Competing Visions

John J. Miller on Jesse Helms:

He "opposed civil rights"? Uh, no. He opposed a particular vision of them.

Here's an ad Helms helped make for Willis Smith's 1950 Senate campaign against Frank Graham:

White people, wake up before it is too late. Do you want Negroes working beside you, your wife and your daughters, in your mills and factories? Frank Graham favors mingling of the races.

The "particular vision of civil rights" that Helms opposed was the vision in which African-Americans are permitted to work beside white people and in which the races are permitted to mingle.

UPDATE: See also "The civil rights movement, as Dr. King calls it, has had an uncommon number of moral degenerates leading the parade". Helms, unlike today's National Review writers, didn't seem to have been confused about this. He, like National Review, opposed civil rights.

Comments

Helms opposed a particular vision of civil rights. Martin Luther King Jr.'s, I believe.

Posted by phil | July 4, 2008 10:40 PM

I don't think he was so much opposed to human rights as he was to recognizing blacks as humans.

Posted by ben | July 4, 2008 10:43 PM

I think most Republican politicians use racism as a tool.

With Helms you felt like he really meant it.

Posted by Chris | July 4, 2008 11:01 PM

It would be swell if a black mortuary attendant with a sense of justice dropped some pig offal in Jesse's mouth before sealing it shut for good. Mingle that, Helms! It wouldn't be race-mixing, though, because Jesse Helms was always a pig.

Posted by MoeLarryAndJesus | July 4, 2008 11:07 PM

Yep, he opposed any "particular vision of civil rights" in which black people had them.

Posted by DTM | July 4, 2008 11:19 PM

Ok, so we agree with Miller's point that Helm's opposition to Civil Rights wasn't as blanket as the NYTimes portrayed it, and in fact only extended to Civil Rights that included black people.

Posted by aleks | July 4, 2008 11:26 PM

Typical liberal trying to distort the facts! Portraying Helms as denying civil rights to blacks when you know full well that he also hated homosexuals. And he probably wasn't fond of Latin Americans either.

Posted by Rob | July 4, 2008 11:53 PM

Typical liberal trying to distort the facts! Portraying Helms as denying civil rights to blacks when you know full well that he also hated homosexuals. And he probably wasn't fond of Latin Americans either.

And probably Jews and Papists, "intellectuals" and unionists.

He, like National Review, opposed civil rights.

It seemed like most of the William F. Buckley obits painted a picture of some sort of genteel conservative wordsmith and ignored the fact that he was a racist fuckwit.

Posted by ben | July 5, 2008 1:12 AM

Jesse Helms also hated what he called the "literary class," which I guess means people who can read. After all, they might go and read something dangerous like the Bill of Rights and Dr. King's writings.

Posted by Reality Man | July 5, 2008 3:25 AM

What Ben said. Any simple investigation will turn up the story that the Nat'l Review had as least as much sympathy--actually more--for the poor Southerners who's culture was under attack as for the Southern blacks who were actually being killed and essentially re-enslaved. And just like today they wrapped themselves in robes of holiness with assholes like Brent Bozell, a paleo-catholic, WFBuckley's brother in law, who finally could not live in a Godless republic any more and found the peace of God---in Franco's Spain. Those slimeballs never change.

It's their intellectual pretentions that have always driven me up the wall--Bill Buckley's darting little tongue and faux-oxford accent. Bah, he was a jerk.

Posted by JohnMcC | July 5, 2008 6:47 AM

Slightly misleading quoting from a 1950 speech.

Why don't you quote me all the attacks on Segregation made by JFK in say 1952 or 1956? And why did Stevenson win South Carolina in 52 and 56? And I have no doubt LBJ made the same Helms type statements in 1950.

Helms never was against equality for black people and didn't support segregation after '65. He became a Republican in 1970. That was 38 years ago.

The fact is liberals hate Helms because he was an effective conservative - not out of their supposed support for "civil rights" and love of the black race.

Posted by pablo H | July 5, 2008 7:42 AM

Re: "The civil rights movement, as Dr. King calls it, has had an uncommon number of moral degenerates leading the parade".

One could say the same, of course, of the party of Larry Craig, David Vitter, Mark Foley, Bob Livingston, and that Baptist dude who had a heart-attack while self-pleasuring in a double wetsuit. It might not be accurate but it's certainly pretty funny.

Posted by Hector | July 5, 2008 8:32 AM

Regarding Mr. Bozell,

I believe that Franco's Spain was on balance a pretty bad regime, and that Franco was on balance responsible for much more evil than good. I particularly reference his shooting up to 200,000 Leftist prisoners _after_ the war was over. However, not _everything_ about it was bad, and people supported the Franco regime for many reasons, some good and some bad. This wasn't a regime like Apartheid South Africa where the very identity of the government and the nation, its very reason for being and existence, were evil. Do you also despise Paul Robeson and Berthold Brecht for migrating to the SOviet bloc?

Posted by Hector | July 5, 2008 8:38 AM

Re pablo H

The liberals hate Jesse Helms because he was a fascist cocksucker.

Posted by SLC | July 5, 2008 8:48 AM

Helms never was against equality for black people

Could have fooled us.

Helms, as a prominent TV editorialist, repeatedly criticized what he called "the so-called" civil rights movement, attacked the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and portrayed the white South as a victim of a national smear campaign.

"The civil rights struggle is now no more than a political gambit leading to anarchy," Helms said in a WRAL editorial in April 1964. "It is time for politicians to stop thinking of the minority bloc votes of the next election and start thinking of the next generation. Otherwise America will be destroyed from within -- just as Karl Marx forecast."

http://www.newsobserver.com/politics/politicians/helms/story/291092.html

Posted by Gabriel | July 5, 2008 8:51 AM

Helms was a great conservative and if he was wrong on segregation, so what? So was 75 percent of the white south. He changed and so did they.

Stevenson and JFK weren't crusaders for "civil RIghts" and LBJ had MLK wiretapped and accused him -behind the scenes of being a Comp Symp..

Further, for 75 percent of the country - outside of the South - segregation and civil rights were really minor issues, even in the 60s. Even most Black didn't really care that much. The number who marched with MLK was l0 percent of the African American population.

Why do you think it took until 1956 for Rosa to sit at the front of the bus? AA just didn't care that much. They had bigger fish to fry.

Posted by pablo H | July 5, 2008 9:45 AM

Helms wasn't just wrong on segregation, he was a cheerleader and a rabblerouser for it.

Further, for 75 percent of the country - outside of the South - segregation and civil rights were really minor issues, even in the 60s. Even most Black didn't really care that much. The number who marched with MLK was l0 percent of the African American population.

Why do you think it took until 1956 for Rosa to sit at the front of the bus? AA just didn't care that much. They had bigger fish to fry.

This is, to put it politely, a fucking lie. Of course there was opposition to Jim Crow before the 1950's - what do you think all those lynchings were for? (Aside from the amusement of men like Jesse Helms.) White Americans outside the South just didn't notice until the opposition became effective. The development of mass media also played a role.

Posted by Gabriel | July 5, 2008 9:55 AM

Re pablo H

Hey, that guy Hitler wasn't all bad either. After all, he built the Autobahn, set up the Volkswagon company and did away with unemployment! What does Mr. pablo want, blood?

Posted by SLC | July 5, 2008 11:03 AM

Why do you think it took until 1956 for Rosa to sit at the front of the bus? AA just didn't care that much. They had bigger fish to fry.

Yeah, they had bigger fish to fry. And there was the the certainty that they'd get arrested, strong possibility that they'd be beaten and/ or lynched. But you're right, it was mostly the fish.

Posted by Jeff S. | July 5, 2008 11:11 AM

Pablo H says: "Helms was a great conservative and if he was wrong on segregation, so what? So was 75 percent of the white south. He changed and so did they."

Where is there any evidence that he changed? He may have stopped publicly supporting segregation once it was clear that doing so was a political lost cause, but there's no evidence that he repented from his earlier position, and his public life thereafter certainly didn't provide much evidence for some sort of evolution on racial issues.

Face it, Jesse Helms was a racist bastard. He wasn't history's greatest monster or some sort of uniquely evil historical figure, but he was a nasty bigot, and America is better place now that he is gone.

Posted by Mark in Houston | July 5, 2008 11:37 AM

"The civil rights movement, as Dr. King calls it, has had an uncommon number of moral degenerates leading the parade". Helms

Give what Bayard Riskin, Jack O'Dell, Stanley Levinson did, plus the convictions of Kings black associates for embezzling from the SCLC causing its later collapse, and the fact that King's own womanizing, beating of prostitutes, drug&alcohol abuse, Kings communications with black militants prior to riots and after statements of "my way or the rioter's way" to city officials, and Soviet ties are under a 50-year court-ordered lock and seal to prevent public scrutiny?

I'd say Helms statement is more factual than it is not.

It would be swell if a black mortuary attendant with a sense of justice dropped some pig offal in Jesse's mouth before sealing it shut for good. Mingle that, Helms! It wouldn't be race-mixing, though, because Jesse Helms was always a pig.
Posted by MoeLarryAndJesus

Remember Teddy Kennedy may pass soon and he alienated as many people as Helms did with his political beliefs. How would you like it if somebody desecrated his body on what they tought were legitimate racial, ideological grounds?

Posted by chris ford | July 5, 2008 12:08 PM

It should also be noted that fuckface Helms was also a vicious anti-gay bigot who buried the nomination of former Massachusetts Governor William Weld to be ambassador to Mexico because the latter favored gay rights. I second the comment of Ed Brayton over at his blog, shithead Helms can rot in peace.

Posted by SLC | July 5, 2008 12:09 PM

Let's not forget his charming habit, during his career as a television and newspaper commentator in North Carolina in the '60's, of referring to the University of North Carolina as the "University of Negroes and Communists." At least once on TV, Negroes was replaced by another "n" word. But I'm sure that doesn't sound like bigotry to a lot of his admirers.

Posted by stuck in 200 | July 6, 2008 1:01 AM

Your link to the Broder article is an outrageous lie and you should explain to your readers why you have failed to correct it. Broders article states that in the 1950s Helms was a aide on Willis Smiths campaign and identifies them both as Republicans.

THE FACT IS BOTH WILLIS AND HELMS WERE DEMOCRATS.
THE CAMPAIGN HE REFERS TO WAS A PRIMARY, ONE DEMOCRAT AGAINST ANOTHER DEMOCRAT.

Broders claim is even shakier since he couldn't even get the Party right and his reference to something that happened in the early fifties is a source from the 1980s.

Helms didn't even become a Republican until the 1970s. Sheesh!

Posted by Patton | July 6, 2008 9:16 AM

There was a book written about the primary, you can see it on Google. Helms is never mentioned, the Willis campaign denied all the racists campaign literature had comef rom their campaign and i fact the book points to a nemesis of Frank Port Grahams', David Clark, as the most likely source of the race baiting.

Broder is a sad hack who probably Googled his so-called facts to smear Helms with a clearly made up charge by soemone who didn't even realize Helms and Smith were life-long Democrats and Helms left the Party over the Vietnam War, not Democrats racist ways...

Posted by Patton | July 6, 2008 9:24 AM