Posted on 01/21/2003 11:00:42 PM PST by kattracks
Civil Rights Leader to Picket 'KKK' Byrd Tribute
A Washington, D.C.-based civil rights leader said Tuesday that he would "chain [himself] to the construction site" of a ceremonial office being built as a tribute to Ku Klux Klansman-turned-senator, Robert Byrd, D-W.V.
"I will not stand idly by and allow the building of a fantasy office for 'a minister of hate' such as Robert Byrd," said Kevin Martin, political affairs director of the African-American Republican Leadership Council. "I am willing to chain myself to the construction site, run the risk of arrest and know I stood on principle rather than remain silent."
Yesterday reports surfaced of a secret budget appropriation to build a replica in the Capitol Building of the ornate office Byrd used to occupy as Senate Pro Tempore, even though he lost the pro tem post when the Democrats lost their plurality.
The exact cost has not been made public and it is unmentioned in any appropriations document or even internal Senate correspondence. But some estimated the Byrd tribute would come with a six-figure price tag, according to the Knight-Ridder news service.
Former Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott, R-Miss., said Byrd's colleagues feared retribution from the ex-Klansman unless they found a new way to honor him, explaining, "Frankly, it's not worth the trouble he can create if you don't give him deference."
But on Tuesday Martin decried the Byrd shakedown as an outrage. "I say shame on both Senate Democrats and Republicans for saddling the American public with the bill of building a monument to an evil one-time recruiter of persons who wanted to conduct terrorist acts against fellow Americans."
Last week Byrd said through a spokesman that he had never participated in lynchings or cross burnings while he was in the Klan briefly during World War II. But questions continue to swirl about the West Virginia Democrat's claim, offered through his spokesman Tom Gavin, that he wasn't a racist while he was a member of the virulently anti-black terror group.
"Democrats can play the race-baiting games all they want, but Senator Robert Byrd is a continued reminder of their racist past of jackboots, billyclubs, water hoses, dogs and nightriders," Martin said. "I refuse to accept Senator Byrd's excuse of why he was a member of the KKK."
Coming Wednesday: Evidence surfaces indicating that Byrd may have been a Ku Klux Klan member well past 1943, the year he maintains he resigned from the notorious hate group.
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Wednesday, Jan. 22, 2003 5:27 p.m. ESTByrd's KKK Alibi Comes Unraveled
Sen. Robert Byrd, D-W.V., has said repeatedly over the years that he joined the notorious anti-black hate group the Ku Klux Klan during World War II - not because he was a racist but because the Klan had taken a strong stance against communism, a system of government that then existed only in the Soviet Union.
But Byrd's KKK alibi doesn't stand up to even the most cursory historical scrutiny, as a World War II veteran pointed out to NewsMax.com Wednesday.
"When Byrd said he joined the Klan, it couldn't have been famous for being anti-Communist, since in 1943 the Soviet Union was our crucial ally in World War II," said our source, who served in the Air Force, then known as the Army Air Corps, in preparation for the Normandy invasion.
"In 1943 Franklin Roosevelt was still calling Stalin 'Uncle Joe'," he added. "And I remember U.S. military maps that showed the Red Army's advances toward Berlin, which was something we were all happy about."
Further puncturing Sen. Byrd's KKK alibi, the World War II vet recalled, "There would have been no reason for any patriotic American to have been anti-Communist in 1943 - because we were doing everything we could to help the Reds beat Hitler on the Eastern Front."
In fact, anti-communism didn't emerge as a genuine force in American politics until 1947, with the outbreak of the Cold War - four years after Byrd says he left the Klan. Two weeks ago the West Virginia Democrat's press secretary Tom Gavin said his boss had belonged to the Klan for only "a number of months."
It was during this period that Byrd - supposedly by then an EX-Klansman - was advising Grand Imperial Wizard Samuel Green on whom to appoint to important posts in the hierarchy of the hate group. In a letter to Green, Byrd urged, "the Klan is needed today as never before and I am anxious to see its rebirth here in West Virginia" and "in every state in the Union."
A year later, in 1948, Byrd opposed President Truman's initiative to integrate the Armed Forces - and he did so using the language of a very much active Klansman.
The powerful Senate Democrat vowed then that he would "never submit to fight beneath that banner [the American flag] with a Negro by my side. Rather I should die a thousand times, and see Old Glory trampled in the dirt never to rise again, than to see this beloved land of ours become degraded by race mongrels, a throwback to the blackest specimen from the wilds."
"If Byrd said he thought the Klan's main job was fighting communism, he's either not being honest about why he joined - or he was a Klansman a lot longer than he now wants to admit," said the World War II vet.
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