governor, and shamed his state, that such a prejudiced person could be elected to the state’s executive mansion! The state of Georgia finally redeemed itself by electing as his successor a peanut farmer from Plains, Jimmy Carter, who advanced racial progress in his four year term as Governor, before running for and winning the Presidency!
From 1972-2002, North Carolina elected Jesse Helms to the US Senate, after a disgraceful career as a segregationist talk show host on radio! Helms proceeded to use the issue of race constantly against his opponents, including an African American competitor, Harvey Gantt, who had been Mayor of Charlotte, and twice opposed him in the election campaigns of 1990 and 1996! Nothing racist was avoided by Helms, who gave no concern that he was promoting hate and division in the nation with his poisonous prejudice!
All of the above politicians, and many others, utilized the fear of middle class and poor whites that any advancement of African Americans was a threat to them,and that they were being denied opportunity because of black progress!
Well, the reader might say, that is all history, so why relate it now?
The answer is that racism and prejudice is alive and well at FOX NEWS CHANNEL and on talk radio, as they have constantly berated Barack Obama, accusing him and his administration of racism, rather than looking themselves in the eye! 🙁
So now the race baiters are Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, Sean Hannity, Laura Ingraham, Michael Savage, and many other conservative activists, who have no shame, and yet are no different than their predecessors in Southern politics from Thurmond to Helms! 🙁
Now it is the so called NEWS MEDIA on the right, acting as if they are legitimate, who are the promoters of race hatred! 🙁
And all of these characters have distorted the 101 year history of the NAACP, an organization dedicated to interracial understanding and cooperation, whose name “COLORED PEOPLE”, does not refer to only African Americans, but people of all colors and races who have faced discrimination and prejudice in this country’s history. They are still facing it today, as the conservative activists leave no stone unturned to turn whites against African Americans, who are supposedly not entitled to equality and advancement, and that it is only coming about at the disadvantage and loss of opportunity of whites!
What a terrible lie, and a disgrace, that these forces spew so much hatred and division, and are seen by many people as legitimate! 🙁
They are no better than Thurmond, Wallace, Maddox, or Helms! They should all be ashamed of themselves! 🙁