Gov. Barbour's civil rights fairy tale - By Eugene Robinson

[kpete]

Gov. Barbour's civil rights fairy tale

By Eugene Robinson
Tuesday, September 7, 2010

Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour, who may seek the Republican nomination for president, is trying to sell the biggest load of revisionist nonsense about race, politics and the South that I've ever heard. Ever.

He has the gall to try to portray Southern Republicans as having been enlightened supporters of the civil rights movement all along. I can't decide whether this exercise in rewriting history should be described as cynical or sinister. Whichever it is, the record has to be set straight.

......

In a recent interview with Human Events, a conservative magazine and Web site, Barbour gave his version of how the South, once a Democratic stronghold, became a Republican bastion. The 62-year-old Barbour claimed that it was "my generation" that led the switch: "my generation, who went to integrated schools. I went to integrated college -- never thought twice about it." The "old Democrats" fought integration tooth and nail, Barbour said, but "by my time, people realized that was the past, it was indefensible, it wasn't gonna be that way anymore. And so the people who really changed the South from Democrat to Republican was a different generation from those who fought integration."

Not a word of this is true.

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more:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/09/06/AR2010090602959.html

[chimpymustgo]

1. Scarborough and Halperin tried to defend Barbour this morning. Disgusting.

[Iterate]

2. Show me a photo at the head of the march.

Find for me one party platform, one speech from a Republican candidate written prior to 1972 that clearly and unambiguously supports the civil rights movement or its activists. You'll find a few speeches, mostly written by moderates like Nelson Rockefeller, moderates who were run out of the party. The same can be done with co-sponsorships of civil rights legislation. In no case did any of them lead the way.

[SargeUNN]

3. I actually lived through the time that Barbour talked about

I was in high school when freedom of choice started in 1968 or 1969 in Mississippi. I was also at the school that was the first in the nation to open after Freedom of choice was struck down. That school was Columbia High School in Columbia Ms. I will air a show, named "Reflections", telling about this on Sunday at http://www.novaexile.com/radio.htm at 3 pm pacific 6 pm Eastern. I think you will also find it interesting that the black high school that was merged with the white one had a student body president that would become a big celebrity in the person of Walter Payton. I tell about this in the show so hope you will make a note to tune it. It should be interesting and informative.

[angstlessk]

4. kick and rec for Sarge