Lott and Jefferson Davis

In a interview issued in 1984 by the Southern Partisan magazine, Trent Lott observed, “I think a lot of the fundamental principles that Jefferson Davis believed in are very important today to people all across the country, and they apply to the Republican Party….More and more of Jefferson Davis’ descendants, direct or indirect, are becoming involved in the Republican Party.” What Mr. Lott was doing even granting an interview to Southern Partisan at the time is beyond us: An article in the magazine that same year proclaimed “Negroes, Asians, and Orientals (is Japan the exception?); Hispanics, Latins, and Eastern Europeans; have no temperament for democracy, never had, and probably never will.” All of that was reported by Ira Stoll, now managing editor of The New York Sun, on page one of the Jewish Forward newspaper on October 13, 1995. The world seems to be taking notice of Senator Lott’s views on race at long last now, in the context of his comments last week at the 100th birthday of Strom Thurmond.