Posted on 09/30/2005 11:48:12 AM PDT by wagglebee
Nearly four months after the Senate's most influential Democrat, former majority leader Robert Byrd, defended the Ku Klux Klan in his autobiography, Byrd has yet to offer an apology - and fellow Democrats have not asked him to make one.
"Robert C. Byrd: Child of the Appalachian Coalfields" hit bookstores in June - and featured Byrd's firsthand account of his days as an up-and-coming member of the nation's most notorious anti-black terrorist group.
According to the eight-term West Virginia Democrat, the Klan he remembers was "a fraternal group of elites – doctors, lawyers, clergy, judges and other 'upstanding' people."
At no time, said Byrd, did he hear his fellow Klansman preach violence against blacks, Jews or Catholics.
Byrd recalls that his admiration for the racist organization began early, when he was a little boy watching his father march in KKK parades.
"Watching from the window, young Byrd saw people dressed in white hoods and robes and wearing white masks over their faces. Some years later, he wrote, he learned that his father had been a member of the Klan and took part in the parade" - according to a Washington Post synopsis of Byrd's book.
By the age of 25, the top Democrat saw the Klan as an opportunity to prove his mettle. After joining up in 1942, Byrd rose quickly through the organizational ranks, earning his stripes within months as a Kleagle - the Klan term for recruiter.
Byrd excelled in the role - boasting in his book that he'd recruited at least 150 new Klansman. The feat helped him get elected to the position of "Exalted Cyclops" - a race Byrd proudly notes that he won "unanimously."
Klan Grand Dragon Joel Baskin said Byrd's performance was so impressive that he personally urged him to enter politics. "The country needs young men like you in the leadership of the nation," Byrd remembers the Grand Dragon telling him.
In recent years, the West Virginia Democrat has made obligatory-sounding comments about his Klan membership being the "biggest mistake of his life."
But Byrd's book makes it plain he still looks back on his Klan days with a measure of nostalgia. During his first congressional race in 1952, Byrd defended his decision to join the Klan, saying membership in the group "offered excitement."
Five decades later Byrd was still using the "N"-word in national TV interviews.
His lingering fondness for the Klan nothwithstanding, top Democrats have remained mum on Byrd's characterization of its membership as "upstanding people."
Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid, Senator Ted Kennedy and presidential candidate Hillary Clinton continue to rely on Byrd as a key ally in tough political battles - and sometimes refer to him as "the conscience of the Senate."
And something else - IF the Klan's principles were so "worthy", and they were so "upstanding", why would Bryd denounce them today. After all, those qualities are timeless - they do not go away with time. If they were great in the past, they'd be great today. So, Byrd is full of it!
I think many are guilty of applying today's moral standards to the early 1940's. People had very good reasons to organize against federal influence after the Civil War, given the most cruel and unfair circumstances of Reconstruction. The robes were worn to avoid being singled out by fed's and reveneurs and perhaps being hounded out of your job or arrested on trumped-up charges.
I don't know....when Tennesseeans and Germans showed up to become my ancestors' neighbors next to their ranch in South Texas, they were welcomed and looked upon as equals by my ancestors even if they didn't have the same "heritage". There was even a little intermarriage. There were Indian/Mexican "vaqueros" on the ranches down there then, and there was intermarriage and friendliness/relations between the Indian/Mexicans and the more Spanish ranchers. In fact, there were even "official" ethnicity names for the children of such pairings.
Isn't it ironic that you hear nothing from the usual suspects; JJ, Rev. Al, and the the minority victim crowd.
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