Barbour spokesman: He's not a racist!

Haley Barbour and the KKK in Yazoo City
Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour is out with a statement today walking back his friendly comments about the White Citizens Councils of the 1960s. Here it is via Politico:  When asked why my hometown in Mississippi did not suffer the same racial violence when I was a young man that accompanied other towns' integration efforts, I accurately said the community leadership wouldn't tolerate it and helped prevent violence there. My point was my town rejected the Ku Klux Klan, but nobody should cons...

Barbour defends comments on race, but is the damage done to his potential 2012 bid? (The Ticket)
Could Haley Barbour's comments on race doom his potential 2012 GOP presidential run before it even starts? On Tuesday, the Mississippi Governor sought to clarify his remarks to the Weekly Standard's Andrew Ferguson about growing up at the height of the Civil Rights movement in Mississippi. "I just don't remember it as being that bad," Barbour had told Ferguson, noting that his hometown, Yazoo City, Miss., wasn't at the flash point of racial tensions at the time. The Governor went on to credit ...

Barbour defends school integration account...
WASHINGTON -- Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour, a potential Republican Presidential Candidate, rebutted critics Monday who said he is sugar-coating his state's history of racial integration. At issue is the January 1970 integration of Public Schools in Barbour's home town of Yazoo City, when he was 20. Historical accounts confirm the schools integrated peacefully, as Barbour stated in a recent profile in the Weekly Standard magazine. Some liberal groups, however, said his comments skimmed over th...

Leonard Zeskind: Haley Barbour Has No Excuse
Haley Barbour Has No Excuse by Leonard Zeskind Twenty-five years ago I worked for an organization in Atlanta founded as the National Anti-Klan Network. Even after we changed our name to the Center for Democratic Renewal, we remained listed in the phone book under our anti-Klan name. And occasionally we would get phone calls from people who had obviously called up information and asked for the number of the Ku Klux Klan. Several of those who called were women--white women that is--looking for ...

Barbour Explains Remarks about Desegregation
Tuesday, December 21, 2010 By Charles Babington, Associated Press Washington (AP) - Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour, a potential Republican Presidential Candidate, said Tuesday he was not trying to downplay the pain that many endured during the South's segregation era when he defended his home town's 1970 Public School integration process. Barbour spoke out a day after several liberal Activists criticized his published comments about school Desegregation in Yazoo City, which occurred when he...

Barbour explains remarks about desegregation (AP)
WASHINGTON – Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour, a potential Republican Presidential Candidate, said Tuesday he was not trying to downplay the pain that many endured during the South's segregation era when he defended his home town's 1970 Public School integration process. Barbour spoke out a day after several liberal Activists criticized his published comments about school Desegregation in Yazoo City, which occurred when he was 20. Historical accounts confirm the schools integrated peaceful...

RE: Barbour's Baggage
As Adam notes, if Mississippi Governor Haley Barbour decides to run for president, he'll come with a lot of baggage. Some of it will be of his own making. A few Barbour's comments in the story Adam cites - a profile of Barbour in the Weekly Standard by Andrew Ferguson - are coming back to bite him. Both Mr. Mott and Mr. Kelly had told me that Yazoo City was perhaps the only municipality in Mississippi that managed to integrate the schools without violence. I asked Haley Barbour why h...

Haley Barbour Responds
Get alerts when there is a new article that might interest you. When asked why my hometown in Mississippi did not suffer the same racial violence when I was a young man that accompanied other towns’ integration efforts, I accurately said the community leadership wouldn’t tolerate it and helped prevent violence there. My point was my town rejected the Ku Klux Klan, but nobody should construe that to mean I think the town leadership were saints, either. Their vehicle, called the "Citiz...

Discussing Civil Rights Era, a Governor Is Criticized
By MICHAEL D. SHEAR NYT WASHINGTON — In an interview that set off a new round of debate on Monday about racial attitudes and politics, Gov. Haley Barbour of Mississippi, a potential Republican Presidential Candidate, recalled the 1960s Civil Rights struggle in his hometown, Yazoo City, saying, “I just don’t remember it as being that bad.” In a profile published Monday in The Weekly Standard, Mr. Barbour also talked about the White Citizens’ Councils of the late 1960s, which o

Haley Barbour
Another proud native son of Disneyssippi. From the New York Times: Discussing Civil Rights Era, a Governor Is Criticized By MICHAEL D. SHEAR WASHINGTON — In an interview that set off a new round of debate on Monday about racial attitudes and politics, Gov. Haley Barbour of Mississippi, a potential Republican Presidential Candidate, recalled the 1960s civil rights struggle in his hometown, Yazoo City, saying, “I just don’t remember it as being that bad.” In a profile pu...

Haley Barbour Walks Back Remarks On Segregationist Citizens Council
WASHINGTON -- After facing intense criticism Monday over his comments about civil rights and the White Citizens Council, Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour (R) has released a follow-up statement condemning the segregationist group. When asked why my hometown in Mississippi did not suffer the same racial violence when I was a young man that accompanied other towns' integration efforts, I accurately said the community leadership wouldn't tolerate it and helped prevent violence there. My point was my...

Blog Buzz: The Barbour backlash
Ali Weinberg writes: Bloggers on the left and right responded to Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour’s statement today walking back his comments on the Civil Rights era. But the racial sensitivity at Barbour headquarters was suggested by an exchange between the Candidate and an aide who complained that there would be ''coons'' at a campaign stop at the State Fair. Embarrassed that a reporter heard this, Mr. Barbour warned that if the aide persisted in Racist remarks, he would be reincarnated as...

Possible 2012 presidential candidate Barbour clarifies civil rights remark
Mississippi Governor Haley Barbour, who may seek the Republican presidential nomination in 2012, went into damage control mode Tuesday because of remarks he made about the 1960s Civil Rights movement in his state. A profile of Barbour in a conservative magazine, The Weekly Standard, included comments from him about what life was like growing up in Yazoo City, Mississippi, in the Civil Rights movement in the 1960s. “I just don’t remember it as being that bad,” Barbour said. The ...

Barbour Spokesman Stands By Barbours Praise of White Supremacist Organization
Speaking to a Weekly Standard reporter recently, Haley Barbour said things had gone pretty smoothly in Yazoo City, Mississippi thanks to the strong influence of a moderate white supremacist organization: You heard of the Citizens Councils? Up north they think it was like the KKK. Where I come from it was an organization of town leaders . In Yazoo City they passed a resolution that said anybody who started a chapter of the Klan would get their ass run out of town. If you had a job, you’d ...

2012: Barbour Backtracks
By now, you’ve probably picked up on the story over the weekend that’s caused quite a stir regarding current Mississippi Gov. and would-be 2012 GOP presidential contender Haley Barbour. In a wide-ranging profile, the conservative Weekly Standard interviewer brings up the topic of Race Relations in Barbour’s hometown of Yazoo City, MS during the late 1950s/early 1960s, which led to either a terribly ignorant or purposely overlooked de...

Barbour's Racial Myopia.
It's a strange day at TAP when I find myself agreeing with Jim Geraghty : I stand by my earlier point that the bar for accusations of Racism has gotten dangerously low, and that Monday afternoon we saw a disturbing conveyor belt in which Barbour was compared to the worst villains of American history over a lone comment that suggests historical inaccuracy and gauzy hometown sentimentalism, not a deep-rooted hatred or a belief in one group of Americans’ inferiority. Neither inaccuracy nor oblivi...

Why this will sink Haley Barbour in 2012
There is a school of thought that Haley Barbour's comments about life in the Civil Rights-era South and Yazoo City chapter of the White Citizens Council represent some kind of cunning, premeditated political strategy -- that the Mississippi Governor, in provoking the wrath of liberal commentators, is now poised to win over sympathetic Conservatives for a potential 2012 White House bid. As the New Republic's Jonathan Chait puts it: His past is not Racist enough to disqualify him, but it is murky ...

Haley Barbour clarifies comments on civil rights era
Too late? When asked why my hometown in Mississippi did not suffer the same racial violence when I was a young man that accompanied other towns’ integration efforts, I accurately said the community leadership wouldn’t tolerate it and helped prevent violence there. My point was my town rejected the Ku Klux Klan, but nobody should construe that to mean I think the town leadership were saints, either. Their vehicle, called the ‘Citizens Council,’ is totally indefensible, as is segrega

Ouch, that is going to leave a Mark..
Okay, who left the stupid door open again?!?!? Gov. Haley Barbour (R-MS), a potential Republican Presidential Candidate, has an interesting perspective on the tumults of the Civil Rights era that swept through his Deep South state. As Barbour recalls it in a new profile in The Weekly Standard, things weren’t so bad in his hometown of Yazoo City, which took until 1970 to integrate its schools (though the final event itself is said to have gone on peacefully). For example, Barbour says that ...

Segregation Best Practices
This won't come as a surprise to those familiar with the history of the late Jim Crow Era or the White Citizens Council movement. But as author John Dittmer explains, the decision of the Yazoo City Citizens Council to try to keep out the KKK wasn't a matter of disagreeing with their objectives. They just thought their methods would be more effective in preserving Jim Crow and that it was better to have White Supremacist forces concentrated in a single organization. As the Yazoo City Citizens C...

Has 'racism' furore ended Haley Barbour's White House chances?
The 2012 presidential race is starting late - it looks like it will get going properly in the Spring, as opposed to January, as it did in 2008 - but that doesn’t mean that things aren’t happening already. Most of what’s going on is behind the scenes (Fundraising, wooing staff, drawing up strategies, sweet-talking party officials, gaming the press) but some of it is spilling out publicly. Governor Haley Barbour of Mississippi is doubtless already wishing this week...

Historian: Segregationist Citizens Councils Were A 'Terrorist Organization'
So what was Gov. Haley Barbour doing, exactly, when he defended the reputation of the Citizens Councils, a segregationist movement that was formed to oppose the Civil Rights movement after the Brown v. Board of Education Supreme Court decision? Barbour released a statement this afternoon, declaring: "My point was my town rejected the Ku Klux Klan, but nobody should construe that to mean I think the town leadership were saints, either. Their vehicle, called the 'Citizens Council,' is totally in...

Haley Barbour Responds to Racial-Tension Criticism, Calls Segregation 'Indefensible'
Conceding that the Civil Rights movement "was a difficult and painful era for Mississippi," Gov. Haley Barbour responded Tuesday to criticism of comments he made that appeared to downplay the racial tensions of the 1960s and praise segregationist groups in his home state. The Republican's latest remarks don't quite amount to an Apology, but offer some clarification about his defense of the all-white organizations called Citizens Councils, whose actions he now says are "totally indefensible." In ...

Gov. Barbour On Segregated South: It Wasn't "That Bad"
Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour (R) loves to rewrite the history of segregation in the South when talking to Journalists. In a lengthy new Weekly Standard profile, though, Barbour really outdid himself: In interviews Barbour doesn't have much to say about growing up in the midst of the Civil Rights revolution. "I just don't remember it as being that bad," he said. "I remember Martin Luther King came to town, in '62. He spoke out at the old fairground and it was full of people, black and white." D...

Barbour defends Miss. school integration account
WASHINGTON—Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour, a potential Republican Presidential Candidate, rebutted critics Monday who said he is sugar-coating his state's history of racial integration. At issue is the January 1970 integration of Public Schools in Barbour's home town of Yazoo City, when he was 20. Historical accounts confirm the schools integrated peacefully, as Barbour stated in a recent profile in the Weekly Standard magazine. Some liberal groups, however, said his comments skimmed over...