James J. Kilpatrick, Nov. 1, 1920 – Aug. 15, 2010

http://www2.timesdispatch.com/news/2010/aug/17/jkob17-ar-457099/

His career with the evening newspaper spanned the tumultuous years after the 1954 decision by the U.S. Supreme Court that outlawed racially segregated schools — a decision against which Mr. Kilpatrick, acknowledged even by foes as a gifted wordsmith, thundered with pointed eloquence.

“These nine men repudiated the Constitution, spit upon the 10th Amendment and rewrote the fundamental law of this land to suit their own gauzy concepts of sociology,” Mr. Kilpatrick wrote after the court ruling.

“If it be said now that the South is flouting the law, let it be said to the high court: you taught us how.”

http://www2.timesdispatch.com/news/2010/aug/17/ed-kilpo17-ar-456808/ Kilpatrick: My Journey From Racism

Editor's note: The late James J. Kilpatrick, former editorial page editor for "The Richmond News Leader," wrote this piece for the "Atlanta Journal-Constitution" in 2002. It is reprinted by permission.

Our nation would have been better off, said Sen. Trent Lott, if it had elected Dixiecrat Strom Thurmond in 1948. We wouldn't have had all these problems over the years.

It was a stupid thing to say, profoundly wrong, deeply offensive. Lott was endorsing the racial segregation on which Thurmond had based his campaign. By "all these problems," he meant the difficulties experienced by white folks in adjusting to the new realities. The statement ended Lott's usefulness on the national stage -- a reality he finally accepted on Friday, with his resignation as Senate majority leader.

Why did he say what he said? Lott's 534 colleagues in the House and Senate know exactly what happened at Thurmond's birthday party. On one occasion or another, they have been there and done that. The senator was surfboarding on a wave of bonhomie. As Dr. Samuel Johnson remarked long ago, in lapidary inscriptions men are not upon their oaths. The jovial Lott sought only to make Strom feel good, a worthy endeavor. In the fulsome process he fecklessly attempted to defend the indefensible.

I can offer a second explanation, but it requires a touch of autobiography.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/08/16/AR2010081602555.html

Gene Roberts and Hank Klibanoff wrote in "The Race Beat" (2006), their Pulitzer Prize-winning book about journalism in the civil rights era.

"Kilpatrick, by propagating a whole vernacular to serve the culture of massive resistance -- interposition, nullification, states' rights, state sovereignty -- provided an intellectual shield for nearly every racist action and reaction in the coming years," Roberts and Klibanoff wrote.

Mr. Kilpatrick told a Roanoke newspaper in 1993 that he had intended merely to delay court-mandated integration because "violence was right under the city waiting to break loose. Probably, looking back, I should have had better consciousness of the immorality, the absolute evil of segregation."



http://www2.timesdispatch.com/news/2010/aug/17/jkob17r-ar-457095/ "He was a hell of a fella. He cultivated a public image on TV of being a cranky conservative . . . but he wasn't a cranky conservative at home. . . . He apologized over and over publicly and in print when he could about being on the wrong side of the segregation issue. He was a son of the South." Marianne Means, Kilpatrick's widow
November 1, 1920 – 15 August 2010