--- In [email protected], [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: > > In a message dated 8/1/05 7:59:58 P.M. Central Daylight Time, > [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: > > Al Gore, Sr., > > who was one of those who spent his life fighting > > for equality for blacks, was: "the segregationist > > Al Gore, Sr.," as if he'd spent his life doing > > precisely the opposite. > > He did. >
In reading some article sonGore Sr, it appears to me that he was a complex man living in a complex world. As the cited article says, "The elder Gore entered politics at a time in the late 1930s when Jim Crow segregation was still a bitter fact of life in the South, and though he was considered a moderate, his positions on race were complicated by the political realities of that time and place." " He believed in a gradual approach to desegregation, arguing that it could only happen over time as job and educational opportunities improved. He never claimed to be "a white knight for civil rights," said historian Badger, but rather "a moderate who believed in the Constitution . . . and who had compassion for oppressed fellow Americans." " http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn?pagename=article&contentId=A63157-2000Apr22¬Found=true I was surprised that he voted against the Civil Rights Act of 1964, and tried to stall its implementation with the Gore Amendment. "He was concerned that it went to far to fast and would be used to cut off funding of schools who appeared to be in violation." Later, Al Gore Sr. apologized for his 1964 vote and called it a big mistake. Looking at his voting record, except for the above, it was almost all pro-civil rights. - In 1956, Al Gore sr. was one of only two Southern senators who refused to sign the racist Southern Manifesto. - Voted against the Poll Tax of 1942 - Voted for Civil Rights Act of 1957 - Nominated 2 young black students from Memphis for appointment to US Air Force Academy - risky in Tennessee in 1957 - Voted for 1965 Voters Rights Act - Voted for the 1968 Fair Housing Act Some excerpts: "His cautious approach faced its stiffest test during the Senate deliberations over the landmark 1964 Civil Rights Act. He feared the act sought to accomplish too much too quickly. While distancing himself from the segregationists who bitterly opposed the measure, he spoke out against it in his own way, arguing that it would place excessive power in the hands of federal bureaucrats who might arbitrarily withhold funding from hospitals and schools perceived to be violating the law." "Sen. Gore on the floor of the U.S. Senate in 1956, taking a dramatic stand against the Southern Manifesto, calling it "the most spurious, inane, insulting" thing he has ever seen and declaiming "Hell no!" while waving away the segregationist document placed before him by colleague Strom Thurmond." "Many of the deepest tensions of American race relations were played out during the long career of Sen. Gore Sr, whose opposition to the segregated ways of his native South angered many of his constituents and eventually led to his political demise. With one notable exception, when he capitulated to regional sentiment and opposed the 1964 Civil Rights Act, the choices he made over more than three decades in Washington were courageous" "With every gesture Gore made in support of civil rights came a mailbag of angry letters from segregationists. One year after denouncing the manifesto, he voted for the 1957 Civil Rights Act and further enraged racist constituents by nominating two young black students from Memphis for appointment to the U.S. Air Force Academy." "Sen. Gore's reputation as a dauntless progressive on matters of race grew so much in later years that it is difficult to think of him as he was back in the early 1960s, at times the most conservative member of his own family. His wife often privately nudged him on racial issues. His daughter was close friends with David Halberstam, Fred Graham and other journalists who had covered the early civil rights movement for the Tennessean, and she brought the commitment and passion of their world into the family orbit. The senator considered himself an economic populist more than anything else" "When Nancy (daughter) was old enough, Pauline (wife) urged her and a friend to read Harper Lee's "To Kill a Mockingbird," and then had them read it again until the theme was etched in their memories. The ideal of a Southern lawyer committed to principles of truth and justice that transcended race and prejudice ..." ================== While a few articles does not make me an Al Gore Sr. scholar, and I am open to more information, the above record appears tobe clearly not of one whe was a "life-long segragationist". But rather of a pragmatist who appears to have supported most civil rights legislation, which took a bit of courage while representing a jim crow south in transition, and took a stand against one bill (a big one albeit) on the convicion that it was not practical, not because he opposed the goal, a decision he later came to deeply regret. To subscribe, send a message to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Or go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/FairfieldLife/ and click 'Join This Group!' Yahoo! Groups Links <*> To visit your group on the web, go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/FairfieldLife/ <*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] <*> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to: http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
