Gore Says Senate Should Censure Lott for “Fundamentally Racist” Comments

WASHINGTON–Former Vice President Al Gore said Monday that Senate Republican leader Trent Lott. Miss., should be censured unless he withdraws comments suggesting the country would have been better off if segregationist candidate Strom Thurmond had been elected president in 1948. Gore described Lott’s remarks as ”fundamentally racist.”
Appearing on CNN’s ”Inside Politics,” Gore, the 2000 Democratic presidential nominee and a possible candidate in 2004, said: ”Trent Lott made a statement that I think is a racist statement, yes. That’s why I think he should withdraw those comments or I think the United States Senate should undertake a censure of those comments.”
”It is not a small thing,” Gore said, ”for one of the half-dozen most prominent political leaders in America to say that our problems are caused by integration and that we should have had a segregationist candidate. That is divisive and it is divisive along racial lines. That’s the definition of a racist comment.”
Lott, who will become Senate majority leader when Congress convenes next month, said in a statement Monday: ”This was a lighthearted celebration of the 100th birthday of legendary Senator Strom Thurmond. My comments were not an endorsement of his positions of over 50 years ago, but of the man and his life.”
At a televised celebration Thursday of the retirement and 100th birthday of Thurmond, R-S.C., Lott told the gathering: ”I want to say this about my state: When Strom Thurmond ran for president, we voted for him. We’re proud of it. And if the rest of the country had followed our lead, we wouldn’t have had all these problems over all these years.”
Thurmond, then governor of South Carolina, ran as the nominee of the States’ Rights, or Dixiecrat, Party in 1948 with an avowed goal of preserving racial segregation.
He said at the time, ”All the laws of Washington and all the bayonets of the Army cannot force the Negroes into our homes, our schools, our churches.” The Dixiecrat Party’s platform stated, ”We stand for the segregation of the races and the racial integrity of each race.”
Last week, Lott’s spokesman, Ron Bonjean, declined to explain what the senator meant when he said the country ”wouldn’t have had all these problems over all these years” if Thurmond had won.
Thurmond carried four states–Mississippi, Alabama, Louisiana and South Carolina–in the election, in which Democrat Harry S. Truman narrowly defeated Republican Thomas Dewey.
Lott discussed the controversial remarks Monday in a private meeting with Senate Majority Leader Thomas Daschle, D-S.D.
Daschle told reporters: ”Senator Lott, in my conversation with him this morning, explained that that wasn’t how he meant them to be interpreted. I accept that. There are a lot of times when he and I go to the microphone, would like to say things we meant to say differently, and I’m sure this is one of those cases for him, as well.”
The Rev. Jesse Jackson, however, sharply criticized Lott. ”Shame on the Republican Party if it does not demote him for promoting this mean-spirited and immoral propaganda,” Jackson said.
”The civil rights movement was one of America’s finest hours. Strom Thurmond’s massive resistance to that movement, and his support in states like Mississippi, was one of history’s low points. Trent Lott must not be allowed to tarnish that truth.”