Ricochet is the best place on the internet to discuss the issues of the day, either through commenting on posts or writing your own for our active and dynamic community in a fully moderated environment. In addition, the Ricochet Audio Network offers over 50 original podcasts with new episodes released every day.
Perhaps They Should Have Appointed This Guy as US Senator for Mississippi
When there was the mess with the special election in Alabama last year with Luther Strange vs. Roy Moore vs. Mo Brooks, part of me was thinking why didn’t they just appoint a black Republican to that seat. There has to be one in the entire state. That might have brought things together or shaken things up in some interesting ways.
This year, the same sort of thing has happened in Mississippi. The difference seems to be that there hasn’t been an election during a boring, non-election season and no Roy Moore. Next month, there is supposed to be a no-party election between incumbent Cindy Hyde-Smith vs. Chris McDaniel vs. Mike Espy with the top two facing each other in a later election unless one of them wins with over 50 percent of the vote.
So I was wondering who would have been a good choice if the Mississippi governor had wanted to appoint a black Republican to Thad Cochran’s Senate seat. Let’s see who’s available:
Blanche Bruce (1841-1898), first African American to serve a full term in the U.S. Senate
Yvonne Brown (1952-2012), first female black Republican mayor in Mississippi
Theodore Roosevelt Mason Howard (1908-1976), surgeon and mentor to Medgar Evers
Hmm, they probably would’ve needed a name of a person who is currently alive.
Nic Lott, first black to have been elected student body president at the University of Mississippi at Oxford? (He previously worked under former Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott — no known relation.)
Hey, here’s a name:
Charles Evers, brother of murdered civil rights activist Medgar Evers, the first black mayor of a biracial town in Mississippi in the post-Reconstruction era, former field secretary for the NAACP, and unsuccessful former candidate for governor in 1971 and the U.S. Senate in 1978 when running as an Independent. He apparently has been a Republican since 1978 or 1980 when he endorsed Ronald Reagan. That’s not long after Thad Cochran and Trent Lott apparently switched parties in 1967 and 1972 and long before current appointed U.S. Senator Cindy Hyde-Smith left the Democrat Party in 2010 and may or may not have voted for Hillary Clinton in 2008.
Mississippi always had a Republican Party? I seem to remember reading a story during the 2016 election that when Mississippi was to appoint Republican delegates to the 1952 convention that nobody knew what to do as there really weren’t any Republicans in the state. Apparently they finally decided to appoint an all-black delegation which mostly lived in Washington DC, and which supported Senator Robert Taft over General Eisenhower.
I watched a few Charles Evers videos on YouTube. Although his sister-in-law was a chairwoman of the NAACP, was Ms. Magazine Woman of the Year, and delivered the invocation at the second inauguration of Barack Obama, Charles seems to be a rather conventional Republican. He says that the topic with which he disagrees with conventional wisdom the most is his hatred of welfare. It appears that he perhaps also supports more marijuana decriminalization/legalization. He says that he had a bit of a falling out with George W. Bush over the war, but I think a World War II veteran is entitled to have an opinion about military matters. Apparently Evers has been a friend or advisor to people as diverse as George H.W. Bush, Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan, Lyndon Johnson, Robert Kennedy, and even segregationists like George Wallace, while criticizing Louis Farrakhan and those associated with the Black Panther movement.
Besides, Congress could have used another World War II veteran. I think the last ones were Senator Frank Lautenberg who died in 2013 and representatives John Dingell and Ralph Hall who retired in 2015. Wikipedia states that during World War II, Evers served in the Army and fell in love with a Philippine woman, but he could not marry her and bring her to Mississippi as the state’s constitution prohibited interracial marriages.
Around March 4, 2016, Charles Evers decided to endorse Donald Trump for president mainly because Trump had been a businessman and Mississippi needed jobs. This was about a week before Ben Carson also decided to endorse Trump. Evers later declared that he liked Trump for two other reasons, because he’s a multimillionaire who can’t be bought and because he shoots from the hip as a non-politician and says what he feels, like Evers does. I think those living in the Northeast and those absorbed within college campus communities forget how much most of the country still admires a person who is willing to speak his mind.
Hey, Charles Evers seems rather healthy for a 96-year-old to me.
Published in General
Wouldn’t be the eldest Senator ever.
It’s great! As some of you may recall, my cousin is chairman of the Democratic Party of Mississippi. Pretty funny, I know.
You’ve got nearly as many cousins as famous guys who have hit on you or dated you.
We’re everywhere.
Of those who have served at least a year, Dianne Feinstein is #6 on that list, and there doesn’t seem to be a lot of talk of California wanting to get rid of her next month.
http://www.oldest.org/politics/senators-us/
Strom Thurmond was pretty old.
Yep, just over 100.
Well you have to be pretty hardy to protest against integration for the longest filibuster ever.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civil_Rights_Act_of_1957
Not a fan of the guy.
And in later years the Democrats swept all that under the rug and treated him like a venerable figure. Amazing. Two “Lions of the Senate”: Strom “Segregation Forever” Thurmond and Teddy Kennedy. They sure scrape the bottom of the barrel for their heroes.
Pssst! He switched to Republican in 1964.
Well of course he did.
Okay Robert Byrd then!
He loves black women though.
Heck, Strom loved all women. He even liked Mark Steyn’s arm.
I think this was Steyn’s elevator story:
Then there was what Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott said about Strom Thurmond, so it all comes back to Mississippi…
I live near Jackson. If I spot Mr. Evers around town, I would love to shake his hand!
While involved in a redistricting lawsuit in Alabama, I ran into a black Republican (plaintiff, I think). He explained that when he was growing up in Choctaw County, the county north of Mobile, the people who mistreated the black population were Democrats.