I N S T I T U T E F O R S O U T H E R N S T U D I E S
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: Wednesday, December 11, 2002
LOTT'S STATEMENT ONLY LATEST INSTANCE OF SENATOR'S SUPPORT FOR RACIST CAUSES
*** Southern Institute says Lott's recent praise for Strom Thurmond's segregationist platform echoes previous statements and support for racist organizations ***
DURHAM, N.C. - -Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott's recent statements praising Senator Strom Thurmond's 1948 segregationist presidential campaign is only the latest instance in a political career riddled by racially offensive statements and close associations with bigoted organizations, according to a statement released today by the Institute for Southern Studies.
"This isn't the first time," said Chris Kromm, director of the Institute, a research and education center based in Durham, N.C. "Lott's claim that he's guilty of merely a 'poor choice of words' would be more convincing if the Republican Senator didn't have a long association with bigotry and intolerance."
Lott has drawn widespread criticism for his comments at a 100th birthday party for Sen. Thurmond last week, in which he said the United States would be better off if the anti-integration Thurmond had won his 1948 bid for the presidency. At the event, Lott stated "I want to say this about my state: When Strom Thurmond ran for president, we voted for him. We're proud of it. And if the rest of the country had followed our lead, we wouldn't have had all these problems over all these years, either."
"Our research finds that Lott's recent statements, far from being a one-time gaffe, are in line with a political career filled with close connections to racist people and causes," Kromm said. For example:
*** Senator Lott has had close ties to the Conservative Citizen's Council, an openly racist and anti-semitic group which grew out of the terrorist White Citizen's Councils, and which today calls interracial marriage "white genocide." In 1992, Lott was keynote speaker at the group's national board meeting, ending his speech by saying "the people in this room stand for the right principles and the right philosophy." In 1995, Lott addressed the Carrol County (Miss.) chapter of the CCC, and in 1997, Lott hosted a private meeting with CCC leaders. Despite these close associations, when confronted with his membership in the group in 1998, Lott claimed he had "no firsthand knowledge" of the CCC. CCC officials responded by saying he was a "friend" and "paid-up member."
*** In 1984, Lott addressed the Convention of the Sons of Confederate Veterans in Biloxi, Mississippi by saying "the spirit of Jefferson Davis lives in the 1984 Republican Platform." The statement was covered in the Winter 1984 issue of the right-wing Southern Partisan magazine, in which Lott also explained that he opposes civil rights legislation, and said that the Martin Luther King Jr. national holiday is "basically wrong." In the 1970s, Lott led a campaign to have the citizenship of Jefferson Davis, the President of the Confederate States of America, retroactively restored.
*** In a statement directly echoing his comments last week, in 1980 Lott - then a Mississippi House member - announced to a Republican political rally that if the country had elected Strom Thurmond on the segregationist Dixiecrat ticket "30 years ago, we wouldn't be in the mess we are today." The rally, at which Thurmond was a keynote speaker, and Lott's statement were covered by the Jackson Clarion-Ledger on Nov. 3, 1980.
"Trent Lott has done more than flirt with racism- - there's a long-term relationship," said Kromm. "Across the world, people are no doubt wondering how the President, Congress and the Republican Party can tolerate having a man with such convictions hold the most powerful position in the U.S. Senate."
Founded in 1970, the Institute for Southern Studies is a non-profit research and education center based in Durham, N.C. The Institute is publisher of Southern Exposure, the award-winning journal of politics and culture.