Barbour’s “Fairy Tale” History of Segregation

David Streeter — September 7, 2010 – 11:56 am | Civil Rights | Election 2012 | GOP Hypocrisies | Republicans Comments (0) Add a comment

Last week, rumored 2012 Presidential candidate, former Republican Party head, and current Republican Governor’s Association Chairman Mississippi Governor Haley Barbour (R-MS) attempted to pass off a revisionist history of segregation during an interview. According to The Washington Post’s Eugene Robinson:

In a recent interview with Human Events, a conservative magazine and Web site, Barbour gave his version of how the South, once a Democratic stronghold, became a Republican bastion. The 62-year-old Barbour claimed that it was ‘my generation’ that led the switch: ‘my generation, who went to integrated schools. I went to integrated college—never thought twice about it.’ The ‘old Democrats’ fought integration tooth and nail, Barbour said, but ‘by my time, people realized that was the past, it was indefensible, it wasn’t gonna be that way anymore. And so the people who really changed the South from Democrat to Republican was a different generation from those who fought integration.’

Not a word of this is true.

Robinson wrote that Barbour “is trying to sell the biggest load of revisionist nonsense about race, politics and the South” that he’s “ever heard,” and:

He has the gall to try to portray Southern Republicans as having been enlightened supporters of the civil rights movement all along. I can’t decide whether this exercise in rewriting history should be described as cynical or sinister.

Robinson explored Barbour’s background and pointed out that Barbour’s “fairy tale” is simply that. According to Robinson, Barbour must have some kind of political angle in trying to revise history:

... Haley Barbour is not stupid. Why is he telling this ridiculous story?

Maybe this is the way he wishes things had been. You’ll recall that earlier this year, when asked about a Confederate history month proclamation in Virginia that didn’t mention the detail known as slavery, Barbour said the whole thing ‘doesn’t amount to diddly.’ Most charitably, all this might be called denial.

It’s much more likely, however, that Barbour has a political purpose. The Republican Party is trying to shake its image as hostile to African Americans and other minorities. It would be consistent with this attempted makeover to pretend that the party never sought, and won, the votes of die-hard segregationists.

One problem, though: It did.

Click here to read Robinson’s op-ed in full.

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