Posted on 01/10/2003 12:55:48 PM PST by Carl/NewsMax
A spokesman for Sen. Robert Byrd, D-WV, told protesters this week that he wasn't sure whether his boss had helped lynch any African-Americans when the top Senate Democrat was a member of the Ku Klux Klan in the 1940's.
Members of the African-American Republican Leadership Council and the Washington, D.C. Chapter of FreeRepublic.com staged the sit-in in Byrd's Hart Building Senate office on Tuesday, where Byrd's press secretary Tom Gavin fielded questions for about 20 minutes.
"We asked Gavin, does he know what Sen. Byrd did while he was in the Klan?" Kristinn Taylor, co-leader of the FreeRepublic group, told NewsMax.
"He didn't know," Taylor recalled. "He said he hadn't talked to Byrd about it."
"We asked Gavin if he knew what the Klan was doing in West Virginia in the 1940s when Sen. Byrd was a member," added Taylor.
Byrd's spokesman pleaded ignorance again.
"Were they lynching black people?" came the next question. "Again, Gavin didn't know," Taylor said.
Then the protesters wanted to know, did Byrd's Klan chapter burn crosses on black peoples' lawns and run them out of town?
"He didn't know. He had no idea," came the response from the Byrd press aide.
When pressed on why Gavin didn't try to find out more about Byrd's Klan past in the wake of last month's Trent Lott fiasco, the spokesman said only that he had failed to do so and didn't explain why, according to Taylor.
"The main thing that shocked us was when Gavin said Sen. Byrd told him that the reason he joined the Klan back then was because of its strong anti-communist stance," he explained.
"We laughed," Taylor said, recalling the protesters' reaction. "That's pretty much the same excuse Trent Lott offered," he added, referring to the brouhaha last month that forced Republican Senate Majority Leader to resign his post for praising Sen. Strom Thurmond's 1948 Dixiecrat presidential bid.
No doubt, couldn't have said it better myself.
So I've always heard. It's been whole hog for many, many years with Senior Byrd.
Thanks. I thought I remembered that. I started reading the thread and it felt like deja vu...
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