Some four decades ago, a young Trent Lott successfully battled to prevent his college fraternity from admitting blacks to any of it's chapters. Gee, what a shock; a white student at Ole Miss, doing what white students did then? Whodathunkit??
At a time when racial issues were roiling campuses across the South, some chapters of Sigma Nu fraternity in the Northeast were considering admitting African-American members, a move that would have sent a powerful statement through the tradition-bound world of sororities and fraternities. At the time, Lott was president of the intra-fraternity council at the University of Mississippi. When the issue came to a head at Sigma Nu's national convention — known as a "Grand Chapter" — in the early 1960s, "Trent was one of the strongest leaders in resisting the integration of the national fraternity in any of the chapters," recalls former CNN President Tom Johnson, then a Sigma Nu member at the University of Georgia.
The bitter debate over the issue took place at the convention in a New Orleans hotel, as Johnson recalls. Sigma Nu's executive secretary Richard Fletcher, a legendary figure in the fraternity, pleaded with the Sigma Nus to find some common ground between those who wanted to integrate and those who didn't, Johnson says. But the southerners were unbending about permitting no exceptions to the all-white policy. With their chapters threatening a walkout, the fraternity voted overwhelmingly to remain all-white.
Taken at face value, Lott's comments at Strom Thurmond's birthday party do not seem at all out of character. Granted, many formerly virulent racists have moderated their views over the years, but their are just as many who have done so only for public consumption. It would appear that one of those folks is the esteemed Senator from Mississippi.
There should be no surprise in the reality that, if you dress a bigot in a $1200 suit, guess what? You still have a bigot. Whatever changes may have taken place in Lott's thinking over the ensuing four decades, Mississippi still has an unreconstructed bigot for a Senator. Of all of the states that suffered through the years of the Civil Rights struggle, Mississippi surely deserves better.
Of course, there is the (all too real possibility) that Lott simply represents the views of a good portion of the GOP leadership. Perhaps Lott's mistake was simply straying from his prepared text.
