Chip Taylor

Senator Kleagle

This weekend, the Washington Post ran an article about Senator Byrd's new book in which he reportedly explains his long-ago membership in the Ku Klux Klan.

The 770-page book is the latest in a long series of attempts by the 87-year-old Democratic patriarch to try to explain an event early in his life that threatens to define him nearly as much as his achievements in the Senate. In it, Byrd says he viewed the Klan as a useful platform from which to launch his political career. He described it essentially as a fraternal group of elites -- doctors, lawyers, clergy, judges and other "upstanding people" who at no time engaged in or preached violence against blacks, Jews or Catholics, who historically were targets of the Klan.

His latest account is consistent with others he has offered over the years that tend to minimize his direct involvement with the Klan and explain it as a youthful indiscretion. "My only explanation for the entire episode is that I was sorely afflicted with tunnel vision -- a jejune and immature outlook -- seeing only what I wanted to see because I thought the Klan could provide an outlet for my talents and ambitions," Byrd wrote.

Emphasis mine.

So, if I understand what he is saying, he wasn't a racist. He was just willing to join a racist organization because he thought it would help him jumpstart his political career.

His statement brings to mind what the Drive-by Truckers had to say about George Wallace:

And George Wallace died back in '98 and he's in Hell now,

Not because he's a racist. His track record as a judge and his late-life quest for redemption make a good argument for his being, at worst, no worse than most white men of his generation, North or South.

But because of his blind ambition and his hunger for votes, he turned a blind eye to the suffering of Black America. And he became a pawn in the fight against the Civil Rights cause.

Fortunately for him, the Devil is also a Southerner.

Now, Byrd didn't carry on his racist nonsense^* as long or as late as Wallace did. But if I grant him the most charitable interpretation of his past -- the one he claims -- he let "his blind ambition and his hunger for votes" lead him to align himself with one of the most reprehensible organizations in the history of this country.

* Maybe his local Kleagle was more like a typical fraternal lodge or something: full of "doctors, lawyers, clergy, judges and other 'upstanding people' ." But he sure picked up the racist outlook someplace. The WaPo article highlights something not mentioned in Byrd's book:

Byrd wrote that he continued as a "Kleagle" recruiting for the Klan until early 1943, when he and his family left Crab Orchard for a welding job in a Baltimore shipyard. Returning to West Virginia after World War II ended in 1945, he launched his political career, but not before writing another letter, to one of the Senate's most notorious segregationists, Theodore Bilbo (D-Miss.), complaining about the Truman administration's efforts to integrate the military.

Byrd said in the Dec. 11, 1945, letter -- which would not become public for 42 more years with the publication of a book on blacks in the military during World War II by author Graham Smith -- that he would never fight in the armed forces "with a Negro by my side." Byrd added that, "Rather I should die a thousand times, and see old Glory trampled in the dirt never to rise again, than to see this beloved land of ours become degraded by race mongrels."

Of course, maybe Byrd didn't really believe that. Perhaps he was just currying favor with Sen. Bilbo.

You know, to help his career.