Douglas C. Lyons, The Sun-Sentinel

July 5, 2008

Douglas C. Lyons
The Sun-Sentinel
200 East Las Olas Boulevard
Fort Lauderdale, Florida 33301

RE: Memories

Mr. Lyons,

In your column today, “Obama’s Southern Strategy Tackles Tradition”, you make typical modern American Liberal use of eclectic indignation and then old reliable memory hole.

You mention Strom Thurmond as if his name were a four letter word. Let the record show that he was a Democrat.

Why don’t you mention other Democrats of the same era?

How about John Sparkman?

He was a Democratic Senator from Alabama. He was Adlai Stevenson’s choice for Vice President in 1952.

How about Sam Ervin?

He was a Democratic Senator form North Carolina. He ran the Senate Committee that took Nixon down.

How about William Fulbright?

He was a Democratic Senator from Arkansas. He was a favorite of the media establishment because of his enlightened views on foreign policy.

Let me reach down the memory hole and pull out an almost forgotten fact, “An inconvenient truth”, if you will. The above named Democratic Senators, inter alia, had one thing in common. They spent every waking moment of their adult lives working to keep Black kids out of schools filled with White kids.


Let the record show that a higher percentage of Republican Senators voted for all the major civil rights legislation of the ‘60s than did the Democrats.

One thing more is owed to the ledger.

You describe former Vice President Albert Arnold Gore as a “Southerner”. He was raised in the Shoreham Hotel in Washington, DC. His first contact with Black folk was when white gloved butlers served him his breakfast before school. The school, by the way, was private. He continued the tradition of shunning Washington public schools with his children. In fact, no one in his or his wife’s family ever attended a public grammar school or public high school.

Speaking of Obama’s new Southern strategy, do you think his kids will go to any of the really fine public schools in Washington should he become President?