Senator Hillary Clinton Must Explain The Praising of a Group of KKK Supporters

A BlackCommentator.com Investigative Report
By David A. Love, BlackCommentator.com Editorial Board
and Peter Gamble, BlackCommentator.com Publisher
April 20, 2008

Note: In a year of political absurdities, where one candidate--Senator Obama--is being held accountable for his friends and acquaintances and everything that they have said and done during their life times, we have stumbled across a problem. Had Senator Clinton not been as self-righteous in her attacks on Senator Obama concerning his associates, including Rev. Jeremiah Wright and Chicago activist Bill Ayers, the following would probably be a footnote and blemish--albeit significant--on the Presidency of one William Jefferson Clinton. Yet, insofar as Senator Clinton has decided to hold her opponent responsible for the words and actions of others, we pose this question: should Senator Clinton be careful where she throws bricks? Now Senator Hillary Clinton (D, NY) has some explaining to do.

BlackCommentator.com has learned that Bill Clinton, while president, repeatedly praised the United Daughters of the Confederacy (UDC). This is an organization that many, including some whites and a former U.S. senator from Illinois, have called racist.

According to the Southern Poverty Law Center, which tracks hate groups, the UDC is a neo-Confederate organization which is affiliated with such white supremacist groups as the Council of Conservative Citizens and the League of the South. Formed in 1894, the UDC limits its membership to women who are related to Confederate veterans of the “War Between the States.”

In 2000, the Southern Poverty Law Center wrote that "[a]lthough the UDC promotes an image of genteel Southern ladies…its publications” tell a different story, adding that recently the “UDC’s president, Mrs. William Wells, shared the podium with…white supremacist lawyer Kirk Lyons.”

In a 1989 UDC Magazine article, Walter W. Lee argued that “purchasers of the slaves” were actually victims of slavery, while “the worst suffering group among those engaged in the trade” were “the crews of slave ships.” Lee also made light of the horrific and deadly Middle Passage, claiming that "the sixteen inches of deck space allotted each slave is not all that much smaller that (sic) the eighteen inches that the Royal Navy allowed for each sailor's hammock and the slaves rapidly had more room due to the much higher death rate."

In her quest for the presidency, the U.S. Senator from New York has presented herself as a qualified expert on civil rights and a participant in the civil rights movement.

Senator Clinton has also put forth her belief that all candidates for the office should be thoroughly scrutinized, that no one should be immune, and all of the presidential candidates should be required to justify their stance on the issues before the voters and explain any contradictions that might arise.

Senator Clinton frequently speaks of her eight years experience “in the White House”. During that time Bill Clinton lavished praise on the United Daughters of the Confederacy. BlackCommentator.com has seen the following documents and presents copies of them here.

June 21, 1994 Letter from President Bill Clinton to the United Daughters of the Confederacy printed in the United Daughters of the Confederacy Magazine, September 1994, Vol. 57 No. 8, page 9. This was a special centennial anniversary edition of the magazine and has an outer cover and a standard magazine cover.

In the letter to the UDC President Clinton wrote:

The White House

Washington

June 21, 1994

I am delighted to honor the United Daughters of the Confederacy as you celebrate your 100th anniversary.

One of the most rewarding of human experiences is the coming together of people to share common experiences and interests. For 100 years, the United Daughters of the Confederacy has maintained and built upon the wonderful legacy of your founders. The strength of your organization today is a testament of the vision of your founders and to your commitment to your shared goals.

I congratulate you on your achievement, and I extend best wishes for many years of continuing success.

Bill Clinton

(Note: these are relatively large scanned images and may take a moment to load depending on your connection speed – please be patient)

Click on any of the links below to view the images.

June 21_1994 President Clinton UDC Praise Letter

UDC Magazine Contents Page

UDC Standard Magazine Cover

UDC Outer Cover

A letter of September, 1994 from Bill Clinton with the same wording as the one above to the United Daughters of the Confederacy was printed on the inside of the front cover of the February 1995 issue of United Daughters of the Confederacy Magazine. This letter praised the Georgia Division of the UDC.

Sept 8 1994 President Clinton UDC Praise Letter

A letter of August 9, 1995 from Bill Clinton to the United Daughters of the Confederacy was printed on the inside of the front cover of the Sept. 1995 issue of United Daughters of the Confederacy Magazine. This letter read as follows:

Greetings to everyone gathered in our nation's capital for the 1995 National Convention of the United Daughters of the Confederacy. Congratulations on beginning of the second century of your organization -- your long history is a tribute to your dedication to and respect for the ideals of your founders.This week marks a special time for the members of your organization to share memories, traditions, and goals. I hope that your visit to Washington is an enjoyable one and that you will take advantage of its unique beauty and many historical sites. Best wishes to all for an enjoyable convention. Bill Clinton

Aug 9 1995 President Clinton UDC Praise Letter

Lest anyone think this organization is nothing more than a group of women in fancy dress who gather for tea and cookies the facts show otherwise.

Former Illinois senator Carol Moseley Braun condemned the UDC on the floor of the Senate in 1993. Adam Clymer in the July 23, 1993, New York Times wrote:

The Senate’s only black member, Carol Moseley Braun, made the chamber listen today as freshmen seldom do. Her oratory of impassioned tears and shouts, stopped Jesse Helms in his tracks as he defended the Confederate flag.

Senator Helms, the 20-year North Carolina Republican, had sought -- and seemed to be finding -- a roundabout way to preserve the design patent held by United Daughters of the Confederacy on a symbol that includes the flag.

He proposed language to that effect as an amendment to the national service bill, which would provide educational grants in return for various forms of service. With many senators unaware of what they were voting on, he won a test vote, 52 to 48.

Then Senator Moseley Braun, a freshman from Illinois, took the floor in outrage at the defense of a symbol of slavery. She told the Senate:

"On this issue there can be no consensus. It is an outrage. It is an insult.

"It is absolutely unacceptable to me and to millions of Americans, black or white, that we would put the imprimatur of the United States Senate on a symbol of this kind of idea."

Less than one year after this event, Bill Clinton wrote his first letter of praise to the UDC.

As recently as Nov. 2007, the UDC Magazine printed an article titled, “Confederate Classics,” as part of a regular column, “Confederate Notes,” by Retta D. Tindal which made the following reading recommendations:

“Some books are classics that never go out of style. As we approach the gift-giving season, there are four books that I treasure and use over and over, whether for research or reference or just to refresh my memory of the special heritage I have.”

Tindall recommended the white supremacist racist text, “Southern By the Grace of God,” by Michael Andrew Grissom, a Ku Klux Klan praising book, not just the Klan of Reconstruction but the Klan of the 1920s, which in turn recommends “The Clansman” by Thomas Dixon, which later was made into the notorious movie “Birth of a Nation”.

UDC Magazine Column of Nov 2007


The United Daughters of the Confederacy have consistently defended the Ku Klux Klan. For example a postcard showing a Grand Cyclops of the KKK could at least at one time be found in the UDC Chapter Room at Florence, Alabama.

Grand Cyclops of the KKK Postcard

According to Time Magazine, Bill Clinton sent a wreath to the Confederate Monument in Arlington Cemetery while president each year.

If Senator Hillary Clinton is going to be viewed as ready on "day one" partially because of her eight years at 16-hundred Pennsylvania Avenue it would be reasonable to find out if elected President will she continue the tradition of support and praise of the United Daughters of the Confederacy.

Why Clinton’s Jeremiah Wright Strategy Failed

By David A. Love
Published by The Black Commentator
April 17, 2008

It is fitting that Lanny J. Davis - former special counsel to President Bill Clinton and supporter of presidential candidate, Senator Hillary Clinton, chose the right-wing editorial page of the Wall Street Journal once again to attack Dr. Jeremiah Wright, Sen. Barack Obama’s pastor and mentor.

And it reflects the actions of a desperate campaign eager to use the time-honored race card, but this time few are listening.

In an April 9, 2008 editorial titled, Obama’s Minister Problem, Davis erroneously argued that Obama still has questions to answer regarding his ties to the “extremist” pastor, and that this is a problem that will not go away.

Enlisting the help of the Journal’s editorial page, Davis has found a willing and eager participant in the racial scapegoating of an African American man with a long record of service to his country and to his community. For the far-right Wall Street Journal, along with the New York Post, its sister publication, and Fox News - all a part of Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation empire - trashing Black people is their bread and butter.

This is particularly true of the “fair and balanced” Fox News, with their daily racist tirades against people of color, on the air and on their website. In a recent post to the Fox News website, where comments are moderated, one person declared: “You blacks would be naked and eating bugs if it weren’t for white people. Name ONE successful society started by blacks. Any sign of civilization in Africa was started by Europeans. Any city in America with predominately black leaders is a cesspool. Look at New Orleans, Philadelphia, D.C., Detroit…”

Another person commented: “No wonder most whites have the opinion that blacks are worthless, lazy sloths who know only how to make more babies and steal everything not nailed down. Barak (sic) Lenin Obama, the big eared Muslim, is only fostering this “wo is me” attitude with his obvious prejudices. I, for one, like my white race over that of any other, so does that make me a racist? I don’t thing so. The black man will not break free from his self-imposed shackles until he picks himself up, dusts himself off and begins to provide for himself just like every other race has done who came to this country. Before the blacks can do this, however, they have to rid themselves of the likes of Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton, Farakan (sic), and the good reverend Wright.”

So, it is no surprise that the right-wing media would take the opportunity to race bait. And in the 24-hour news cycle of cable television, stories such as the Wright “controversy” are promoted for their entertainment value and the advertising revenue they can generate.

And in presidential politics, the Republican Party’s Southern Strategy - winning elections by appealing to White nationalism and White racial anxieties - has helped many a politician up the political ladder. In his 1988 presidential bid against Michael Dukakis, George Bush Sr. used the infamous Willie Horton ad. Horton, a convicted murderer, was the embodiment of the menacing Black man. After being released from prison on a furlough, while Dukakis was governor of Massachusetts, Horton raped a White woman.

In the 2000 presidential primaries, Bush Jr.’s campaign spread rumors that his then-rival, Senator John McCain, fathered a Black baby out of wedlock. Oddly, in his second quest for the presidency eight years later, McCain embraces Bush, an unpopular president who has waged an equally unpopular war in Iraq.

To the cynical race-card dealer, operating under the old political paradigm, Barack Obama should have provided the perfect target. After all, he is a Black man with Black affiliations running for the nation’s highest office, and blackness scares some Whites. The Clinton campaign, knowing their candidate could not take the nomination from an ascendant Obama except through graft, placed their hopes in conjuring an image of his wild-eyed, hate-spewing, anti-American, anti-White, and anti-Semitic B lack preacher.

But this time, it didn’t work. And the frustration is reflected in Davis’ embarrassing and unfortunate Wall Street Journal tirade.

To be sure, vast reservoirs of racism still exist in the United States. There are some voters in this country who do not like Black people, and will not vote for a person of color, nor anyone who is not a White man, for that matter. But given that those votes never were for the taking, let us focus on the real issue at hand. Obama’s campaign is bringing millions of new people into the process, a multiracial and intergenerational coalition of democrats, republicans, independents, and young people. For these voters, the racial buttons simply are not working. And for young people in particular, who did not grow up in a segregated America, they do not share the bigoted hang-ups of their parents. A generation of Whites who grew up listening to and embracing Public Enemy is not fazed by this notion of righteous Black anger a la Jeremiah Wright. In fact, many who have lived under the injustices of the Bush regime, the worst administration in American history, must share Dr. Wright’s sense of indignation. Perhaps, forty years after The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s assassination, Black rage, justified and historically contextual, is not so foreign and shocking a concept to mainstream America. And since when did anger, filled with constructive criticism and a patriotic demand that one’s country do better, amount to hatred? It is far easier to paint the truth-teller as a loathsome crackpot - and compel African American leaders to repudiate their own in the process - than to deal with the sobering realities they articulate.

Wright said “We bombed Hiroshima, we bombed Nagasaki, and we nuked far more than the thousands in New York and the Pentagon, and we never batted an eye. We have supported state terrorism against the Palestinians and black South Africans, and now we are indignant because the stuff we have done overseas is now brought right back to our own front yards. America's chickens are coming home to roost.”

In his rant, Davis claims that “If my rabbi ever uttered such hateful words from the pulpit about America and declared all Palestinians to be terrorists, I have no doubt I would have withdrawn immediately from his congregation.”

Interestingly, Wright’s words on American foreign policy were inspired by Ambassador Edward Peck, retired career diplomat who was chief of the U.S. mission to Iraq under President Carter. Peck’s words, in turn, were inspired by Malcolm X’s 1963 “Chickens Coming Home to Roost” speech, which placed the assassination of President Kennedy within the context of America’s role as a purveyor of violence. Malcolm, of course, was vilified in life and labeled a hatemonger, yet was commemorated with a U.S. postage stamp in death.

Rev. Wright said “The government…wants us to sing God Bless America. No, no, no. God damn America; that's in the bible, for killing innocent people. God damn America for treating our citizens as less than human.” Lest we become guilty of historical amnesia, Dr. King, when he was assassinated, was working on a Sunday sermon entitled “Why America May Go To Hell.” In the sermon, King wrote that “If America does not use her vast resources of wealth to end poverty, to make it possible for all of God's children to have the basic necessities of life, she too will go to Hell.”

In his April 30, 1967 sermon at Ebenezer Baptist Church titled, “Why I Am Opposed to the War in Vietnam,” King declared: “And don't let anybody make you think that God chose America as his divine, messianic force to be a sort of policeman of the whole world. God has a way of standing before the nations with judgment, and it seems that I can hear God saying to America, ‘You're too arrogant! And if you don't change your ways, I will rise up and break the backbone of your power, and I'll place it in the hands of a nation that doesn't even know my name. Be still and know that I'm God.’”

The Dr. King who called for a revolution of values against the triple threats of racism, materialism and militarism, was a far cry from the watered-down image of the innocuous dreamer which today’s mass media have created. In his 1967 book, Where Do We Go from Here: Chaos or Community?, King wrote, “A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death.” Perhaps if Dr. King were alive today, Lanny Davis would ask us to repudiate him, and disassociate ourselves from his hateful, divisive speech.

Some people say that all is fair in politics. Unfortunately, the race card has been an accepted part of politics for years, primarily because that’s the way people liked it. The politics of division worked because of the willingness of bitter and frustrated working-class Whites to act against their own self interests, placing racial solidarity with White elites above economic solidarity with struggling Americans of all backgrounds. The emergence of the Rev. Wright issue as a non-issue - and the public rejection of Clinton’s attempts to render Wright the boogeyman, shows that all is not lost, and perhaps issues really do matter.

After 30 Years, the MOVE 9 Must be Paroled

By David A. Love
Published by The Black Commentator
April 10, 2008

Seven years before the 1985 bombing of the radical Black collective MOVE - in which the Philadelphia police firebombed a block of Osage Avenue in West Philadelphia, killing five children and six adults, and destroying 61 homes - there was the first MOVE siege.

On August 8, 1978, officers of the Philadelphia Police Department were involved in a confrontation with MOVE members at their Powelton Village headquarters in West Philadelphia. Officer James Ramp was shot and killed. Nine MOVE members were convicted of third degree murder, conspiracy and other lesser offenses, and sentenced to 30-100 years.

Now the eight remaining members are up for parole. They have been exemplary prisoners, and should be released. But many would argue that they should not have been imprisoned in the first place.

The judge said that he had “absolutely no idea” who killed Officer Ramp. Moreover, he reasoned that since the MOVE defendants called themselves a family, he decided to sentence them as a family.

Some observers have concluded that the officer was a victim of police gunfire. While the ballistic report claims that the officer was shot from a downward trajectory, the MOVE members were in their basement at the time of the incident. “But let’s think about this for a minute. You don’t have to be a ballistician to figure this one out. It’s just common sense,” said Linn Washington, Jr., veteran journalist with the Philadelphia Tribune and professor at Temple University.

In an interview with journalist Hans Bennett, Washington - who was on the ground reporting on the 1978 siege - noted that according to police sources, Ramp was killed by police. “You’ve got four male MOVE members in the basement allegedly armed, according to police testimony. A basement by its very nature means it’s below ground level.… So, anything they’re shooting out of the windows has to be at an upward trajectory. They would have to shoot up to get out the window. Ramp was directly across the street at ground level. So how could something hit him, in what was said to be a downward type angle, when MOVE members were firing upward from that basement?”

There were other problems with the case, including the destruction of evidence by police. The police destroyed the MOVE house after the siege, despite a court order barring them from doing just that. Unfortunately, although this act of official misconduct is reprehensible, it is not surprising. After all, this was the Philadelphia of the 1960s and 1970s, under the racist regime of police chief-turned mayor Frank Rizzo. And Philly’s Finest were the perfect picture of corruption, brutality, obstruction and frame-ups, particularly regarding their treatment of the city’s residents of color, and political activist organizations such as the Black Panthers.

Throughout the nation during this period, in Philadelphia and elsewhere, political prisoners such as the MOVE 9 were created.

To the untutored, the term political prisoner conjures up images of the old Soviet Union, of Communist China or some far-flung dictatorial regime. But the concept of the American political prisoner is very real, one which makes a mockery of the spoon-fed narrative of a fair, blind and equitable justice system. Under that narrative, those who swear to uphold the law always do so with vigor, while all of those who are behind bars are dangerous individuals who certainly did something wrong to get there, but nevertheless received due process.

In reality, prisons are America’s foremost method of social control, providing cover to a regime of failing schools, systemic economic inequality and joblessness among poor communities and communities of color. Secret offshore prisons provide the backdrop for the bogus U.S. war on terror. And on the domestic front, imprisonment serves as a potent tool to quell political dissent and neutralize burgeoning social movements. Moreover, prison stocks are traded on Wall Street.

Meanwhile, no efforts imaginable would allow the MOVE 9 to regain the 30 years they have lost languishing behind bars. However, parole would be a step in the right direction. Their supporters are signing an online petition, and contacting the Pennsylvania Board of Probation and Parole to make their voices heard.

Will Clinton Repudiate Her Ties to the Christian Right?

Published By The Black Commentator
April 3, 2008

People who live in glass houses should not throw stones.

In her quest for the Democratic nomination for president, Senator Hillary Clinton was more than willing to use the race card to attack Dr. Jeremiah Wright, Barack Obama’s pastor and mentor, for “controversial” statements he made about this country’s racist history and violent policies. “He would not have been my pastor,” Clinton said of Wright in an interview with the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review. “You don't choose your family, but you choose what church you want to attend.”

And behind the scenes, she has attempted to convince the influential superdelegates in her party that Obama is unelectable because of Dr. Wright.

Although Clinton says that you don’t choose your family, apparently she has chosen a rather problematic family of sorts.

Mother Jones, The Nation and The Huffington Post have reported on Clinton’s membership in a secretive club of right-wing Christian politicos called “The Fellowship,” also known as The Family. The powerful Capitol Hill group is the subject of a book to be released in May 2008 by Jeff Sharlett titled, The Family: The Secret Fundamentalism at the Heart of American Power. Cult-like, The Family is divided into units called cells, and has included such prominent conservatives as Sam Brownback, Ed Meese, John Ashcroft, James Inhofe, Rick Santorum, and George Allen.

At home, The Family is best known for its seemingly innocuous National Prayer Breakfast. Internationally, it has displayed a fascist leaning and a fascination with Hitler. It has reached out to Nazis, and has supported some of the world’s most brutal and criminal right-wing dictatorial regimes, including General Suharto in Indonesia, General Costa de Silva in Brazil, the Duvalier regime in Haiti, and death squads in Central America.

The Family believes that God gives the elite the power to rule, a philosophy which sounds far from democratic.

So, as Clinton and others rake Rev. Wright over the coals and brand him as hateful, unpatriotic and un-American, Clinton aligns herself with the most theocratic and antidemocratic forces in the United States.

Clinton’s ties to The Family explain a lot of things, including her support for federal funding of faith-based initiatives, and her co-sponsorship with former Senator Santorum of the Workplace Religious Freedom Act. The act would allow pharmacists to refuse to fill birth control prescriptions, and allow police officers to refuse to protect abortion clinics, on religious grounds.

Her ties to The Family also help to explain, in part, her willingness to provide the Republican Party with their best material in attacking Obama. Praising John McCain’s for his experience, while denigrating Obama as inexperienced, unelectable and not up to the job of president (in other words, Black), Clinton seems to be an enthusiastic and effective cheerleader for a conservative victory in November.

(It should be noted, as an aside, that Clinton’s defining moment involved the trashing of another Black senator. In her 1969 commencement speech at Wellesley College, Clinton, as class president, embarrassed the keynote speaker, liberal African-American Senator Edward Brooke (R-MA), the first Black senator elected since Reconstruction.)

Meanwhile, when Wright said God Damn America for slavery, for inferior schools and substandard housing, for mass incarceration and for murderous policies, he spoke in the finest tradition of American patriotism. True patriots do not wave the flag and wear a red, white and blue lapel pin and believe their job is done. Rather, the measure of a true patriot is to criticize America when it is doing wrong, when it fails to live up to its constitutional promises, and to challenge the nation to do better. Jeremiah Wright’s God is the God of human rights and social justice, of John Adams and Frederick Douglass, of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and Malcolm X, of Mahatma Gandhi and Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel.

But the God which Clinton and The Family appear to recognize - one which anoints and ordains entrenched power for power’s sake, blesses military death squads and endorses corrupt and oppressive regimes - is a completely different matter.