Posted on 06/26/2020 10:00:08 AM PDT by maggief
As the Stapleton neighborhood abandons its name — and as statues come down across the country — Sens. Cory Gardner, Michael Bennet, and the rest of Colorado’s delegation should stop the federal government from idolizing a racist.
Demand removal of dozens of memorials to former Sen. Robert Byrd, D-W. Va., starting with his portrait in the U.S. Capitol.
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The Stapleton neighborhood, built on the site of the old Stapleton Airport, is changing its name because former Democratic Denver Mayor Benjamin Stapleton joined the Klan briefly in the 1920s. At the time, the Klan was a veritable appendage of the Democratic Party, and membership was a means of getting elected.
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“Rather I should die a thousand times, and see Old Glory trampled in the dirt never to rise again, than to see this beloved land of ours become degraded by race mongrels, a throwback to the blackest specimen from the wilds,” Byrd wrote in a 1944 letter to segregationist Sen. Theodore Bilbo, D-Miss.
Elected to the U.S. Senate 15 years later, as the Klan chapter he founded continued fomenting hatred, Byrd led an 83-day filibuster against the Civil Rights Act of 1964. He stood for a record-breaking 14 consecutive hours during one of his personal tirades against civil rights.
Byrd repeated the N-word during a 2001 interview, saying “I’m going to use that word. We just need to work together to make our country a better country, and I’d just as soon quit talking about it (race) so much.”
(Excerpt) Read more at gopusa.com ...
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