Rosa Parks died today. Here is the obituary that will appear in tomorrow's Guardian.

According to legend, on December 1 1955, a tired black woman in Montgomery, Alabama, sat in the "for whites only" front section of a bus and started the civil rights movement. Rosa Lee Parks, who has died aged 92, never stopped explaining that this was not really what happened. Nonetheless she continued to be presented as a simple soul with tired feet - a condescending misinterpretation of a woman who was an experienced and respected campaigner for civil rights.

When Rosa Parks was born in Tuskegee, the state of Alabama was rigidly segregated. But her mother, a believer in equality and justice, brought her up to defy racism, telling her about her grandfather, Sylvester Edwards who had defied white racism. Determined that her daughter would be well educated, she also sent Rosa to Miss White's School for Girls. In this era educated black girls could work either as clerks or seamstresses and Rosa Parks became skilled in the latter. Years later she remembered how racism permeated the details of everyday life. Black women would be served last if they tried to buy new shoes; when they tried a hat on in a store the saleswoman would put a bag inside it.
In the early 1940s, Rosa Parks and her husband Raymond, a barber, whom she had married in 1932, became involved in the Montgomery branch of the National Association for the Advancement of Coloured People (NAACP) where she set up the youth council. The Montgomery NAACP chapter decided to take up segregation on public transport - continuing a long tradition of African American direct action on buses. Rosa Parks had been ejected from a bus in 1943 when she refused to enter through the back door, and became well known to drivers, who would sometimes refuse to let her on.

In the late 1940s the Alabama State Conference of NAACP branches was formed and Rose Parks became its first secretary. This brought her into contact with longstanding civil rights campaigners.

These included the labour leader A Philip Randolph, who was president of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters from 1925 to 1968. In 1941 he had led a march of 50,000 against unfair government and war industry employment practices, which resulted in the Fair Employment Practices Commission. Parks also knew Ella Baker, who had worked with the Young Negroes Cooperative League under the 1930s New Deal and then organised for the NAACP in the south, becoming field secretary in 1940. It was to be Ella Baker who later helped create the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), bringing ideas of non-violent direct action and collective leadership to a new generation.

There was continuity between the NAACP's work during the 1940s and the civil rights movement locally in Montgomery as well. Rosa Parks had worked closely with the local president of the NAACP in Montgomery, ED Nixon. He had also led the local Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters for 15 years and was president of the Progressive Democrats. The emergent civil rights movement was thus linked to a whole range of progressive labour and social movements, and individuals often took part in several organisations.

In the early 1950s people were coming to Nixon with their complaints and the idea of a boycott was in the air. The first mass bus boycott had occurred in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, in 1953 and the same tactic was tried in Virginia with some success. In 1954 a group of professional black women in Montgomery, the Women's Political Council (WPC) led by Jo Ann Robinson, had protested to the mayor about segregation on the buses, telling him that feeling was so strong that 25 local organisations were discussing a boycott.

Then, early in 1955, 15-year-old Claudette Colvin was dragged off a bus and arrested. The NAACP was ready to take up her case. Inspired by the great victory against segregation in education, which had been won in 1954 with the Supreme Court Brown versus Board of Education of Topeka decision, they wanted to challenge the law. However Colvin turned out to be pregnant and they knew this would bring bad publicity.

Rosa Parks in contrast, was married, respectable, quiet and dignified. She understood local politics and, moreover, had been encouraged by a white civil rights campaigner Virginia Durr, whose husband acted as a lawyer for the NAACP, to attend the Tennessee Highlander Folk school which taught courses on how to resist segregation.

Rosa Parks left Montgomery Fair, the department store where she did repairs on men's clothing, as usual on December 1. It was true that she was tired after work and pain in her shoulders, back and neck was troubling her. By chance the bus driver happened to be the very man who had forced her off the bus back in 1943. She did not, as myth would have it, sit in the whites-only front part, but sat beside a black man at the back. As more white people got on the driver told her to give up her seat. She refused.

"If you don't stand up, I'm going to call the police," he threatened. To which she replied: "You may do that."

Arrested, found guilty of violating the segregation law and fined, she consulted with her husband and her mother and decided that her arrest would serve as the test case. ED Nixon set about organising the boycott immediately. Jo Ann Robinson and Mary Fair Burks of the WPC announced her arrest to the students and teachers at Alabama State college, telling them that a boycott was being organised. They began mimeographing leaflets and getting them distributed. Nixon meanwhile contacted church leaders and progressive ministers, including Ralph Abernathy and EN French, who presented demands to the bus company on December 5. A coalition of local groups formed the Montgomery Improvement Association, which coordinated the boycott.

On the evening of December 5 thousands of people gathered at the Holt Street Baptist church where the young preacher Martin Luther King praised Rosa Parks as "one of the finest citizens of Montgomery" and called for action in protest against her arrest. His speech, which was televised, invoked American democracy, with biblical images of a righteous pilgrimage and a commitment to justice and equality for all. "We in Montgomery," he proclaimed, "are determined to work and fight until justice runs down like water and righteousness like a mighty stream."

Ninety-eight per cent of Montgomery's black citizens participated in the boycott which lasted for 381 days. Nearly 100 people were arrested, including Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King. In January and February 1956, the houses of Nixon and King were bombed. The boycott spread to Tallahassee that May. On December 20, the Supreme Court supported the decision of a lower court and federal injunctions were served on the bus company officials to end segregation. Montgomery's buses were integrated on December 21 1956.

A great victory had been won. But Rosa Parks was sacked from her tailoring job and, in 1957 left Montgomery, following harassment, for Detroit. She later became a special assistant to Congressman John Conyers until her retirement in 1988.

In 1965 she was on the historic march through Montgomery when Martin Luther King called for a "march on poverty". And, on December 1 1995, the 40th anniversary of the Montgomery bus boycott was marked by a commemorative ceremony in her honour on the spot where she had been arrested.

She continued to be extremely active, travelling extensively to lecture on the civil rights movement and the social and economic problems that continued to face black Americans. In 1987 she founded the Rosa and Raymond Parks Institute for Self-Development, which aimed to help the young and educate them about civil rights. In October 1995 she addressed the Million Man March in Washington, in 1996 she toured the US and visited South Africa, and in 1999 she was awarded the Congressional Gold Medal, America's highest civilian honour.

Her autobiography, Rosa Parks: My Story, was published in 1992. Interviewed by Brian Lanker in a collection of portraits of black women who changed America, I Dream a World, she said: "My desires were to be free as soon as I learned that there had been slavery of human beings." She carried these desires for freedom with her throughout her life.

Her husband Raymond died in 1977.

· Rosa Lee (Louise) Parks, civil rights campaigner, born February 4 1913; died October 24 2005

http://www.guardian.co.uk/usa/story/0,12271,1600274,00.html

Rosa Parks is perhaps the preeminent example of how a simple act by a simple person can change history.

I was born in North Carolina in 1965 and move to NYC with my mom and sister in 1970. My dad stayed in NC until 1981 so I visited the state frequently. One thing I notices is that is was far more common to see Blacks and Whites interacting socially in NC than in NYC. I believe before Rosa Parks refused to get out of her seat one would never see members of the two races speaking with each other in the South.

The body of Rosa Parks lies in honor at the Rotunda in Washington, the first woman to be given this honour and only the second African-American, she shares an honour bestowed upon the likes of Abraham Lincoln and John F. Kennedy, what a fitting tribute for a woman who did so much for the American civil rights movement.

Amen, Adam, well put.

I see that right-wing politicians like George Bush are trying desperately to identify themselves with Rosa Parks. However, I would ask, where were you in the 1950s when she and millions of other black Americans were being treated as second-class citizens? Did you take part in those “Freedom Rides” where whites broke Jim Crow laws in an attempt to bring this disgrace to the world’s attention? The answer is no. Those whites were left-wingers who were denounced by the Republican Party as “communists” who were trying to undermine respect for "law and order". I find the hypocrisy of Bush and company sickening. That goes for Tim Gratz as well.

Who are you to judge me as a hypocrite, John?

For your information I was only a high school student while the civil rights movement of the sixties was going on. Moreover, I admit that though I was a strong supporter of civil rights, I was concerned that the introduction of white northerners into the South (the South called them "Northern agitators") would only increase Southern intransigence and indeed delay progress in civil rights. In my opinion, what really made progress was the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965. But in retrospect it was the civil rights movement that showed the nation how bad things were and demonstrated the need for the legislation.

And by the way John another reason I am a Republican is because all the Southern racists like Bull Conners were Democrats. You claim the Republican Party called the civil rights workers "communists". That's just another Simkin lie. I challenge you to identify one Republican law-maker who branded the civil rights workers as "communists". That was the Southern Democrats, John. The same ones who supported Kennedy and Johnson in 1960.

I saw the Democrat Party in 1960 as composed in the North of corrupt big city bosses, with much support from organized crime, and in the South by racists. In fact, that was a large part of the coalition that elected JFK.

And, a bit parenthetically, the candidate I would most like to see the GOP nominate in 2008 happens to be black.

For a start, Barry Goldwater. It was of course the line taken by William F. Buckley, the man who founded that group that you joined, Young Americans for Freedom.

It is true that in the South the Democratic Party was dominated by racists. However, there were others like Ralph Yarborough, who was consistent in his support for civil rights.

It is also true that it was members of the Democratic Party in the North who played an important role in the Freedom Riders campaign. Others were members of left-wing organizations such as CORE. However, as far as I can discover, none were members of the Republican Party.

All right, John: cite a quotation from either Goldwater or William F. Buckley, Jr. to the effect that all (or most) civil rights workers were Communists.

Your saying so, without any citation, proves nothing.

I should add, and I presume you would agree, that there were some civil rights workers who were in fact Communist Party members.

But your original post clearly implied that Republicans denounced as Communists left-wing civil rights workers who were not in fact Communists, and attempted to so brand the entire movement.


Also re Southern racists, remember that Buckley helped to write extremists such as the Birchers out of the conservative movement, even though it could cost Goldwater political support. But the Northern Democrats, including Kennedy, were willing to and actively solicited the support of these Southern racists. I submit that the activities of the Southern racists were far more deleterious to our society (and to blacks in particular, of course) than the far-out ideas of the Birchers. To get in bed politically with the racists, in my opinion, effectively approves their ideas and activities. Not to say there were not some Democrats with the courage to stand up to the Southern racists. Hubert Humphrey comes to mind.

One should note that it has been twenty-four hours and John has not yet been able to document the remarks he attributed to Goldwater and Buckley.

I think I can demonstrate that there is no basis for close to half of the assertions John posts.

William Buckley’s belief that the civil rights movement was part of a communist conspiracy to undermine the American way of life was a common theme in the National Review. For examples of this see John B. Judis’ book, William F. Buckley: Patron Saint of the Conservatives, 1988 (pages, 56, 132, 139, 191, 209, 242, 268-69, and 308).


This was a common position of the far right in America, both in the North and South. It was of course the view of Barry Goldwater and the right-wing of the Republican Party. See for example Rick Perlstein’s Before the Storm: Barry Goldwater and the Unmaking of the American Consensus, (page 447). I know you have a copy of this book because you advised me to buy it.

It was the reason why they opposed Richard Nixon’s as presidential candidate in 1960. He was associated with Dwight Eisenhower’s policy of upholding decisions made against racism made by the Supreme Court during his period as vice-president (1952-1960).

I would like to ask you a question. Can you name one right-wing Republican who campaigned for black civil rights in the 1950s and early 1960s?

John wrote:

I would like to ask you a question. Can you name one right-wing Republican who campaigned for black civil rights in the 1950s and early 1960s?

Certainly, John. Richard Nixon. See Caro's "Lyndon Johnson: Master of the Senate."

Also Dwight Eisenhower and Herbert Brownwell, who helped fashion the 1957 Civil Rights Bill. (Same source.)

Also Sen. Everett Dirksen, the Senate Republican leader who helped secure passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

This list is far from inclusive.

And frankly the fact that you were not aware of this demonstrates to me that you are either: 1) less than truthful; or 2) not as widely read on the politics of the 1950s and 1960s as you should be to be pontificating as you do. I think anyone who wants to understand the politics of those two decades ought to read Caro's magisterial multi-volume LBJ biographies as well as the Bechloss books on the LBJ tape transcripts. I prefer to attribute your post to ignorance rather than to dishonesty.

It's almost unbelievable, however, that you were not aware of Dirksen's seminal role in the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

Here poor old me, you you have blasted as "having committed intellectual suicide" and "having an inferior intellect" knows those things, and YOU didn't???

I said campaigned, not supported. As I pointed out earlier, it was because Eisenhower and Nixon went along with the Supreme Court’s decisions on segregation and discrimination that your friends, William Buckley and Robert Welch put is around that Eisenhower and Nixon were under the control of the communists. That is why Buckley and the Young Americans for Freedom campaigned for Barry Goldwater against Nixon in 1960 (when Goldwater dropped out of the race they supported William Knowland).




You have referred several times over the last few days questioning my skills as a historian. In my defence I would say that I have a degree in history, taught the subject for nearly 30 years, and have been the author of history books that have sold over 100,000 copies.

You are on the other-hand have a degree in law and worked as a lawyer until you were disbarred from the profession. Maybe you should explain why you are a disbarred lawyer. Has it got anything to do with not telling the truth?

John, I think your distinction between "campaigned for" and "supported civil rights legislation" is a distinction without a difference. If you had read Caro, you would have known that in 1956 Nixon had campaigned in Harlem promising to try to end the filibuster that the Southern democrat racists used to stop civil rights legislation.

My friends Buckley and Welch? You know darn well I was never a supporter of the John Birch Society. It's just another Simkin smear!! Just as you attempted to smear Buckley by implying he might have been involvedc in the assassination, until you backed off when Raymond Carroll pointed out how ridiculous that was. Your tactics put McCarthy to shame. Although I think most if not all Communists would lie for the Party cause, I do not think most (American anyway) Communists would necessarily murder even if ordered to do so. McCarthy, rightly or wrongly, accused people of being Communists. You have wrongfully accused people of being murderers! A far more serious false charge than anyone McCarthy ever made.

What you fail to grasp is that I am not a supporter of the Democratic Party. Nor would I be if I lived in the US. I find it difficult to understand how you cannot distinguish between support and campaigned. People campaign for things because they think the issue is very important. As with active supporters of Civil Rights, this meant risking their physical well-being by taking part in “freedom rides” etc. This is something that no right-wing Republican politicians did before the passing of civil rights legislation in 1964 and 1965.

It is true that Nixon told certain audiences that he was in favour of civil rights legislation. That is why he was hated by right-wing figures such as William Buckley. Nixon was not trusted by Buckley and his followers and was opposed by the right-wing (they supported William Knowland in 1960 Barry Goldwater in 1964).

Buckley pointed out in private correspondence in 1960 that he considered Kennedy to the right of Nixon. However, he was unwilling to endorse either candidate because he considered both of them as “unreliable” on the civil rights issue.

Nixon did move to the right after 1968. However, he was never accepted by the right-wing of the Republican Party. This view was reinforced by his failure to try and win the war in Vietnam (something he had promised the right he would do) and his willingness to have talks with China and the Soviet Union.




Maybe you could point out where on the Forum I have accused members of the Republican Party of being murderers. Then we can take a look at the evidence for these claims.

John, your post above seems better than the last. It deserves a comment and I had started a long one and touched the wrong button and the whole thing disappeared. This has happened to me before. Microsoft Word has a "reverse" key that can reverse such mistakes. Are you aware of any way to reverse an inadvertent reversal here? Any help you or any other member has would be appreciated.

For now, cheers!

One small initial comment: I do not think many Democrat politicians were actually civil rights workers, any more than Republican politicians went in the field and risked their lives. I could be wrong about this and if so I assume someone will correct me if I am.

Most of the civil rights workers (at least those from the North) were Democrats or socialists (at least I think this to be the case).

However, perhaps you can identify the party affiliation of the first black member of a President's cabinet and the party affiliation first of the first black man elected to the U.S. Senate. And for extra credit: the identity and race of the man G. Gordon Libby regularly calls "the smartest man in the United States".

I challenged John to support his statement that the Republican Party "called the civil rights workers communists".

This is how he replied in part:

This was a common position of the far right in America, both in the North and South. It was of course the view of Barry Goldwater and the right-wing of the Republican Party. See for example Rick Perlstein’s Before the Storm: Barry Goldwater and the Unmaking of the American Consensus, (page 447). I know you have a copy of this book because you advised me to buy it.

After the hurricane it took me a while to find Perlstein's book. But I did and looked up John's reference. The only thing I could find on page 447 was the following:

Evans and Novak wrote after a reporting trip to San Francisco in March: "Here as elsewhere the Negro is in danger of losing control over the civil rights movement to thugs and Communists."

There is no reference on that page to any such statements made by Barry Goldwater or any other Republican, far-right or not. John has cited a reference that does not support his statement. Very interesting indeed.

John also wrote in response:

William Buckley’s belief that the civil rights movement was part of a communist conspiracy to undermine the American way of life was a common theme in the National Review. For examples of this see John B. Judis’ book, William F. Buckley: Patron Saint of the Conservatives, 1988 (pages, 56, 132, 139, 191, 209, 242, 268-69, and 308).

I do not have access to Judis' book. Considering the fact that Perlstein's book does not say what John attributed to it, I think John should include the actual statements in that book. I was a regular reader of National Review and although it was many moons ago I never remember words to the effect that John attributes to National Review.

So John I renew my challenge if indeed you are as accurate a historian as you claim to be, where is the support for the statement you made?

Here is exactly what John wrote:

Those whites were left-wingers who were denounced by the Republican Party as “communists” who were trying to undermine respect for "law and order". I find the hypocrisy of Bush and company sickening. That goes for Tim Gratz as well.

He of course has so far failed to support his statement. Moreover, even if (which I doubt) a Republican politician made such a statement, that is not the same as the Republican Party as a party making such a statement. This is at a minimum very sloppy writing. Moreover, John has yet to provide any proof that any Republican politician made such a statement.

And how dare John call me a hypocrite! As I have said before, I was sickened by how the Southern Democrat Sheriffs treated the civil rights protestors. And why is Bush, in John's view, a hypocrite? Onviously, George cannot take credit for actions of his relatives but I'll bet you a dozen doughnuts that Prescott Bush always voted correctly on civil rights legislation while he was in Congress.

I proudly belong to the Party that elected the first black senator and will elect the first black president!

John says he is not a Democrat but why is his outrage directed at the Republican Party when it was the Democrats who were the racists? And of course that is the same party that still accepts a former leader of the Ku Klux Klan as a Senator! Talk about hypocricy!!! Where is John's outrage at the Party that for so long accepted the support of Southern racists and used that support to elect its presidents?

I see you have not explained to the members what appears in the first two paragraphs of Rick Perlstein’s book. On line 11 Perlstein talks about members of organizations such as Young Americans for Freedom wearing badges “I AM A RIGHT-WING EXTREMIST” who compared their activities to Rosa Parks. Perlstein goes on to look at what he calls “an inappropriate overabundance of political commitment”.

As Perlstein points out, the journalists, Rowland Evans and Robert Novak, did claim that the civil rights movement was under the control of “communists”. Both these men are long-term apologists for the Republican Party. It is no coincidence that Libby and Rove leaked the Joseph Wilson story to Novak (see thread on the New Watergate).

John, nothing you said in this post or in the first two paragraphs of the Perlstein book supports your statement that the Republican Party said that the civil rights movement was a communist conspiracy, John.

Do you have the intellectual integrity to withdraw the statement you made since you cannot support it?(You cannot support it because there is no truth to it.)

You wrote:

As Perlstein points out, the journalists, Rowland Evans and Robert Novak, did claim that the civil rights movement was under the control of “communists”.

John, can you read?

Here is exactly what Perlstein says Evans and Novak wrote:

Evans and Novak wrote after a reporting trip to San Francisco in March: "Here as elsewhere the Negro is in danger of losing control over the civil rights movement to thugs and Communists."

Now it is far different to say that a movement is in danger of losing control to the Communists than that it is (now) under the control of the communists.

So you are STILL not getting it right!

Evans and Novak were wrong (as Perlstein points out). But they were not "the Republican Party" and even they did not make the statement that the civil rights movement was a Communist conspiracy. What they said, rightly or wrongly, was that "thugs and Communists" were trying to take it over.

On page 133 Judis writing about the National Review’s constant attack on Eisenhower claims that Buckley and the other editors constantly “condemned the administration’s concessions to communism and the welfare state, and they defended the South’s resistance to racial integration.”

On page 139 Judis explains why Buckley argued against blacks having the vote. He writes: “Buckley would claim that he was asserting the de facto rather than genetic inferiority of blacks. But the inescapable point was that he was willing to cite an individual’s membership in a “race” – regardless of that person’s educational background or intelligence – to disqualify him from voting.”

Judis then goes on to look at why Buckley was so against blacks having the vote. Buckley explained in the National Review many times that if blacks got the vote they would support politicians who wanted to increase welfare spending. As quoted earlier, Buckley equated the welfare state with communism.

Buckley believed that Martin Luther King and other civil rights leaders were communists (based on information he received from J. Edgar Hoover). As he wrote in National Review on 19th August, 1967, as far as he was concerned, King was comparable to Hitler and Lenin. Therefore, King needed to be repressed: “the non-violent avenger Dr. King, that in the unlikely event that he succeeds in mobilizing his legions, they will be most efficiently, indeed most zestfully, repressed.”

Buckley, again relying on information given to him by Hoover, also believed the communists controlled the anti-war movement. Like many right-wingers, Buckley watched in horror as in the 1960s as the anti-war, civil rights, trade unions and anti-poverty groups began to merge (pages 308-309). It is of course no coincidence that Martin Luther King was assassinated at a time when he was widening his attacks to the Vietnam War and to the way that the poor were being treated in America. This grand coalition was indeed posing a serious threat to the power structure of the United States.

John, I appreciate your time and effort in writing this, since I do not have access to the Judis book. I'll look closely at it and then comment tomorrow. But a few initial thoughts:

Hoover may very well have thought King a Communist. Perhaps (emphasize perhaps) Buckley did as well, as Judis claims.

If possible, I would like to see more of the quotation from the August 19, 1967 National Review where Judis claims Buckley compared King to Hitler and Lenin.

But a careful reading of your post does not support a statement that Buckley wrote that the civil rights movement was controlled by Communists. What it says is that Buckley believed King was a Communist and he wrote a column comparing him to Hitler and Stalin.

From your post, it appears that Judis does not claim that Buckley ever publicly stated or wrote that King was a communist (or that the civil rights movement was controlled by communists).

Therefore, the Judis book does not appear to support your assertion that "the Republican Party called the civil rights workers communists". We do not even have a clear reference that even Buckley ever wrote that.

What we seem to have is only this: J. Edgar Hoover and a prominent Republican thought King was a Communist. That is a far, far cry from your statement that "the Republican Party said civil rights workers were communists". You can hardly translate the thoughts of Hoover and Buckley into a statement by the Republican Party. That's quite a leap!

Next question: if Buckley never wrote that King was a Communist, how does Judis know what Buckley thought? If Buckley wrote a piece comparing King to Hitler and Stalin, maybe Buckley thought he was a Nazi. It's a non sequitur, John.

The Democratic Party did contain a lot of racists in the Deep South. They also included a lot of people committed to civil rights. Members of the Democratic Party in the North of course favoured civil rights in the Deep South. When in 1964 the Democratic Party united to pass civil rights legislation, the Republican Party man an attempt to win the racist vote in the Deep South by putting up Barry Goldwater as its candidate. Goldwater had a long record of defending Jim Crow laws. Partly as a result of the great sadness people felt about the death of JFK, who had shown in the last two years of his presidency, the American party rejected the racism of Goldwater. However, since then, white racists in the Deep South have given their vote to the Republican Party.

The civil rights legislation of 1964 was passed with strong support from the Republican Party and its Senate leader Everett Dirksen, a fact you conveniently fail to mention.

And Goldwater was no racist. He integrated his department store and did other things to advance race relations. He did not believe that the federal government should dictate to states. I think he was wrong to emphasize state's rights and proprty owner's rights over civil rights. I am not sure if he later came to accept that he was wrong in opposing the Civil Rights Act of 1964. But he was no racist.

What support have you for your statement that "white racists have given their vote to the Republican Party"? What a broad over-generalization! Do you mean every Southern racist. most southern racists, or what?

And let me remind you once more the party to which Harry Ku Klux Klan Byrd belongs. Do you suppose there are racists who support their former klan-mate (and thus Democrats)?

The same thing happened when you were going to provide evidence about Fidel Castro and the bombing of New York. We are still waiting. The evidence obviously does not exist. Nor will you find evidence on this Forum of me accusing Republican leaders of murdering JFK.

John wrote:

Nor will you find evidence on this Forum of me accusing Republican leaders of murdering JFK.

But, when I repeatedly asked John to state that there was no evidence to support Shanet's claim that C Douglas Dillon orchestrated the assassination, he declined to do so. Granted, this is not precisely the same as John accusing Dillon but his failure to renounce Shanet's groundless claim certainly comes close to vouching for it.

and John also said this about William F. Buckley, Jr.:

[i]I have never heard the name William Frank Buckley [he is refering to Junior--Tim] mentioned in relation to the JFK assassination. However, there is evidence to suggest that he was willing to go to extreme measures to get Barry Goldwater elected in 1964. Is it possible that after the Cuban Missile Crisis and the failure of Operation Tilt, Buckley thought that more extreme measures were needed.
. . .

Is it possible that by November 1963 Buckley knew that Goldwater would not be able to defeat JFK in 1964? After his experiences with the covert actions of YAF, might he have been tempted to use more extreme methods to stop JFK being reelected?


That comes to at least a hair's width of accusing Buckley of being a conspirator!

I should also add that black people have held the most important Cabinet positions under Bush 41 and Bush 43. Further demonstrating the inanity of John's post about Bush's hypocricy on race matters.

Should any black person vote for a Democrat presidential candidate until the Democrats have forced Sen. KKK Byrd to apologize for his racism and his membership in the Ku Klux Klan? The Republican Party, of course, rightly stripped Trent Lott of his leadership merely because he made an inappropriate remark about slavery. Yet a Democrat Senator belonged to an organization that regularly murdered and terrorized blacks!

Talk about Democrat hypocrisy!!

There is, of course, no such thing as a black Republican.

Well, the highest elected official on a state level who is a black is a Republican. (Lt. Governor of Maryland.) Read his resume. It'll knock your socks office. John and others from the UK, note he was in the London office of a major US Wall Street law firm.

http://www.mdarchives.state.md.us/msa/mdma...l/msa13921.html

And of course another rising star is Ohio Secretary of State Kenneth Blackwell who is the leading GOP candidate for governor, and whose resume is equally impressive.

http://www.kenblackwell.com/Biography.aspx


It is my prognostication that in 2006 there will be a black GOP governor and in 2008 a black GOP president or vice-president.

Did you know that a black Republican wrote the theme song for the NAACP? And that the NAACP was founded by White Republicans on the 100th birthday of Abraham Lincoln?

A BLACK REPUBLICAN WROTE THE NAACP'S NATIONAL ANTHEM

James Weldon Johnson

(1871 - 1938)

Every time the NAACP sings its national anthem, Lift Every Voice and Sing, it honors a black Republican, James Weldon Johnson. This inspirational song, which was also adopted in the 1940's by millions of black Americans as the Negro National Anthem, was written in 1900 by Johnson in collaboration with his talented musician brother, John Rosamond Johnson, to commemorate President Abraham Lincoln's birthday.

The NAACP itself was founded on President Lincoln’s 100th birthday, February 12, 1909, by white Republicans who opposed the racist practices of the Democratic Party and the lynching of blacks by Democrats.

Johnson, who was born and educated in Jacksonville, Florida, served as field secretary for the NAACP in 1916 when he was offered the position by Joel E. Springham after attending the Armenia Conference on racial issues. In 1920, Johnson became the general secretary of the NAACP, the first black man to hold that office. He resigned from his position with the NAACP in 1930 after serving the organization for nearly 15 years.

After Johnson moved to New York in 1902 and became active in the Colored Republican Club of New York, he was appointed to the post of United States Consul in Puerto Cabello, Venezuela, by Republican President Theodore Roosevelt. Johnson transferred to a similar post in Corinto, Nicaragua in 1909. His role in helping the United States Marines defeat the rebels when a revolution broke out in Nicaragua in 1912 earned Johnson wide acclaim.

In 1914, after Democrat President Woodrow Wilson from Virginia was elected, Johnson resigned from the U.S. Consular Service because he believed that there would be little opportunities for black Americans in Wilson's administration. President Wilson subsequently dismissed all black American federal officials. During Wilson's presidency, the Democrat-controlled Congress introduced the greatest number of bills proposing racial segregation and discrimination than had ever been introduced before.

The Daily American, the first black American-owned newspaper, was founded by Johnson in 1895. In the newspaper, which lasted for less than a year, Johnson addressed racial injustice, and, in keeping with his Republican values, asserted a self-help philosophy that was shared by Booker T. Washington. He also argued for the merits of racial integration and cooperation in both his newspaper and later literary works. While serving as the principal of Stanton Elementary School in Jacksonville, Johnson studied law under a white lawyer named Thomas A. Ledwith, and, in 1898, became the first black American to pass the Florida bar examination.

Johnson was a songwriter, poet, civil rights leader, and novelist. He was most likely better known for his literary works in the 1920's during the golden era of black culture and writing, known as the Harlem Renaissance, than he was for his leadership of the NAACP. He was a mentor for young writers during that time, including Langston Hughes.

Among Johnson’s works is The Autobiography of an Ex-Coloured Man, a novel about a black man who passed for white, published anonymously in 1912 and reissued in 1927 under his own name. He wrote his autobiography Along the Way in 1933, but his most celebrated work is The Book of American Negro Poetry published in 1922 that helped define what became known as the Harlem Renaissance. He and his musically talented brother, John, became a successful songwriting team on Broadway with Bob Cole, writing such hit songs as Nobody’s Lookin’ but de Owl and de Moon in 1901, Under the Bamboo Tree in 1902 and Congo Love Song in 1903.

Although he died tragically in an automobile accident in 1938 while on vacation in Maine, he is remembered for his dedication to serving his fellow human beings and his unfailing integrity.

Information about Johnson's life can be found in his papers in Yale university's Beinecke Library. The Library of Congress also has manuscripts about Johnson, including the NAACP Collection and the Booker T. Washington Papers. A comprehensive biography is James Weldon Johnson: Black Leader, Black Voice by Eugene Levy published in 1973. An essay about Johnson written by Robert E. Fleming at the University of New Mexico and published in the Literary Encyclopedia on January 8, 2001 can be found on the Internet at www.LitEncyc.com .

Earlier, John wrote (to me):

I see that right-wing politicians like George Bush are trying desperately to identify themselves with Rosa Parks. However, I would ask, where were you in the 1950s when she and millions of other black Americans were being treated as second-class citizens?

Answer:
Kindergarden. So was President Bush. (We are close to the same age.) His uncle, however, was in the Senate fighting for the civil rights bill against racist Southern Democrats.

The Democrat Party, by the way, has never apologized for the actions of its officials in defeating civil rights bills through the undemocratic filibuster, etc.