Mississippi governor backpedals on racial remarks

[WestVirginiaRebel]

L.A. Times:

Reporting from Washington — Republican Gov. Haley Barbour of Mississippi tried Tuesday to snuff out a racially charged brush fire of his own making that threatened to harm a potential 2012 presidential run.

Barbour's damage-control effort followed recent comments in a magazine interview in which he praised the white Citizens Council in his hometown of Yazoo City for helping to integrate local public schools without violence during the civil rights era.

"You heard of the Citizens Councils? Up north they think it was like the KKK. Where I come from it was an organization of town leaders," Barbour told the Weekly Standard. "We didn't have a problem with the Klan in Yazoo City."

Barbour, 63, backpedaled after a flurry of criticism. Historians pointed out that the councils — sometimes called the "white-collar Klan" — had carried out deliberate campaigns of anti-black harassment, including in Yazoo City.

In an attempt to quell the controversy, the governor released a statement condemning the Citizens Council.

He said the council was "totally indefensible, as is segregation. It was a difficult and painful era for Mississippi, the rest of the country, and especially African Americans who were persecuted in that time."

For Barbour, a onetime Republican National Committee chairman and Reagan White House political aide, the danger is that his remarks on race will become part of the narrative of any future presidential run.
________

Whoops...

[Rheo]

The rest of the quote the LA times left out.

The Boy from Yazoo City

 

Why would he apologize and make it seem like there was a Klan issue? Did he lie in the first story or am I reading the whole dang thing wrong?

--

 

Both Mr. Mott and Mr. Kelly had told me that Yazoo City was perhaps the only municipality in Mississippi that managed to integrate the schools without violence. I asked Haley Barbour why he thought that was so.

 

“Because the business community wouldn’t stand for it,” he said. “You heard of the Citizens Councils? Up north they think it was like the KKK. Where I come from it was an organization of town leaders. In Yazoo City they passed a resolution that said anybody who started a chapter of the Klan would get their ass run out of town. If you had a job, you’d lose it. If you had a store, they’d see nobody shopped there. We didn’t have a problem with the Klan in Yazoo City.”

[Casino67]

I never understood how Robert Byrd stood up to the withering criticism by all of the Democrats over his membership in the KKK. Even the use of the N word by Bobby on the floor of the Senate couldn't get them to react. But say something nice to a 100 year old congressman at a birthday party and all hell breaks out.

 

The R's have to come up with a reaction to the libs use of the 'racism' canard and quit trying to be excused for saying something that only offends a partisan liberal.