U.S. Sen. Robert C. Byrd, a story of America
No senator left a more visible legacy in his native state than the late Robert Byrd of West Virginia. He was from Sophia, my father is from nearby Mount Hope, and everywhere you go in that part of the country you see signs proclaiming “Robert Byrd this” and “Robert Byrd that.”
“West Virginia has always had four friends,” Byrd once said, “God Almighty, Sears Roebuck, Carter’s Liver Pills, and Robert C. Byrd.”
Citizens Against Government Waste lists, among other West Virginia projects, the Robert C. Byrd Locks and Dam, Robert C. Byrd Green Bank Telescope, Robert C. Byrd Drive, Robert C. Byrd Federal Correctional Institution, Robert C. Byrd Center for Hospitality and Tourism and of course the Robert C. Byrd Hardwood Technologies Center.
In effect orphaned at age 1, raised as the foster son of a miner in a home with neither electricity nor running water, Byrd’s story was an American story, from his dalliance with the KKK to his early endorsement of Barack Obama as president.
His proudest vote, he said, was that opposing military action in Iraq. Time has proven him prescient on that matter.
“If the United States leads the charge to war in the Persian Gulf, we may get lucky and achieve a rapid victory,” he warnd in 2003. “But then we will face a second war: a war to win the peace in Iraq. This war will last many years and will surely cost hundreds of billions of dollars. In light of this enormous task, it would be a great mistake to expect that this will be a replay of the 1991 war. The stakes are much higher in this conflict.”
That speech thoroughly refutes the claim of apologists today that no one could have known what the occupation of Iraq would be like. Byrd knew, as did others, but his warning fell on ears deafened to everything but the cry for war.
Over the years, people would often note Byrd’s knowledge of and affection for subjects such as Shakespeare, the Bible and Roman history, which he often mined for citations and allegoriess. But few understood that his deep immersion in such sources was the product of a poor boy’s striving to educate himself, a 19th century mindset that he shared with Abraham Lincoln, among others.
You could say that an era ended with his death this morning at age 92, but in reality his era ended a generation ago, maybe even a century ago, and Robert Carlyle Byrd was its last surviving dinosaur.
Tell us what you think about the site
Customer Care »
Vacation stops, manage subscriptions and more
AJC Services
Sections
Other Editions
Visitor Agreement | Privacy Statement
© 2013 The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
324 comments Add your comment
williebkind
June 28th, 2010
12:29 pm
HDB: Did you compare the 2nd amendment individual right to own and possess firearms to owning a car?
ken: Yes I saw the news report on the violence and destruction of the radical left at the G20 summit. Some already have posted about the Tea Party but it was a slur about eating. Liberals provoke violence and blame the conservatives. The G20 is just one more of the violence the progressive liberals have imposed on citizens. They will not stop until we stop them.
Jason T
June 28th, 2010
12:33 pm
Wikipedia:
Robert Byrd
Senator Robert Byrd was a Kleagle, a Klan recruiter, in his 20s and 30s.West Virginia’s Democratic Senator Robert Byrd was a recruiter for the Klan while in his 20s and 30s, rising to the title of Kleagle and Exalted Cyclops of his local chapter. After leaving the group, Byrd spoke in favor of the Klan during his early political career. Though he claimed to have left the organization in 1943, Byrd wrote a letter in 1946 to the group’s Imperial Wizard stating “The Klan is needed today as never before, and I am anxious to see its rebirth here in West Virginia.” Byrd defended the Klan in his 1958 U.S. Senate campaign when he was 41 years old.
Jay, a “flirtation”?
chainshaw
June 28th, 2010
12:34 pm
Exalted Cyclops is the leader of Klavern or chapter. He was voted on and elected the leader of his chapter of the Klan. Saying that he was flirting with the Klan is like saying the Bill Campbell flirted with the City of Atlanta. He was an elected leader.
Byrd was the epitome of what is wrong in Washington. Decades of buying votes, including the votes of many people that he said things like this about “I shall never fight in the armed forces with a Negro by my side… 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.”
What a great guy!
HDB
June 28th, 2010
12:39 pm
williebkind
June 28th, 2010
12:29 pm
HDB: Did you compare the 2nd amendment individual right to own and possess firearms to owning a car?
To a point….I was saying that those who own guns should be licensed and registered….as should all firearms!! In that aspect was I making the comparison.
neo-Carlinist
June 28th, 2010
12:42 pm
who cares if he flirted with or married the KKK? who cares if he was a cyclops, kleagle or klavern-keeper? do other dead former Klansmen get this much ink? he was a pork broker and nothing more. he was, as has been posted by many, a screaming example of the need for term limits and a screaming example as to why there will never be term limits – the professional politician (pimp) class is not going un-write the law which enables them to remain in power. enough about Byrd. let’s move on the 2nd Amendment/SCOTUS
HDB
June 28th, 2010
12:44 pm
The question that Jay has asked is profound; for all of those who are continually bringing forth Sen. Byrd’s past statements as per his membership in the KKK…his past statements about segregation..his fiibuster against the Civil Rights Act….AND his admission and apologies for his mistakes, please show where Strom Thurmond, Jesse Helms, Barry Goldwater, Ronald Reagan, et. al., have done likewise. I have yet to see such actions taken.
Repentance is vital……..
Robyn
June 28th, 2010
12:44 pm
Dalliance ? Flirtation ? Jay is saddened by the passing of Byrd and is in denial.
Jay
June 28th, 2010
12:46 pm
Chainsaw, do you have a source for that definition of Exalted Cyclops?
HDB
June 28th, 2010
12:48 pm
williebkind June 28th, 2010
12:29 pm
There are radicals on BOTH sides of the political spectrum…….the radical right wants armed insurrection and sedition…..note what Sharron Angle stated in Nevada!!! Would you disown them as much as I would disown the radical left??
ken
June 28th, 2010
12:54 pm
Trent Lott should get equal treatment.
Robyn
June 28th, 2010
1:02 pm
http://legal-dictionary.thefreedictionary.com/Exalted+Cyclops
Jay, you aren't being honest
June 28th, 2010
1:09 pm
Jay why not be honest and admit, by minimizing Byrd’s involvement with words like “flirtation” and “dalliance” you diminished his redemption, and his repudiation of his previous views?
DawgDad
June 28th, 2010
1:12 pm
Never fear, Jay. There is a long line of equally reprehensible characters in the Democratic party Congressional ranks ready to pick up the mantle for Byrd. Byrd’s legacy is alive and well; tax-and-spend big-government, political shakedown, and elitist demagoguery is thriving unabated.
HDB
June 28th, 2010
1:19 pm
Ken….the problem is that Trent Lott’s “conversion” was seen as more of a “save-his-a$$” affair…versus Sen. Byrd’s full conversion!! Trent Lott brought his beliefs out more recently….and more purposefully.
From wikipedia:
Trent Lott —
Political controversy ensued following remarks Lott made on December 5, 2002 at the 100th birthday party of Sen. Strom Thurmond of South Carolina. Thurmond ran for President of the United States in 1948 on the Dixiecrat (or States’ Rights) ticket. Lott said: “When Strom Thurmond ran for president, we voted for him. We’re proud of it. And if the rest of the country had followed our lead, we wouldn’t have had all these problems over the years, either.”[3]
Thurmond had based his presidential campaign largely on an explicit racial segregation platform. Lott had attracted controversy before in issues relating to civil rights. As a Congressman, he voted against renewal of the Voting Rights Act, voted against the continuation of the Civil Rights Act and opposed making Martin Luther King Jr.’s birthday a federal holiday.[4] The Washington Post reported that Lott had made similar comments about Thurmond’s candidacy in a 1980 rally.[5]
Robert Byrd —
When running for the United States House of Representatives in 1952, he announced “After about a year, I became disinterested, quit paying my dues, and dropped my membership in the organization. During the nine years that have followed, I have never been interested in the Klan.” He said he had joined the Klan because he felt it offered excitement and was anti-communist.[8] However, in 1946 or 1947 he wrote a letter to a Grand Wizard stating, “The Klan is needed today as never before and I am anxious to see its rebirth here in West Virginia and in every state in the nation.”[13]
In 1997, he told an interviewer he would encourage young people to become involved in politics, but to “Be sure you avoid the Ku Klux Klan. Don’t get that albatross around your neck. Once you’ve made that mistake, you inhibit your operations in the political arena.”[14] In his latest autobiography, Byrd explained that he was a member because he “was sorely afflicted with tunnel vision—a jejune and immature outlook—seeing only what I wanted to see because I thought the Klan could provide an outlet for my talents and ambitions.”[15] Byrd also said, in 2005,
“ I know now I was wrong. Intolerance had no place in America. I apologized a thousand times… and I don’t mind apologizing over and over again. I can’t erase what happened. ”
— Robert C. Byrd, [8]
In the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People’s (NAACP)[59] Congressional Report Card for the 108th Congress (spanning the 2003–2004 congressional session), Byrd was awarded with an approval rating of 100 percent for favoring the NAACP’s position in all 33 bills presented to the United States Senate regarding issues of their concern. Only 16 other senators that approval rating in the session. In June 2005, Byrd proposed an additional $10 million in federal funding for the Martin Luther King, Jr. National Memorial in Washington, D.C., remarking that “With the passage of time, we have come to learn that his Dream was the American Dream, and few ever expressed it more eloquently.”[60]
Byrd DID more than Lott did………
Fix-It
June 28th, 2010
1:38 pm
Do leopards change spots, do zebras change stripes? So all you wonderful liberals really like the Byrd bigot? Then you should ALL demand that Trent Lott be reinstated.
Steve
June 28th, 2010
1:50 pm
Jay,
You perform an injustice by attempting to downplay the role Byrd had within the KKK. You’re 12:18 comment comes across as though you have no journalistic research ability what-so-ever.
I agree with most that it was good he denounced them later, but he was a staunch supporter of them during the approx 10 years he served.
HDB
June 28th, 2010
1:50 pm
…and for those who keep bringing up Sen. Byrd’s voting record on Civil Rights….
Washington Post:
In the Senate, Majority Leader Lyndon B. Johnson (D-Tex.), became Mr. Byrd’s mentor, rewarding the freshman with a seat on the Appropriations Committee. In the House, Mr. Byrd had voted for the Civil Rights Act of 1957, the first significant effort to guarantee voting rights since Reconstruction. He also voted, at Johnson’s behest, for the Civil Rights Act of 1960, which established federal inspection of local voter registration rolls. Eisenhower signed the bill into law.
His detractors labeled him a racist hillbilly, but quietly over the years he worked to shed that image. When he arrived in the Senate in 1959, he had hired one of the Capitol’s first black congressional aides. When a vote on making King’s birthday a federal holiday came up on the floor of the Senate in 1983, Mr. Byrd told an aide, “I’m the only one who must vote for this bill.” In 2008, Mr. Byrd endorsed Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) for president.
Scout
June 28th, 2010
1:53 pm
The KKK was composed mostly of Democrats.
HDB
June 28th, 2010
1:53 pm
“The evil that men do lives after them; The good is oft interred with their bones.”)
T Knight
June 28th, 2010
1:59 pm
Amazing, just amazing, that Robert Byrd is given a pass because he has passed on. My heart goes out to his family and those who loved him. God will be his his judge, not me.
Gerald
June 28th, 2010
2:30 pm
As much as I hate to agree with the clearly unprincipled Bookman, the truth is that the Supreme Court had never ruled that the 2nd amendment guarantees an individual right to bear arms until 2008. Until then, it was considered a collective right. Now it being a collective right doesn’t mean a right only of the government, such as the liberals who dishonestly claim that “well-regulated militia” means stuff like the army, police, national guard and reserve etc. While citizen militias are controversial now thanks to the media offensive against them in the 1990s, they were once common, and the Constitution guaranteed the ability to own firearms, BUT ONLY TO MEMBERS OF MILITIAS. So, you don’t have to be in the national guard to own a firearm because it can be a private citizen militia, but you do have to be in a private citizen militia in order to have your right to own a gun guaranteed. So, while the 2nd amendment does guarantee private ownership of firearms, it does not guarantee INDIVIDUAL ownership of firearms. Claiming that it does is a logical and legal leap that the text and context of the 2nd amendment does not support.
Now both the left and the right claim that since private militias are obsolete, that gives them the right to make precisely that leap. The left claims that since these militias are now obsolete (and should be illegal), then the right to private ownership of arms disappears. Conservatives claims that the disappearance of militias should cause that collective but still private (or should I say private but still collective) right to being an individual right. But each side is guilty of the same thing: picking an unsupported interpretation that supports their original position. If you support individual ownership of firearms, you pick one position, if you oppose firearms (or simply private property and support government regulation of everything but abortion) then you pick the other.
The more legally honest position would be to declare the NRA and similar groups like GOA to be private citizen militias, and claim that their members have the constitutional right to bear arms. And then the debate can shift to precisely what “well-regulated” means, and whether a city (or an apartment complex or housing subdivision) can bar an NRA member from residing there.
Jason T
June 28th, 2010
2:56 pm
@Gerald
Aren’t the first 10 Amendments addressing individuals? Would the Second Amendment be the only one not addressing the rights of individuals?
The Second Amendment clearly states:
Second Amendment – Militia (United States), Sovereign state, Right to keep and bear arms.
A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.
Using your argument, should it read:
…the right of The Militia to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed.
HDB
June 28th, 2010
3:50 pm
Fix-It June 28th, 2010
1:38 pm
Note my 1:19 and 1:50 for repudiation…..
HDB
June 28th, 2010
3:54 pm
Scout
June 28th, 2010
1:53 pm
The KKK was composed mostly of Democrats.
True…until the transition of Southern Democrats to the GOP in 1964; they took that Southern conservatism…and racist paradigm to the Republican Party where it has languished since…….
Note Jesse Helms, Ronald Reagan, and Trent Lott for starters……….all were Democrats until the conservative transition……………