27 votes Nay in the Senate...20 democrats 7 Republicans. Byrd was a PoS. So was Thurmond. Had the Republicans not supported it practically enmasse, the bill would NOT have PASSED.
Byrd should have resigned from Congress and taken his GD KKK sheet with him. You democrats are hypocrites deluxe.
Again, repeating for all needing:
You're just another one of the revisionists who pretends that the Dixiecrats of yesterday didn't become the Southern Republicans of today.
There are a lot of you out there, which means there are a lot of LIARS out there.
No other Senator received a 100% approval on his voting record from the NAACP ...How interesting that you left out Strom Thurmond.
And Byrd apologized. Thurmond didn't.
And actually, for the record, Byrd originally renounced his racist past in 1982 in the aftermath of a traffic accident in which his grandson was killed.
And actually, George Wallace ALSO renounced his racist views as well, and just like Byrd, he did so LONG before his death.
Byrd even said that he regretted voting AGAINST the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
You're just another one of the revisionists who pretends that the Dixiecrats of yesterday didn't become the Southern Republicans of today.
There are a lot of you out there, which means there are a lot of LIARS out there.
It's okay really, you guys are all dreaming of fighting the Civil War all over again.
I suspect that you will get the chance to experience defeat once again, too.
Had NORTHERNERS not supported it, it would never have gotten out of committee. Northern Democrats supported the 1964 CRA at a higher rate than Northern Republicans did.
No other Senator received a 100% approval on his voting record from the NAACP ...
Senator Byrd did.
In fact, that was the prime REASON Dixiecrats turned red.
They felt BETRAYED by their Democrat brethren in the North, East and West.
It was the college kid Democrats in the East, West and North, idealistic as Hell and raised on tomes like "Black Like Me", "Guess Who's Coming to Dinner", authors like Richard Wright and all the other brave black writers who illuminated the Jim Crow era in stark, graphic terms.
And it didn't take much to spread the new awareness to their parents either.
And when Faubus and his pals started in on the schools it was seen nationally and INTERNATIONALLY for the first time. Democrats in the rest of the country had never seen it writ large that way before. And soon the WORLD saw it.
Make no mistake about it folks, even THE SOVIETS capitalized on the 16mm images of police dogs attacking black busriders and freedom marchers.
When Dick Gregory published his paperback book "Nigger" it was very nearly the last straw.
You cannot possibly pull the wool over people's eyes when they have seen it firsthand, when they have seen it in moving images and read the firsthand accounts in black and white on the printed page.
The young Democrats in the East, North and West were flat out horrified and DISGUSTED and that is when the REST of the Democratic Party SEVERED its connections to institutionalized racism in all its forms, leaving the Southern Dems ALONE in the cold.
Try as you might to pretend that Democrats everywhere are the original racists, we are closer to the truth than you will ever be.
We ACKNOWLEDGE our sordid past, we RECOGNIZE that the old Democrats looked the other way, we AGREE that the old Republicans believed in equality.
HOWEVER, when the Jim Crow South got treated to the disinfecting sunlight of network newsreel cameras, Democrats everywhere but in the South moved on and moved forward. I was there, I grew up in it, I can name all the names and point to all the places. You can fool the young and dumb ignoramuses of the newer generations but every time you try to, we will just pull out our endless shelves of non-fiction, dredge up the old newsreels, pull up our shirtsleeves so you can see the cigarette burns on our arms and the lash marks on our backs.
You fools can't get away with trying to rewrite history because history is written by the victors and, based on the earthquake in Virginia tonight, you've lost.
Your radical right wing Tea Party candidates will be annihilated this November.
The Mason Dixon Line keeps migrating a little further South every month and has been for six years now.
I suspect it is now somewhere South of Richmond and still sinking.
Revisionism will be exposed, repeatedly, unswervingly, endlessly, victoriously.
You'll NEVER get away with it.
I'm certainly not one to go to bat for Robert Byrd, but he at least gave lip service (and voted accordingly) to being contrite for his actions as a young man.
The people who bring up Byrd and the Klan neglect to mention that he left that rancid organization in the early '50s. They like to act as if he was wearing a white hood on his deathbed.
They don't just act like it, a couple of them just said it straight out two pages back
Selective memory.
Today's Tea Party faithful ARE blood relatives of the old Dixiecrats of yesteryear.
I read Black Like Me when I was 12. Didn't get much of it. Read it again when I was about 17. What a brilliant work.
If you're a sports fan, read Only The Ball Was White, in my opinion the best book on Negro League baseball ever written. It's an eye-popper.
I won't go that far; sure, there's a few TP types who strike me as full-blooded racists, but again, they're largely a. geographically Southern, and b. facing small electorates. Most of the Tea Party darlings who don't fall into those categories don't strike me as particularly racist. Backwards on a ton of issues, mostly their rabid social conservatism (GAY IS THE NEW BLACK), hyper-religiousness and complete lack of empathy for anyone who is not them, but not racist, per se. Ignorant, sure.
I'm not "going that far" or going anywhere. There isn't any payoff for me to trace the lines the way they are going.
If the Tea Party had held faithful to their outrage at excess, they eventually would have found more than a little common ground with the likes of Occupy.
And that would have actually been GOOD FOR Occupy because sans any moderating influence from outside their bubble and lacking leadership, they instead became ripe for anarchist infiltration, much the same way the old Vietnam anti-war movement of the 60's became co-opted by CPUSA and the SWP.
Are ALL Tea Partiers racist? No of course not. Some are focused on strictly fiscal and constitutional matters but again, you find that the deeper you go, the more you encounter the folks who believe everything past the Tenth Amendment is invalid. That means the Fourteenth gets tossed, yes?
And then you're right back to where you started, not "wanting to go there" but finding yourself knee deep in it anyway.
So okay, maybe I should instead say "The old Dixiecrats of yesterday found a welcome in the Republican sweep of the South and a good many of those eventually became the Christian Right, Christian Reconstructionist right wing and the Tea Party of the South."
If I wanted a payoff of any kind it would simply be to continue exposing the ongoing revisionism.
I have no issues with admitting the foibles of the Left or the Liberals in the past, or even now.
What gets me is when someone on the other side sends their garbage over here and pretends it's ours.
I had a "discussion" last week with a right-winger here on this very forum (I won't name names) who claimed that there is no such thing as right-wing totalitarianism or authoritarianism, simply because totalitarianism and authoritarianism are strictly left wing, ergo liberals are fascists, QED. The amount of intellectual dishonesty it takes to believe that is true is staggering.
No need to name names, I saw it live LOL.
He might have been involved in the death of a few harmless prairie dogs.
No, it's factually correct and everybody knows it except Libertarians. Let me put it in more simple terms. Libs like government and would like it to be active in society. Cons want less government, and the less they want the more Con they are. Unless you are now telling me that Libertarians actually love government and want more of it.
i could tell you how yo are wrong yet again, but we all know it won't change your mind.
i'm cool with letting you continue to be wrong.
"Twists history"
I'm not even a "conservative" but I damn well know my history and I know that the democrats were the "good ol' boys of the south" - you think most "old" racists of today are republicans or conservatives? think again - they're straight ticket democrat voters - at least in the south.
You're just living in denial.
And when I get back from the store I will elaborate more.
Again, repeating for all needing:
You're just another one of the revisionists who pretends that the Dixiecrats of yesterday didn't become the Southern Republicans of today.
There are a lot of you out there, which means there are a lot of LIARS out there.
So you're still attempting to equate AmericanliberalsLIBERALS, DEMOCRATS - errrmmm, ANYONE WHO DISAGREES WITH THE GOP/TP with Hitler and the Third Reich, yes?
If not, how is this germaine to the discussion of the ongoing revisionism which is spreading like kudzu in the American dialogue today?
"Eddie, I'm driving around here, and I don't see any Obama stickers or signs anywhere. Why is that?" He looked back at me with sad, sad eyes and said, "Pete, you know why." And he was right - I did know why. The blacks of 71%-black Sunflower county did not dare post Obama signs on their cars or in their yards because if they did, they or their family members would soon lose their jobs.
Again, you liberals are NOT revisionist. You people are just damn Liars with a CAPITAL L. There is NOTHING to REVISE. Those were predominately democrats that voted AGAINST the Civil Rights ACT of BOTH 1957 and 1964 . And had it not been for the Republican Party neither would have become LAW. Get over it.