New York Times

December 13, 2002

Lott's Walk Near the Incendiary Edge of Southern History

By PETER APPLEBOME

Many Southern politicians become experts at striking a delicate balance between celebrating their region and its heritage without endorsing the uglier aspects of its racial history.

But, as with his remarks last week in praise of Strom Thurmond's Dixiecrat campaign for the presidency in 1948, Senator Trent Lott, the incoming majority leader, has walked closer to the most incendiary reaches of Southern history and politics than almost any other major contemporary Southern politician.

Mr. Lott once told the Convention of the Sons of Confederate Veterans that "the spirit of Jefferson Davis lives in the 1984 Republican platform" and then expounded on those remarks in Southern Partisan, a magazine that celebrates the Confederacy and Southern values and traditions. Mr. Lott, while in Congress, had a column that ran periodically in the magazine of the far-right Council of Conservative Citizens, an outgrowth of the segregationist White Citizens Council, and he has spoken at the group's meetings and met with its leaders in Washington.

When a Jefferson Davis presidential library was dedicated in 1998 at Beauvoir, Davis's home on the Mississippi Gulf Coast, Mr. Lott gave a dedication speech in which he said, "Sometimes I feel closer to Jefferson Davis than any other man in America."

Southern heritage means many different things in Mississippi than it does it Vermont, and many Southerners are quick to say that they can celebrate their past and grand old men -- whether the heroism of Civil War soldiers or the career of the 100-year-old Mr. Thurmond -- without celebrating racism. And Mr. Lott is not the only Republican politician to show up, for example, in the pages of Southern Partisan. Attorney General John Ashcroft, former Senator Phil Gramm of Texas, Representatives Dick Armey of Texas and Lindsey Graham of South Carolina and former Speaker Newt Gingrich of Georgia all appeared there in lengthy interviews.

But though the reaction this time was far more intense, Mr. Lott's remarks in praise of Mr. Thurmond are not out of keeping with his statements throughout his political career, Southern political analysts say.

"A good comparison is with Thad Cochran, the other senator from Mississippi," Merle Black, a professor of politics and government at Emory University, said. "Last time Corchran ran, he got 32 percent of the black vote. Lott got 11. When you read that Lott said the same thing about Thurmond in 1980, it's like he's thinking that what worked well in Mississippi in 1980 will work for a national audience. It's like he's got a complete blind spot."

If race remains a difficult issue for Mr. Lott, it should come as no surprise. He began in politics as an aide to Representative William Colmer, one of Mississippi's staunchest segregationists, and his life has been deeply affected by Mississippi's transition from a segregated society to an integrated one. When the editor of his local paper crusaded in 1963 against segregation, one angry letter he received was from Mr. Lott's mother, Iona. She told him that if he did not publish her letter it would prove "you are truly an integrationist and I hope you not only get a hole through your office door but through your stupid head."

As president of the intra-fraternity council at the University of Mississippi in the early 1960's, Mr. Lott helped lead the opposition to integration of his fraternity, Sigma Nu, and succeeded in keeping the national fraternity all white, said Tom Johnson, the former CNN president who was then a Sigma Nu member at the University of Georgia. Mr. Johnson said he voted with Mr. Lott and has long regretted it.

"He was the leader of his chapter and a very strong voice in the national fraternity," Mr. Johnson said. "He certainly took a major role in leading the opposition to integration."

Throughout his career he has had ties to many groups with at least one foot in the racial and cultural politics of the Old South. In 1979 he received the Jefferson Davis Medal from the United Daughters of the Confederacy for his successful effort to have United States citizenship restored to Davis, who was president of the Confederacy from 1861 to 1865.

The Council of Conservative Citizens, for which Mr. Lott wrote columns, has a Web site with a home page that includes, among other things, a Confederate flag, an advertisement for a book on why the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. does not deserve a holiday in his name and an appeal to support Mr. Lott.

Mr. Lott's voting record includes, in 2001, the only negative vote on the nomination of Judge Roger Gregory as the first black judge ever seated on the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit, and votes against the Dr. King holiday in 1983 and the extension of the Voting Rights Act in 1982, both of which were supported by Mr. Thurmond.

Dan Carter, a history professor at Emory, said Mr. Lott's remarks in some ways reflected a broader amnesia about race in the way that many people -- and not just Southerners -- would like to view the nation's racial past through a soft gauzy lens.

"Looking at this in the most charitable way, you could see this as a willful re-creation of the past in which you don't want to confront the racial implications of it," Professor Carter said. "In fact, if you take race out of the Dixiecrats, there's nothing there."

Mr. Lott's supporters say he is being unfairly maligned and his views distorted.

"The fact of the matter is he was conducting a birthday party for a man that had reached the age of 100 and was giving him his due," said Walter Scott, who is black and the owner of a computer business in Jackson, Miss. " I've known Trent Lott for 25 years. He's not a racist."

Others say that much of the furor reflects a misunderstanding of Southern history and culture. When Mr. Lott praised Jefferson Davis, he spoke of Davis's commitment to conservative principles and smaller government, not race. And some Southerners say the vast spectrum of Southern groups, ranging from hate groups like the Ku Klux Klan to more academic and benign ones all get lumped together.

"I don't think talking positively about Jefferson Davis's political philosophy is ipso facto evidence of racism," said Chris Sullivan, editor of Southern Partisan, which has about 10,000 subscribers. "But a lot of people want to think that being pro-Southern or pro-Confederate is synonymous with being a racist."

Asked the relevance of Mr. Lott's actions in the past, like his opposition to integration of his fraternity, Mr. Johnson, the former CNN president, said there was no simple answer.

"I don't know," he said. "I look back with deep regret with my vote, and I hope that people will look at my record over 40 years. I think it's the same with Senator Lott. We're all measured by our votes, our record, and Trent should rightly be measured that way. In this case, it's hard for me to believe he intended to say what he said. It was a colossal mistake."