TruthNews Commentary, July 2, 2010

"I shall never fight in the armed forces 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."

Those were the words of the late Senator Robert Byrd in 1944.

Byrd, a West Virginia Democrat and longest-serving member of the U.S. Senate, died Monday at the age of 92. Ironically, Byrd was lauded by President Barack Obama, who said, "[Byrd] had the courage to stand firm in his principles, but also the courage to change over time."

But Byrd's courage to change over time served to further his political career. Early in his career, he championed racism to defeat a Republican senator who championed integration. Later in his career, he embraced liberal causes in order to rise within the Senate ranks. Rating Byrd's voting record in 1964, the liberal lobbying group Americans for Democratic Action found that his views and the organization's were aligned only 16 percent of the time, less than even conservative Republicans of the era; by 2005, he had an ADA rating of 95 percent.

The former Ku Klux Klansman, who holds the record for the longest service in the Senate and the longest overall service in the Congress, rose to occupy several influential positions. In 2006, Byrd was elected to an unprecedented ninth consecutive term in the Senate and became the longest-serving senator in U.S. history. Byrd, who later apologized for his leadership in the Ku Klux Klan, holds the dubious distinction of being the only senator to have voted against the only two African-Americans to have been nominated to the Supreme Court.

Byrd was born Cornelius Calvin Sale, Jr. in North Wilkesboro, North Carolina, on November 20, 1917. When he was one year old, his mother died in the 1918 Flu epidemic. His father dispersed the family children among relatives. Titus and Vlurma Byrd, the infant's uncle and aunt, adopted him and renamed him Robert Carlyle Byrd, and raised him in the coal-mining region of southern West Virginia.

Byrd began his political career by joining the Ku Klux Klan in 1942 when he was 24. Byrd recruited 150 of his friends and associates to form a chapter of the Ku Klux Klan. After Byrd had collected the $10 membership fee and $3 charge for a robe and dunce cap from every applicant, the Grand Dragon for the mid-Atlantic states traveled to West Virginia to officially organize the chapter. The chapter unanimously elected Byrd the "Exalted Cyclops," or chapter leader.

In a memoir published in 2005, Byrd says he viewed the Klan as a useful platform from which to launch his political career.

Byrd avoided service in World War II, working instead as a welder in a Baltimore shipyard. However, in 1944, Byrd wrote to Mississippi Senator Theodore Bilbo, a Democrat and fellow Ku Klux Klan member, to advocate continued segregation of the U.S. military. Byrd's letter read, in part,

"I shall never fight in the armed forces 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."

Byrd won a seat in the West Virginia House of Delegates in 1946, representing Raleigh County from 1947 to 1950.

In 1947 Byrd wrote a letter to a Ku Klux Klan Grand Wizard stating, "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 nation."

In 1950, Byrd was elected to the West Virginia Senate, where he served from 1951 to 1952.

Byrd ran for the U.S. House of Representatives in 1952. During the campaign, he lied about his Ku Klux Klan involvement, stating, "After about a year, I became disinterested, quit paying my dues, and dropped my membership in the organization. During the nine years that have followed, I have never been interested in the Klan." However, Byrd's interest in the Klan continued from 1942 until at least 1947 when he wrote a letter advocating the Klan's "rebirth here in West Virginia and in every state in the nation."

Byrd defeated Republican incumbent W. Chapman Revercomb for the United States Senate in 1958. Revercomb's record supporting civil rights had become an issue, playing in the Klansman's favor. Byrd was re-elected to the Senate eight times.

Byrd joined with other Southern Democrats to filibuster the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Byrd personally filibustered the bill for 14 hours. Despite an 83-day filibuster in the Senate, both parties in Congress voted overwhelmingly in favor of the Act, and President Johnson signed the bill into law.

Byrd also opposed the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

In 1967, Byrd voted against the nomination of Thurgood Marshall, the first black appointed to the Supreme Court.

Byrd later moderated his segregationist views and voted for the 1968 Voting Rights Act. The Washington Post in 2005 explained that "like other southern and border-state Democrats of his time, Byrd came to realize that he would have to temper his blatantly segregationist views and edge toward his party's mainstream if he wanted to advance on the national stage."

Byrd's strategy paid off. He led the Democratic caucus as Senate Majority Leader from 1977 to 1981 and 1987 to 1989, and as Senate Minority Leader from 1981 to 1987. From 1989 to 1995, he served as chairman of the powerful Senate Appropriations Committee, which enabled him to steer billions of dollars in pork-barrel spending to West Virginia.

However, Byrd did not completely change his racist ways. In 1990, he voted against the nomination of Clarence Thomas to the Supreme Court. Byrd stated that he was offended by Thomas' use of the phrase "high-tech lynching of uppity blacks" in his defense against allegations of sexual harassment. Byrd claimed that Thomas exhibited "arrogance."

Byrd’s regret for his racist past reflected his opportunism, rather than true repentance. In 1997, Byrd told an interviewer he would encourage young people to become involved in politics but also: "Be sure you avoid the Ku Klux Klan. Don't get that albatross around your neck. Once you've made that mistake, you inhibit your operations in the political arena." In other words, he regretted his Klan membership not because the Klan advocates violence against blacks, but because it hurt his political career.

Bill Clinton, himself a master opportunist and the nation's "first black president," explained Byrd's membership in the Klan by saying that Byrd "was trying to get elected." Clinton's explanation, while portraying Byrd as a mere opportunist, doesn't tell the whole truth. Byrd didn't just join the Klan, he built the Klan in West Virginia. West Virginia broke away from Virginia during the Civil War in order to stay on the northern side which was fighting against slavery. West Virginia in the 1940s had few blacks and was not a hotbed of racial tension. In the same manner that Hitler stirred up latent anti-Semitism in Germany in order to get elected, Byrd created and promoted the Klan in order to build racial tension. Byrd's election to the Senate in 1958 was a consequence of the racism that he himself had helped to create.

Byrd's stated his regret that his Klan membership had become a political albatross, but he failed to recall that his Klan leadership and promotion of segregation had gotten him to the Senate in the first place. However, Senate Democrats conveniently overlooked Byrd's racist past and continued to elect him to Senate leadership positions. Byrd again served as chairman of the Appropriations Committee from 2001 to 2003 and from 2007 to 2009. Concurrent with his leadership of the Appropriations Committee, Byrd also served as President pro tempore of the Senate, in which position he continued until his death. As President pro tempore, the former Exalted Cyclops was third in line of succession for the presidency after the Vice President and the Speaker of the House.

In 2005, Byrd opposed the nomination of Condoleeza Rice for Secretary of State, who, despite Byrd's opposition, would go on to become the first black woman to serve as Secretary of State. Byrd was one of only 13 senators who voted against Rice.

Although Byrd apologized for his leadership in the Ku Klux Klan, he had no regrets about his efforts to earmark billions of federal dollars to his home state. The money paid for buildings, institutions, and roads, many that now bear his name.

Byrd's final legacy might be the racist Ku Klux Klan ideology that he espoused, which has kept West Virginia as one of the whitest states in the union, with blacks making up little more than 3 percent of the population. Byrd also kept West Virginia as one of the poorest states in the union. Rather than using the billions in pork to build sustainable jobs, he used it to build monuments to himself.