Iowa Sen. Tom Harken had a great idea for everyone at the outset of the Republicans 40 hours of "debate" over the Democratic filibuster of four of President Bush's judicial nominees: watch ABC's The Bachelor. 

Since I had some down time between shows I decided to flip over to C-SPAN2 and watch some of the riveting debate. What was shown was a lot of big placards, Republican outrage and smirking by Democrats like Sen. Charles Schumer (D-NY), who had to be laughing inside at the spectacle. But what caught my eye and ear was an exchange between Republican Senators Lamar Alexander and Orrin Hatch.

Alexander, R-Tennessee and Utah's Hatch, the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, were dogmatic in stating that the use of the filibuster in the 1950s against civil rights legislation was used "in a despicable way."

The two of them kept going on and on and on about how terrible those filibusters were and how minorities  were disenfranchised by the actions of their Senate predecessors. As they continued with their verbal assault, I wondered what their former esteemed colleague, the late Sen. Strom Thurmond (R-SC), would have thought of their words. Remember, it is Thurmond who holds the Senate record for the longest individual filibuster. And what was it set over? The debate of a civil rights bill.

I¹ll bet Alexander and Hatch never shared their true feelings about what Thurmond and a band of southern Democrats did to disenfranchise black folks during the 1950s and 1960s. Did they consider Thurmond shameful for his avid participation? Do they consider the Southern Manifesto to be an abomination? Do they believe that his 1948 presidential campaign was also despicable because it was a racist states rights effort?

If they were serious about their feelings, I'm sure Hatch and Alexander will not support the renaming of the Capitol’s visitors center after Thurmond, a man who did all he could to make black folks feel as unwelcome as possible on Capitol Hill and the rest of the country.

And just in case you started to fall for the ruse, let's set the record straight on the GOP and black folks the last 40 years:

• It was indeed southern Democrats who fought civil rights legislation. Yet Barry Goldwater, the hero of the Republican Party, fought the 1964 Civil Rights Act, and it was his 1964 presidential run that led the GOP to become the anti-integration party. When the national Democratic Party embraced civil rights, all of those bigoted imbeciles left and went to the GOP.
• It was Richard Nixon and the GOP who have played on racial fears to divide this country by implementing the southern strategy, which to this day has kept the South in Republican hands.
• Ronald Reagan may have extended the Voting Rights Act in 1982, but he
  fought it like a dog. Then again, he called the Voting Rights Act of 1965 "humiliating to the South."
• President George Bush vetoed the Civil Rights Act in 1990 when it came up for renewal.
• Which party fought the Martin Luther King Jr. national holiday? The GOP. Which party vigorously fought efforts to impose sanctions against the apartheid regime in South Africa? That's right, the party of Lincoln.
• Hatch also slammed the Democrats for being anti-Hispanic for holding up the nomination of Miguel Estrada. I guess he forgot about all of the Hispanics and African Americans nominated by President Clinton that Hatch didn't even let have a hearing.

But the person who was the most indignant was Georgia Sen. Zell Miller. Yes, he is officially a Democrat, but he is nothing more than a Republican with Democratic clothes.

In defending the nomination of California Supreme Court Justice Janice Rogers Brown's nomination to the federal bench, the Georgia senator thundered: "The Democrats in this chamber...(are) standing in the doorway, and they've got a sign: Conservative African-American women need not apply. And if you have the temerity to do so your reputation will be shattered and your dignity will be shredded. Gal, you will be lynched."

This wasn't the first time Republican senators and their supporters have used lynching to describe what is happening to Bush¹s judicial nominees. Hatch has said it several times, and Miller defended the use, saying he wasn't the first one to do so. Who was he relying on for cover? Conservative columnist and economist Thomas Sowell.

The comparison also brought back memories of Clarence Thomas. During his contentious 1991 U.S. Supreme Court hearings, Thomas said he was being put through a "high tech lynching for uppity blacks." I can recall that statement evoking sympathy from a number of black friends. That's when the tide began to turn for Thomas, and he was confirmed soon thereafter.

Yet Miller's use of lynching to describe the situation didn't sit too well with Wade Henderson, director of the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights. "Either Senator Miller has conveniently forgotten a frightening period of American history, or he is willfully demeaning all those African-Americans who were hung from trees throughout the period of racial segregation in the South," said Henderson, according to CNN.com.

Henderson demanded an apology from Miller, but the Senator remained unrepentant, saying in a statement: "The tragedy here does not lie in my floor speech this morning. The tragedy lies in what is happening in the United States Senate to this highly qualified conservative, African-American jurist. I would put my record on civil rights up against anyone's. As Georgia's governor, I named more African-Americans to state boards than any Georgia governor, and I named more African-Americans to judgeships than all previous governors combined. I named an African-American female as the first to serve on the Georgia Supreme Court. I also appointed an African-American as state Attorney General, the first one in the nation at the time."

Zell, I don't give a damn how many black folks you have appointed in your career. That's not the issue. Lynching, which meant tossing a rope over a tree, tying a noose around the neck of a black man, woman or child, and hanging them, is murder. It means snuffing the life out of a human being. It was white American terrorism against fellow Americans who happened to be black.

According to Daryl Fears of the Washington Post: "Lynching historically refers to a 50-year span of racial violence starting in 1882, during which 2,500 black men, women and children were kidnapped, beaten, burned, hanged and otherwise killed, according to E.M. Beck, a University of Georgia professor who co-wrote a book on the period titled, "A Festival of Violence: An Analysis of Southern Lynchings, 1882-1930."

What happened to Clarence Thomas and now Janice Rogers Brown isn't a lynching. It¹s politics. If you want to know the victims of lynchings, go and talk to the families of the 435 Georgia blacks who were lynched in those 50 years (23 were white. Mississippi had 538 victims, of whom 509, or 95%, were black).

Zell, if you, Orrin Hatch and any other Republicans want to stand up and oppose the Democratic filibuster of judges, go right ahead. But to act as if you are protectors of the civil rights of African Americans - and using lynchings as a part of your argument - is an abomination.

Roland S. Martin is founder and editor of BlackAmericaToday.com. His columns are syndicated to newspapers nationwide by Creators Syndicate. He can be reached at [email protected].

November 20, 2003
Issue 65

is published every Thursday.