Helms-Revisionism

You probably heard that Jesse Helms died last week. But, unless you're knee-deep in the Big Con, you probably haven't experienced Helms-Revisionism.

No, I'm not talking about the boilerplate death-salutes to Helms. It is neither surprising, nor especially objectionable that the editors of the National Review might hail Helms as a "true American patriot"

What is both surprising and objectionable is the widespread insistence that Helms was not a racist.

Take a remark by Ms. Coulter:

Helms was viciously and falsely portrayed as a racist -- including in the totally objective New York Times obituary last week. In January 1963, a decade before Helms would run for office, he editorialized about Harvey Gantt, the first black student to be admitted to Clemson University in South Carolina.

Helms praised Gantt to the skies, saying he had "stoutly resisted the pose of a conquering hero" and had "turned away from the liberal press and television networks which would glorify him." Gantt, Helms said, just wanted to be an architect and "Clemson is the only college in South Carolina that can teach him how to be one."

Coulter, I suspect, found the Helms quote in a Newsweek article written back in 1990. The article (which, if you have Lexis-Nexis - is called "A Historic Race Down South) doesn't tell us much about the CONTEXT of what Helms said back in 1963.

For all I know, the praise for Gantt could be part of a longer harangue against civil rights ("Bad blacks in the street, good blacks "stoutly resisting the post of a conquering hero"")

Or the remarks could be just what Coulter makes them out to be.

Fortunately, another Helms quip helps to settle the question:

"The Negro cannot count forever on the kind of restraint that has thus far left him free to clog the streets, disrupt traffic and commerce and interfere with other men's rights." -- television interview, 1963" (Quoted in the New York Times)

In August of that same year, some 300,000 American's 'clogged' the streets of Washington D.C.

One DailyKossack responded to Helms' death with a post called: "Jesse Helms, you rat bastard, burn in hell." Conservatives love to point out and decry such vulgarity. They are right to.

In 1995, after hundreds of thousands of Americans had died of AIDS, Helms remarked:
""We've got to have some common sense about a disease transmitted by people deliberately engaging in unnatural acts.""

The Left -- Liberals, progressives, and radicals alike -- ought not to sink down into the Helmsian cesspool.

Better to oppose Helms, and his legacy of vulgar reaction, with these words, offered to 300,000 Americans from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial:

It would be fatal for the nation to overlook the urgency of the moment. This sweltering summer of the Negro's legitimate discontent will not pass until there is an invigorating autumn of freedom and equality. Nineteen sixty-three is not an end, but a beginning. Those who hope that the Negro needed to blow off steam and will now be content will have a rude awakening if the nation returns to business as usual. There will be neither rest nor tranquility in America until the Negro is granted his citizenship rights. The whirlwinds of revolt will continue to shake the foundations of our nation until the bright day of justice emerges.

Views expressed on this page are those of the authors and not necessarily those of Campaign for America's Future or Institute for America's Future