Byrd Never Apologized for Klan Membership

[MORTARDUDE]

http://www.newsmax.com/showinsidecov...2/12/11/112622


Byrd Never Apologized for Klan Membership

Critics of Sen. Trent Lott have spent the last 24-hours parsing the words of the series of apologies he has offered for praising Sen. Strom Thurmond's 1948 Dixiecrat presidential candidacy last week. But satisfactory or not, at least he did apologize, which is more than anyone can say about Senate Majority Whip Robert Byrd's comments regarding his Ku Klux Klan past.

"I apologize to anyone who was offended by my statement," Sen. Lott said, using the "a" word explicitly.

While Byrd did issue an apology last year for invoking the phrase "white n*ggers" during a nationally televised TV interview, the top Democrat has never expressed much personal contrition for his role as Ku Klux Klan Grand Kleagle in the 1930s.

In fact, as recently as nine years ago, Byrd explained that he joined the group that specialized in lynching African-Americans because it "offered excitement."

Though the West Virginia Democrat went on to tell the Washington Post in June 1993 that his stint in the KKK was the mistake in his life that he most regrets, he never acknowledged that the group's Jim Crow agenda had anything to do with his decision to sign up.

Instead, Byrd explained that he decided to become a cross-burning, night-riding, sheet-wearing member of the Klan because "it was strongly opposed to communism."

Twelve years earlier, in another interview with the Post, the West Virginia Democrat sounded anything but contrite when asked about his days as a Klansman.

"Suddenly, Byrd's face freezes," wrote Post reporter Martin Schram in May 1981. "The muscles on either side of his jaw harden to what must be the consistency of golf balls. His eyes are lasers burning deeply into his questioner."

"I really do not want to answer that question," the former Grand Kleagle glowered. "It is something I have addressed time and time again."

"He is tired of hearing about it," Schram wrote. "Tired of having to answer for it. It was just a mistake of youth, he goes on."

Finally, Byrd explained in testy tones, "Just as a lot of young people these days join organizations they regret joining, I joined as a youth and regretted it later. I made a mistake."

In a comprehensive Lexis-Nexis search through 32 years of media reports on Sen. Byrd's Klan past, NewsMax.com was unable to unearth a single quote where the top Democrat used the word "apology" or "apologize" - or where he strongly condemned the violent hate group in any way.

Byrd's strongest statement on the Klan was apparently delivered during the same 1981 Washington Post interview.

"I abhor the Klan," the Senate Democrat said. "Every time I see on television men wearing robes, it turns me off. I look upon the Klan as a silly, asinine group that tries to act outside the law, and uses violence and intimidation as their currency."

But Byrd's references throughout the years to the murderous hate group seem peppered with adjectives like "silly" and "asinine" rather than the stronger language one might expect about a group he claims to "abhor."

Nowhere among the top Democrat's Klan quotes could we find terms like "dangerous," "racist" or, for that matter, any reference whatsoever to the group's persecution of blacks.

Despite Byrd's not using words like "apology" and "apologize," his representatives have insisted that he has repeatedly made his "regrets" about his Klan days clear.

On several occasions the former Kleagle has talked about the "mistake" he made that will dog him for the rest of his days. Once he actually referred to joining the group of black-lynching racists as "a youthful mistake."

Still, as late as 1946, when Byrd was well into his adulthood at age 29, the politically ambitious West Virginian didn't seem particularly regretful about his "mistake."

"The Klan is needed today as never before," Byrd proclaimed in a letter to the KKK's Imperial Grand Wizard, the Post reported.

And if he truly "abhorred" his past "mistake," he didn't seem particularly eager to make amends when it came to the issue of integrating the armed forces under President Harry Truman.

In another letter written around the same time that was unearthed last year by columnist Michelle Malkin, Byrd vowed never to fight in the military "with a Negro by my side."

"I should rather die a thousand times and see old glory trampled in the dirt never to rise again," the ex-Klansman pledged, "than see this beloved land of ours become degraded by race mongrels, a throwback to the blackest specimen of the wilds."

As Malkin also noted, 20 years after Byrd described African-Americans as "race mongrels," he spent 14 hours filibustering against the 1964 Civil Rights Act. He also voted against Thurgood Marshall and Clarence Thomas, the only two blacks ever nominated for the U.S. Supreme Court.

And then, of course, there was last year's unfortunate "white n*gger" reference.

Perhaps those complaining that Sen. Lott's explicit apology didn't quite meet their standards would do better to turn their attention to Sen. Byrd's lack of contrition for his enthusiastic membership in a group whose goal was the extermination of the black race.