Originally Posted by
Blackstone
Sorry to keep you in suspense. ;-)
I never used the word “horrific” to describe his comments. They were not. But, comments don’t have to be horrific to support racism. His praised the White Citizens Council for their role in the integration of Yazoo City schools, as if they had been a force of good during the civil rights struggle. When asked why Yazoo City was perhaps the only municipality in Mississippi that managed to integrate the schools without violence. Barbour said:
“Because the business community wouldn’t stand for it,” he said. “You heard of the Citizens Councils? Up north they think it was like the KKK. Where I come from it was an organization of town leaders. In Yazoo City they passed a resolution that said anybody who started a chapter of the Klan would get their ass run out of town. If you had a job, you’d lose it. If you had a store, they’d see nobody shopped there. We didn’t have a problem with the Klan in Yazoo City.”
What he continently omitted was they did the same to anyone, black or white that signed the petition for integrating schools in Yazoo City. Council members fired signers of the petition, or prevailed upon other white employers to fire them. Of course they denied using any economic force or physical intimidation. All they did was “provide information” (a full-page ad in the local paper listing the “offenders”); spontaneous public feeling did the rest. As a result, 51 of 53 blacks who had signed the original integration petition withdrew their names and/or were run out of town, had businesses boycotted, and insurance policies cancelled. One member of the Yazoo City Citizens Council, explained, “if a man works for you, and you believe in something, and that man is working against it and undermining it, why you don’t want him working for you—of course you don’t.”
The White Citizens Council also established a private, segregated, white only academy which still exists today, so their white kids would not have to go to public schools with black kids.
Now, this same organization of “community leaders” did go on record opposing the Klan by saying, “your Citizens Council was formed to preserve the separation of the races, and believes that it can best serve the county where it is the only organization operating in this field.” Sounds like a swell bunch of guys. Is it any wonder Barbour admires them so much?
Then, there was the picture of Barbour that appeared on the website of the Council for Conservative Citizens (successor organization to the White Citizens Council). The website also contained such articles as “In defense of racism.” The picture was taken at one of the group’s fundraising barbeques. When there was media uproar over it, Barbour denied any knowledge of CCC’s racist activities. But, he also refused to ask them to remove of his photo from the site.
Then, early last year, there was his response to the uproar over how the history of slavery was conspicuously omitted from Virginia’s Confederate History Month. Barbour’s comment was, “To me, it's a sort of feeling that it's a nit, that it is not significant, that it's not a—it's trying to make a big deal out of something doesn't amount to diddly". I wonder if it didn’t amount to “diddly” to those who were enslaved?
Based on this, how could I vote for Haley Barbour? In my place, would you? Do you think he would help me, or help those that would hurt me?