<< Back 12/18/02 Time for Lott to resign Senate seat By Bruce Steinbicker If Trent Lott was a regular caller on redneck radio, the Asheville talk shows dominated by right wing zealots, I would have shaken my head in a mixture of amusement and dismay when I heard him praise Strom Thurmond and say the world would be a better place if that vile South Carolina racist had been elected president in 1948. But Trent Lott is a United States senator who surely knows his every word uttered in public will be seen and heard around the world. Billy Graham let his true feelings about Jews be known to his crony Richard Nixon in the oval office, but, at least, he didn’t know the tape was running. Lott knew the eyes and ears of the world were on him. Had Lott simply made a joking remark to the effect that it’s too bad you weren’t elected president, Strom, we all could have laughed with him as part of Thurmond’s 100th birthday celebration. But Lott crossed the line when he said, “We wouldn’t have had all these problems over all these years” if segregationist Strom had been elected president. Remember, Thurmond said southerners were above the law when he bellowed, “All the laws of Washington and all the bayonets of the Army cannot force the Negro into our homes, our schools, our churches.” It is simply unacceptable for a United States senator to support a racist position like this. What problems would we have avoided? Would Strom, in his second term, have declared Brown vs. the Board of Education null and void? Would he have sent troops to Oxford, Tuscaloosa, and Little Rock to thwart the law rather than enforce it? Would he have urged a successor to veto the important civil rights laws of the Kennedy-Johnson era, including the Voting Rights Act of 1965? Thank God for Presidents Kennedy and Johnson who dedicated their lives to helping us move beyond our sordid, racist past. Someone asked me a few years ago how I observed Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s birthday. I said I spent some time thinking about how far we have come and how far we have to go to fulfill Dr. King’s dream. Lott’s unfortunate remarks brought that thought back to me. We have come a long way from the time when a governor, which Thurmond was in 1948, could say Negroes, who are tax payers and citizens, could be kept out of “our” schools. A co-worker told me one time in the 90s that there were “27 of them” at the high school in her Buncombe County district. I bet she couldn’t have told me how many whites attended that school. She can keep score if she wants to, but I do believe she understands that Brown vs. the Board of Education is settled law. The veneer of civility is razor-thin in many who pay lip service to the laws of our land. I overheard many conversations not intended for my ears during my career in state government. I particularly recall the outbursts of four co-workers when the North Carolina General Assembly made Dr. King’s birthday a state holiday. I truly liked and enjoyed working with these people who didn’t know I had gone into an adjoining office to work. While I was saddened to hear how they really felt, I do think they knew that the days when Strom Thurmond’s rantings were acceptable are long gone. Heck, even ole Strom knows that. Too bad nobody told Trent Lott. His resignation from the Senate is the only honorable way out of this mess. (Bruce Steinbicker is a retired CPA.)