The admonition has often been “don’t damn the dead,” but in
the case of Harry
F. Byrd Jr., I’m going to make an exception. Mr. Byrd descended from one of
Virginia’s “first families,” followed in his father’s footsteps and became U.S. Senator
from Virginia in 1965. On Tuesday, the Winchester Star reported Byrd’s
death at 98.
Byrd therefore lived long enough to see the segregation he
believed so strongly in broken in Virginia, just to name one of the out-dated
beliefs that came to fruition in Byrd’s own lifetime.
In his heyday, Byrd was one of Virginias’ most influential
politicians, oftentimes cited as Virginia’s headman in the “massive
resistance” campaign carried out in the 1950s by politicians from the Deep
South to halt public school desegregation.
In fact, it was Harry Byrd Jr. who assisted in the creation
of the policy known as massive resistance which, among other things, included
the closing of public schools for years instead of desegregating them. So if
you ever have any doubts that political eras of times past were somehow less
prone to asinine policy ideas based on prejudice, look no further than Harry
Byrd Jr. and his father, Harry Byrd Sr., two byrds in a pod.
Byrd should always be remembered among Virginians and
Americans alike. He represented and still represents a politics of exclusion,
of ignorance, of intolerance, and of un-American values. Byrd demonstrates the
negative consequences of an individual whose place in the political spotlight
has been unencumbered for too long.
Virginia’s elected officials, Democrats and Republicans
alike, will no doubt praise Byrd in one form or another for some supposed
positive attribute or contribution he made to Virginia. Ultimately, history should
always remember him as a man who fought for an America that only accepted white
Anglo-Saxon men into the fold of political power, an America that most of us
today would find unacceptable.
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