Not Your Sweetie

"The Lott Record - which ones did he mean lightheartedly? compiled by Monica SF



* Lott made almost the same statement about Thurmond two decades ago at a rally in
Jackson, Miss. on Nov. 2, 1980. "You know, if we had elected this man 30 years ago, we
wouldn't be in the mess we are today," he said.

* In 1992 he gave a keynote address to the Council of Conservative Citizens, which
advocates the preservation of the white race. He said, quote: "the people in this room
stand for the right principles and the right philosophy." He also hosted some group
members at his
Washington office.

* Years earlier, Lott gave an interview to Southern Partisan magazine, which published
articles defending Confederate figures and sold a T-shirt
commemorating Abraham Lincoln with the phrase his assassin uttered, "Thus always to
tyrants."

* Lott was one of 24 House members to vote against 1981 legislation extending the
Voting Rights Act, which created penalties for Southern states that didn't assure open
polls to black voters. "They are still trying to exact Reconstruction legislation that is just
not fair," he said at the time.

* Lott tried to help Bob Jones University keep its federal tax-exempt status despite the
school's policy prohibiting interracial dating two decades ago. "Racial discrimination
does not always violate public policy," Lott, then a congressman from Mississippi, wrote
in a 1981 court brief. "If racial discrimination in the interest of diversity does not violate
public policy, then surely discrimination in the practices of religion is no violation," he
argued.

* Lott led the fight to restore Jefferson Davis' U.S. citizenship and once suggested the
Confederate leader would support the Republican Party if alive today. While serving on
the Republican Party platform committee in 1984, he attended a meeting of the Sons
of Confederate Veterans in Biloxi, Miss., in which he was quoted as saying, "the spirit of
Jefferson Davis lives in the 1984 Republican Platform."

* Lott opposed the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday and voted against it in 1983. "I just
think it was basically wrong," he said of the vote.

* Lott supported segregation when as a college student he watched armed U.S.
marshals escort the first black student to the University of Mississippi. He also
advocated keeping blacks out of his fraternity. In a 1997 interview with Time magazine
he said: "Yes, you could say that I favored segregation then ... The main thing was, I
felt the federal government had no business sending in troops to tell the state what to
do."

* In 1979, while representing Mississippi in the House of Representatives, Lott joined a
bipartisan group that supported a constitutional amendment to prohibit school busing.