Thurmond: King was a commie

I fucked black women

Thurmond encouraged FBI to build case against King, memo reveals

BY LAUREN MARKOE AND JOHN MONK

Knight Ridder Newspapers

WASHINGTON - (KRT) - U.S. Sen. Strom Thurmond and his staff tried to get the FBI to build a case against civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. in 1965 on the grounds that King was "controlled by communists," according to a recently released FBI memo on the late senator from South Carolina.

On Monday, the FBI released a portion of Thurmond's FBI file - nearly 600 pages of sometimes heavily edited memos, letters and other documents. The file details a long, secret and mutually beneficial relationship between Thurmond and the FBI. Another 1,700 pages remain to be released. The documents were released in response to requests by The State newspaper in Columbia, S.C.

Thurmond wasn't the only conservative politician who tried to paint the civil rights movement's leaders as "red." But the FBI memo plumbs the depths of Thurmond's aversion to desegregation. And with other pages in the now-public file, it shows how much of Thurmond's politics was dedicated to fighting the "Red Menace."

Thurmond, an iconic figure in Southern political history and an ardent segregationist who later publicly embraced his black constituents, was willing to go to great lengths to vilify King in the 1960s.

The Sept. 15, 1965, memo, written by Cartha "Deke" DeLoach, a top deputy to then-FBI director J. Edgar Hoover, recounts a meeting in the senator's office that was supposed to include Thurmond; instead, Thurmond was represented by aides.

One Thurmond aide, according to the FBI memo, said the senator wanted King to be exposed as a communist. DeLoach's memo recounts the aide "stated that it was widely understood that King was controlled by communists in this country."

The aide, whose name the FBI edited out of the memo, also reportedly asked DeLoach "if there was a concerted effort on the part of the FBI to discredit King."

DeLoach wrote that he responded that "such matters were beyond our jurisdiction."

It was later revealed that the FBI indeed had tried to discredit King by secretly wiretapping his telephone and leaking information to reporters and others.

At the meeting, the aide also showed DeLoach recent newspaper clippings in which Thurmond had criticized King for "injecting himself into matters of foreign policy at the United Nations."

Those same clippings, DeLoach wrote, criticized Arthur Goldberg, then the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, for meeting with King.

Joe Darby, vice president of the South Carolina chapter of the NAACP, said Tuesday that those who opposed the civil rights movement tried to label its activists as communists.

"That was a very dirty word to get folks stirred up," he said. Many blacks were intimidated into silence, he said, because they knew standing up for their rights could invite the charge.

Today, Darby said, it's hard for people to realize how inflammatory the "communist" label was, but "it made sense to the white South in the 1960s."

"It was not a matter of logic; it was a matter of gut reaction."

Dan Carter, a nationally known civil rights historian at the University of South Carolina, attested to the power of the communist smear upon the civil rights movement.

"As late as 1962 or 1963, a majority of Americans actually believed that communists were involved or were instigators of the civil rights movement," he said.

Moreover, he said, the segregationist White Citizens Councils - in their appeals to Northerners - stressed the supposed communist leanings of civil rights workers rather than segregation.

"The segregationists played the anti-communist card," Carter said. "It was the one card they could deal to both Northerners and Southerners."

The FBI never conclusively found King was a communist, Carter said. But it tried to link him to communists by saying he associated with them or had ties to organizations that included communists.

Nevertheless, said Thurmond biographer Jack Bass, Hoover "no doubt was a source of Strom Thurmond's belief that Martin Luther King Jr. was heavily influenced by communists."
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Deroy Murdoch, Armstrong Williams, tell us how great the GOP is again?

posted by Steve @ 12:03:00 AM