Thomas T. Connally Quotes
... a lynching of the Constitution.
Thomas T. Connally, 1877-1963, U. S. Congressman & U.S. Senator (Democrat, Senate Debate, 1948[This is one of the most ironic quotations in American history. President Truman sent a civil rights message to Congress proposing the outlawing of lynching which was quite common in the South but even extended to New Jersy and Indiana. So this senator, with the support of the other Southern Senators killed the bill claiming the it was the Constitution that was being lynched becuse the Federal government was prohibiting the right of the states to allow the lynching of Blacks and civil rights enthusiasts. It was a low point in Senate history.
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Wilson, a history and government professor and college president before politics, was has been accused of being one of the most racist Presidents since Reconstruction. Prior to his Presidency, the Federal Government had been making steady progress in hiring African Americans. Under Wilson there was a wholesale firing of a large proportion of them. Some apologists argue that his League of Nations and other major aspirations required the votes and cooperation of Southern Senators who insisted that many of the blacks be terminated. At the same time, the KKK was near the zenith of its membership and political power and was an intimidating force. Wilson’s home state of New Jersey not only had a large KKK membership but there were lynching of Blacks in his own state and when Governor and President he never asked for any anti-lynching legislation.
For years through the Jim Crow years, Whites murdered many Blacks with impunity if they were perceived to be uppity or to try and obtain their Constitutionally Protected rights. Most took place in the South. The Negroes were typically tortured, mutilated, burned and hung from trees where they would be left for days as the major purpose was to strike terror in the Southern Black population. The Southern State and local governments never opposed the policy via oratory, legislation of law enforcement. The Federal Government did not interfere either. And much of the FBI under J. Edgar Hoover actually enabled the White Citizen’s Councils and the Klu Klux Klan. The NAACP began an anti-lynching campaign and Ms. Holiday was a one-woman public exposure campaign centered around this song. The anthem itself was written by a New York City schoolteacher named Abel Meeropol, using the pen name, Lewis Allan. It reached millions of Americans and Holiday fans the world over. To view some of the historical scenes described in the song, see http://withoutsanctuary.org/main.html
Buying furniture and equipment for Negro schools was perceived by the White Population as “squandering public funds”. Web returned with the Militia but no one would testify against the Klan. Huggins left the area and went to the North. The Klan did not kill him, but they accomplished their objective of intimidating all the local people Black and White so that Negro schools would not be furnished and getting rid of the only White who tried to improve Negro schools. The methods of terrorists have not changed much since then.
Jury nullification is when the jury believes that the defendant has committed the crime alleged, but acquits anyway because it believes the law is wrong or the defendant acted properly or justly. Most trial judges detest the concept and often tell the jury that they may not engage in the practice. However, there is a long American tradition of jury nullification dating back to colonial America. This quotation shows one of the negative aspects of nullification. See {640833}.
Blacks were fighting and dying in WWII. They were equal when they were under fire, but otherwise not. The war was against fascist protagonists whose creed was inequality while the allies were upholding freedom and equality. But making that aspiration a reality was difficult.
Johnson, fundamentally an inveterate racist, tried to kill all attempts at protecting Negro rights after the Civil War. Congress rewrote the Bill to obtain enough signatures and then passed it over the President’s Veto later in the year.
Incredible as it seems today, no Black person had ever dined in the White House as a guest of the President. African American servants were common. And Abraham Lincoln had received many Black visitors as had Presidents after him. But no president had ever had a Black person to dine as a social equal. The photo, reproduced here, illustrates the parity. But that was the worst thing a President could do so far as Tillman and his fellow racists were concerned. They had, since the end of the Civil war, used violence and terrorism to murder, maim and/or intimidate the Negro population to remain in an economic and socially inferior position. In Tillman’s state over these decades they had more lynchings than legal executions and there were plenty of them. Newspapers over the South riled up the whites and there was a wave of terror to be sure that the President’s importune action would not be taken as an endorsement of the Negro’s right to any equality or even dignity. This dinner essentially wedded all the Blacks to the Republican Party and all the Southern Whites to the Democratic Party. This would remain the political situation for over 60 years until the Democrats passed the LBJ Civil Rights Act in 1964 and the Republicans decided to solicit the Southern White racists who accepted the invitation and within a few years, there was a complete reversal of party loyalty of most Blacks and most Southern White Racists.
This quotation illustrates how the racist South defeated the objectives of the Civil War and Reconstruction by the institution of Jim Crowe laws and so called “states’ rights”. It would take more than another half century for the Yankees and the vast majority of the non-Southern Americans decided that the Southerners could no longer “do as they pleased” with fellow human beings. It is hard to believe for us today that an entire section of our country could actually believe in the morality of the South but that is the tragic history of race relations in America.
He was not only an atheist himself, but he was a major opponent of organized religion which he regarded as one or the major initiators and drivers of slavery, segregation and discrimination. For this reason he was critical of Martin Luther King—{583307}. His irreligiosity had always prevented his gaining much support from his fellow African Americans even though a great writer like H. L. Menken considered Schuyler, "the best writer in America".
At the time, there was not only racial discrimination, especially in the South, but lynching—the relatively public and open killing of Blacks and other forms of racial violence were commonplace in Southern America. Truman, himself a Southerner, was considered a traitor by many Southerners because he tried to deal with the Civil Rights problem more vigorously than any previous president. The Democratic Party had “the solid South”—political control of the Southern States and there was an unwritten rule that the Party positions and leaders would not push Civil Rights and would support States rights in law enforcement. The Republicans, in the Lincoln tradition, fought hard for Civil Rights enforcement but were the minority. Truman integrated the armed forces and did what he could do via Executive Orders but could not get any laws through the Congress. When LBJ pushed the Civil Rights Bill through Congress, Southerners became Republicans and the South was solidly in the Republican camp.
He had written this text on a newspaper when he was jailed in Birmingham for violating a court order not to demonstrate. A common tactic of the Southern segregationists was to have local segregationist judges issue injunctions against civil rights demonstrations on the grounds that they would promote violence. These were generally unconstitutional, but King and others were jailed until the legal appeal could even be heard.
Thomas Terry Connally was an American politician, who represented Texas in both the U.S. Senate and the House of Representatives, as a member of the Democratic Party. He served in the U.S. House of Representatives from 1917 to 1929, and in the U.S. Senate from 1929 to 1953.
