RACIST LEADERS IN OUR COUNTRY~PART 1

From the editor: In this article and the one to follow, featured will be prominent politicians and leaders of our country who've displayed and encouraged racism.  As I've noted below, some of these have tried to clarify their image in later years.

Governor George Wallace

Our country's political arena has featured some  who were smooth enough, clever enough to partially conceal their agenda with respect to civil rights, racism.

George Wallace, for example, the Alabama governor, in running for president in '64 and '68, tried to say that he was a different man than the one who stood in front of Foster Auditorium at the University of Alabama on June 11, 1963, to stop the enrollment of African-American students Vivan Malone and James Hood.

Wallace claimed he'd changed from the man who stood on his state's capitol steps at his inaugeration in '63 and screamed "Segregation Now!  Segregation Tomorrow! Segretation Forever!"

Wallace claimed later that he was not a racist, just a segregationist.

He won 9,901,118 popular votes, that is, 13.53% of votes cast nationally, carried five Southern states; Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi and won 45 electoral votes plus one vote from a faithless elector.  

He also had substantial support among blue collar workers in the north and midwest.

Look at those numbers and try to explain how our country is not infected with racism.

William F. Buckley on his TV show "The Firing Line"

Much smoother and more articulate than Wallace was longtime conservative writer, Yale-educated William F. Buckley, Jr., editor of the National Review.

Buckley was silver-tongued, erudite, could intimidate a debate opponent with an evil stare and smile, combined with a string of ten dollar words.

Now, like George Wallace, Buckley did try to clean up his racist image as he neared his death bed, even voting for Barrack Obama in 2008, then resigning from the National Review the next day, but his early, well-documented positions and views were clearly racist.

Wrote Buckley:   

"The sobering answer is Yes —  the White community is so entitled because, for the time being, it is the advanced race. 

It is not easy, and it is unpleasant, to adduce statistics evidencing the median cultural superiority of White over Negro: but it is a fact that obtrudes, one that cannot be hidden by ever-so-busy egalitarians and anthropologists." 

While I admit to being impressed with Buckley for much of my young life, he was not a force for good during the civil rights era and I make no judgement on his late-life conversion to human/civil rights.