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Black leaders throughout the country are denouncing the remarks and voting record of Mississippi Senator Trent Lott whose racially charged comments have struck a fervor of resentment within the Black community.

Congresswoman Maxine Waters stated: “I have joined with my Congressional Black Caucus colleagues in calling for Mississippi Sen. Trent Lott to relinquish his position as Senate Majority Leader. The CBC is also preparing a censure motion to be introduced on the first legislative day of the 108th Congress. Censure of a member of the House or Senate is the strongest formal condemnation, short of expulsion. A motion of censure requires a majority vote in the Senate to proceed.”
“This action is being taken because Sen. Lott is a man whose own words and associations show him to be an unreconstructed racist. He must not be allowed to lead the party that controls of two branches of our government.”
During Sen. Strom Thurmond’s 100th birthday celebration, Sen. Lott, the incoming Senate Majority Leader, told the gathering: “I want to say this about my state. When Strom Thurmond ran for president we voted for him. We’re proud of it. And if the rest of the country had of followed our lead we wouldn’t of had all these problems over all these years, either.”
The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) continued to call for Senator Trent Lott to resign from the majority leader-elect post because of recent bigoted remarks he made praising segregation.
Kweisi Mfume, NAACP President & CEO, said: “Senator Lott’s latest apology comes 22 years too late. The senator made comments praising segregation in the 80s similar to the ones he made last week, which leads me to believe that those were not a ‘poor choice of words,’ they were his favorite choice of words. I maintain that Senator Lott’s statements are dangerously divisive and the kind of callous, calculated, hateful bigotry that has no place in Congress or in this country. This is the same Trent Lott who voted against the extension of the Voting Rights Act, extension of the 1964 Civil Rights Act and against the Martin Luther King Jr. Commission and the federal King Holiday.
Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott helped lead a successful battle to prevent his college fraternity, Sigma Nu, from admitting Blacks, in the early 1960s, reports TIME Magazine national correspondent Karen Tumulty.

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