Sen. Robert Byrd, KKK, and Hate

"My obituary will say I was a member of the Ku Klux Klan.”

The blog  Daily Caller.com is following how lots of politico's, including Barack Obama want to have the now deceased U.S. Sen. Robert Byrd to be positively remembered. But they seem to want to forget the facts, some that have been covered in The Washington Post,  that in the early 1940s, a politically ambitious butcher from West Virginia named Bob Byrd recruited 150 of his friends and associates to form a chapter of the Klu Klux Klan. After Byrd had collected the $10 joining fee and $3 charge for a robe and hood from every applicant, the "Grand Dragon" for the mid-Atlantic states came down to tiny Crab Orchard, W.Va., to officially organize the chapter. More HERE about the Senator's Shame.

As the Daily Caller notes, in passing, Sen. Byrd will also be remembered for having joined the Klu Klux Klan as a “young man.” The Right Wing Moon Bats Love It. Look out, the White Sheets of the KKK, will be Flown at Half-Staff Today.

There is more, as reported by Jeff Crouere with the Bayou Buzz.com, before his Senate career, Byrd was a recruiter for the KKK. Three years after he supposedly left the organization, he was still writing letters on behalf of the organization. In 1946, Byrd wrote the Imperial Wizard of the KKK, “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 Union.”
After his election to the U.S. Senate, Byrd worked against the landmark 1964 civil rights legislation and even filibustered against the bill.  He voted against the Supreme Court nominations of Thurgood Marshall and Clarence Thomas, two African American nominees, and opposed the desegregation of the armed forces.

As the Daily Caller.com notes, a quick check of this morning’s obituaries reveal that in the eyes of the traditional media, Byrd the Progressive Porker is much more important than Bob the Exalted Cyclops. Byrd joined the Klan at the ripe young age of 24 — hardly a young’un by today’s standards, much less those of 1944, when Byrd refused to join the military because he might have to serve alongside “race mongrels, a throwback to the blackest specimen from the wilds,” according to a letter Byrd wrote to Sen. Theodore Bilbo at the height of World War II.

Today’s obituaries, however, made little mention of Byrd’s once-deeply held hatred for African Americans. Check out the Daily Caller for a collection of obituary snow jobs on Bob the Exalted Cyclops. Read more: Daily Caller.com

AAPP asks: Should he (Byrd) get a pass for his klan history? How many black folks was Byrd responsible for killing in West Virginia when he served as  Exalted Cyclops?  Are Americans suppose to forget that lynching of Black people in the Southern and border states became an institutionalized method used by whites to terrorize Blacks and maintain white supremacy? Should black politicians forget? Should the media forget? Should the families of those lynched by the KKK forget? Should America forget?  What do you think?

Was he the great emancipator as so many want to make him out to be? Or was he the  “white nigger,” an early 20th-century anachronism that Byrd employed not once, but twice during an interview with Tony Snow.

Before you answer those question read this:

Robert Byrd on his biggest mistake (1993):

“Well, it’s easy to state what has been my biggest mistake. The greatest mistake I ever made was joining the Klu Klux Klan. And I’ve said that many times. But one cannot erase what he has done. He can only change his ways and his thoughts. That was an albatross around my neck that I will always wear. You will read it in my obituary that I was a member of the Klu Klux Klan.”

So... What do you think now? Should we forget, or should Robert Byrd's obituary read that he was not only a member, but a leader in the Ku Klux Klan, an organization that not only  lynched, hanged and shot black men, women and children but also - burned black men women and children at the stake, maiming, dismembering, castrating and using other brutal methods of physical torture and sadism.