Was Jesse Helms a racist?

Question

Was Jesse Helms a racist?

Answer 1

NO, I think He just wanted everyone to be treated the same, He believed  that everyone should be treated equal, with no provisions for race or color or creed.

Answer 2

Yes.

"Helms began his career as a radio spokesman for segregation, anticommunism and religious fundamentalism, and never moved far from this noxious political axis. Born in Monroe, North Carolina in 1921, he received some initial training in radio in the military during World War II and returned to take a position at a radio station in the state capital, Raleigh.

In 1950 he worked as a researcher for racist Democratic Senate candidate Willis Smith, whose campaign included a doctored photo of the incumbent’s wife dancing with a black man. (Helms biographer Ernest Furgurson reports the claim that Helms personally cut up the photos and combined them.)

Helms went to Washington as Smith’s staff administrative assistant, then returned to North Carolina two years later as executive director of the state’s banking association, where he spent seven years helping enrich the financial institutions that exploited the struggling farmers and small businessmen Helms would later claim to represent. He also ran for and won a seat on the Raleigh City Council.

In 1960 Helms took a job as a TV commentator, the position that would prove the real launching pad for his political rise. For 12 years he railed against “***** hoodlums,” “sex perverts,” Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and other civil rights “agitators,” and denounced welfare recipients, saying in one broadcast, “A lot of human beings have been born bums.”

By 1972 the Democratic Party in North Carolina was deeply split over the issue of race. Senator B. Everett Jordan, a three-term incumbent and longtime defender of segregation, was challenged for the Democratic nomination by Congressman Nick Galifianakis, who won a bitter primary fight with the support of many newly registered black voters. Helms switched parties, sought the Republican nomination and won a narrow victory, becoming the first Republican ever to win a Senate race in North Carolina. Former Democrats, many motivated by white racism, provided his 54-46 percent margin.

A similar pattern developed throughout the region—hailed by President Richard Nixon as a vindication of his “Southern strategy.” The Republican Party, once the party of Abraham Lincoln, revived its fortunes in the South by adopting the cause of racial prejudice, under a thin disguise of opposing “special privileges” for blacks. Helms followed in the footsteps of other diehard racist politicians, like Strom Thurmond of neighboring South Carolina, in switching parties. But more than any of them, even Thurmond, he retained the closest ties to far-right and Ku Klux Klan elements openly committed to white supremacy.

The Republican Party never established complete predominance in North Carolina, with conservative Democrats retaining control of the state legislature and the governorship for most of Helms’ 30 years in the Senate. Helms’ own seat was never secure, not so much because of the black vote—less than 20 percent in the state—but because of deep-seated opposition among workers of all races to a politician so closely linked to the banks and the textile and tobacco bosses. Helms never won more than 55 percent of the vote in any of his races, while the state’s other Senate seat changed parties every six years, as four consecutive incumbents were defeated for reelection.

Helms held on, not so much because of his in-state popularity, but due to the powerful financial backing of big business and right-wing elements nationally. He became the principal spokesman for what is, in all but name, the fascist wing of the Republican Party, voicing their obsessive hatred of blacks, immigrants, g**s, liberals, socialists, foreigners and the United Nations. Helms developed an enormous nationwide fundraising machine and spent record amounts to eke out reelection after reelection—he spent more than $10 million in 1984 and a staggering $16 million in 1996, in a state with only a handful of mid-sized media markets.

In the Senate, Helms could be counted on, not only to vote against any semblance of progressive reform, but also to engage in tirades and one-man delaying tactics that frequently prevailed against the increasingly timid stance of the waning group of liberals. He opposed minimum wage increases, abortion and fetal tissue research, food stamps, anti-pollution legislation, reparations for the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II, funding for the National Endowment for the Arts and the establishment of Martin Luther King Day as a national holiday. He regularly backed legislation tailored to the religious right, including bills to reestablish Christian prayer in the public schools, outlaw flag burning and bar any federal action to protect the rights of g**s and lesbians.

In one revealing episode in 1982, when the Reagan administration grudgingly supported reauthorization of the 1965 Voting Rights Act, Helms waged war against the bill, introducing amendment after amendment—to exempt North Carolina counties from its provisions, to weaken the enforcement powers of the Civil Rights Division of the US Department of Justice, to reduce the extension from 25 years to 15 years. All were defeated by overwhelming bipartisan majorities. Ultimately, Helms voted against final passage of a bill that even Strom Thurmond eventually supported."

http://www.wsws.org/articles/2008/jul200...

Answer 3

Yes,as is everyone on the planet.That word lost its meaning decades ago.http://www.racismeantiblanc.bizland.com/...  http://tworca.org/ColorOfCrime.pdf