The Daily Background

So, Trent Lott is resigning (probably to pursue lucrative lobbying options before new ethics rules take place). That’s all fine and well. Let’s not forget that in addition to being against most everything we’re for as progressives, he’s also an awful racist. Here’s a collection of racist quotes that The Politico gathered together to celebrate his none-too-premature departure:

“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 the years, either.”

— December 2002. Lott eventually apologized, explaining that his comment was misinterpreted, but …

… during the 1980 presidential campaign, he spoke after Thurmond at a Mississippi rally for Ronald Reagan and said:

“You know, if we had elected that man 30 years ago, we wouldn’t be in the mess we are today.”

— November 1980

Shortly before Lott praised Thurmond in 1980, he had successfully campaigned to restore Jefferson Davis’ citizenship, which was stripped when he became head of the Confederacy.

Said Lott nearly a decade later:

“Sometimes I feel closer to Jefferson Davis than any other man in America.”

— May 1998, according to the National Review Online

“The spirit of Jefferson Davis lives in the 1984 Republican platform.”

— 1984, at a convention of the Sons of Confederate Veterans

“I think that a lot of the fundamental principles that Jefferson Davis believed in are very important to people across the country, and they apply to the Republican Party.”

— Fall 1984, in an interview with Southern Partisan magazine, explaining his convention speech

“Racial discrimination does not always violate public policy.”

— 1981, in a brief Lott submitted to the Supreme Court in defense of Bob Jones University’s explicitly discriminatory policies

Filed under: Z-TDB Blog