Only on your part.

Or maybe it is your own prejudices and slavish bias that  blind you to the truth. “They” are the politicians that supported segregation like George Wallace, who before he was shot had a sudden change of heart because if he waned to get re-elected he needed the black vote. And of course “good Negros” voted him into office again. It is also how the South went from mostly democrat from the 1870’s to mostly republican in the late 1970’s How the stereotype of the redneck went from good old boy democrat, to racist redneck once the democrats no longer had control. Racism was suddenly bad and the South was full of racists. Yet in good liberal circles the racism never changed. When they could not get away with open racism they just became subtle. Women became a minority. A choice between hiring a black man or a white woman the black man had to go to the back of the bus. Women make up 50% of the population but suddenly earned minority status. When Harold Ford Jr. had enough votes to become speaker of the house, he was told it was not his turn because they needed to show support for women. This is how Nancy Pelosi became Speaker of the House of Representatives. Mr. Ford was slowly forced out of the party when the party failed to support his re-election. He tried to become Senator and again his support faded. Civil rights always takes a back seat to woman’s rights. No one screamed racism when Mr. Ford was eased out of office because they were just trying to make history and support women. You choose to forget that in the south you had to be a democrat and supported by the KKK to get elected, until the KKK lost its power. Them good old boys would not be re-elected once blacks were allowed to vote without fear.

about the kindest response i can offer is this:  you're either deluded or have no regard for truth. 

i'd prefer the former because i'm willing to accept your purported relationship to roy wilkins as fact and i'm pained by the thought of you dishonoring the memory of a member of your own family.

on one hand, we have your bizarre speculation; on the other, the authority of mr wilkins' own autobiographic record and words including this comment on the 1964 republican convention and its nominee: "a man came out of the beer halls of Munich, and rallied the forces of Rightism in Germany...all the same elements are there in San Francisco now."

wallace had that change of heart after being shot. 

if that's what it takes, perhaps stokely, h rap and huey were correct and i was wrong.

your cousin knew full well his allies (liberals from both parties who came together to enact the civil rights acts of 1957 and 1964) and his enemies (racists from both parties who did their damnedest to prevent their enactment).

referring to nixon's 1969 decision to delay the desegregation of mississippi schools--as a quid pro quo demonstration of what the gop's southern strategy was really all about--roy wilkins said: "it's almost enough to make you vomit"

he was wrong, of course. 

no almost enough about it.

although i maintain my license to drive, i've chosen not to own a car since 1994.  gotta great 10-speed and--unlike most southern californians--i don't mind availing myself of existing public transportation, sparse as it may be.  i prefer the back of the bus (more leg room & greater overal visibility).

this is the first i've heard bout anyone being hired to sit up front.

congressman ford never had enough votes to become speaker of the house nor did he compete for the title.  you're probably referring to his bid to become minority leader in 2003 for which he didn't have enough votes and has never even suggested he did.  he referred to himself as an underdog candidate (his own words, in fact).

in addition to that massive mistatement of fact, here's why your claim in its entirety is yet one more perfect example of the kinda misperception, paranoia and just plain crap--in this case, misogynistic crap--we've all come to expect from you.

1. pelosi had been in the house for 10 years more than ford.

2. pelosi has contributed to far, far more of her colleagues' campaigns than anyone in her party.

3. ford supported bush's foolish decision to invade iraq; pelosi correctly denounced the resolution (she earned her leadership positions for that act of constitutional courage alone).

4. ford was late in declaring his interest in becoming minority leader (not speaker) and focused his campaign on the media instead of on the membership.

5. in case you missed the final tally, she received about 6 votes to each 1 ford received.

you really need to put them paint cans behind you.

nothing i've quoted above is true by any stretch of the imagination.

ford is still a democrat and he wasn't eased outa office any more than he was forced outta the party.

he decided to give up his seat in the house when he ran for a senate seat in 2006. 

he was ahead in that race until (and i quote here from wikipedia altho i remember it clearly and, if you spend a lil time reviewing my posts from that year, you'll see i was outraged by how his campaign was sabotaged by the republican party):

On August 3, 2006, Ford overwhelmingly won the Democratic primary. After the primary, Ford's supporters held a large victory celebration at Nashville's LP Field. Among the speakers was former U.S. President Bill Clinton.

Ford faced Republican Bob Corker in the November 2006 election. Not long after Corker's primary victory was assured, Ford challenged Corker to seven televised debates across the state. In response, Corker said he would debate Ford, though he did not agree to seven debates.

In October 2006, as polls indicated that Ford maintained a slight lead in the Senate race,^[21] the Republican Party ran a television advertisement^[22] where a white woman, played by Johanna Goldsmith, talks about meeting Ford, who was unmarried at the time, at "the Playboy party."^[23] The ad was denounced by many people, including former Republican Senator and Secretary of Defense under Bill Clinton, William Cohen, who called it “a very serious appeal to a racist sentiment.” Corker himself asked the Republican leadership to pull the ad, which it refused to do. Corker subsequently pulled ahead in the polls.^[24]

Corker and Ford participated in a televised debate in Memphis on October 7, in Corker's hometown of Chattanooga on October 10, and in Nashville on October 28. In January 2006, NBC's Meet the Press extended an open invitation for the candidates to debate on the nationally-televised show. Ford accepted the invitation, stating that "any weekend would work for him." The Corker campaign did not agree.^{[citation needed]}

how you like your blue-eyed boy now, mr death?

just in case anyone missed it, even ford's republican opponent had a problem with that racist republican ad.

Good for you, you take a statement used for political purposes rather than taking what I wrote in context. I remember this election, I remember the family laughing and making jokes like I have to Goldwater, when they had to pee, The same lies were told that he was a racist, "The only thing a negro can do for me is shine my shoes" that quote went through New York and then spread across the nation. a pity it was a lie. Let us ignore the fact that LBJ was a member of the KKK. The difference was that LBJ was an ego maniac, and made it a point to get legislation passed that the democrats refused to pass for Kennedy. In his mind that would make him a greater president than JFK. So all that good legislation that the democrats refused to pass for the racist Kennedy they would pass for the racist LBJ. Ego was what got the 1964 civil rights act, the first civil rights act in 100 years, and only with the majority support from the republicans even when the democrats had the majority and could have passed it without a single republican vote. But the racist democrats refused to go along with the bill and the republicans had the honor of casting the deciding votes.

Bee, you fail to see any of this and hold fast to your racist masters and you think I am deluded. The progressives and liberals were in charge when they hosed Negros down in the streets for wanting equal rights. Show me where republicans or conservatives have accepted open racism? I have already pointed out the racists actions on the liberal side, the best you can come up with is a speech delaying integration of schools from President Nixon.

Lynching’s, firebombing churches, is okay as long as we integrate the schools on time.

So what you are saying is that the most senior person should be speaker of the house, why hold elections.

Ford declares. "Even when we're right, they don't want to hear it."

Quote from Time Magazine 10 Dec, 2002 “The quotation also describes the hostility Ford's bid to lead House Democrats provoked from backward-looking members of the older generation of black activists and politicians, including some of his colleagues in the Congressional Black Caucus. The sheer meanness — and downright stupidity — of the vituperation is an indication of the intellectual bankruptcy of what currently passes for black leadership. Ford is too shrewd to talk openly about the insults himself, but they obviously stung him. Not content to criticize Ford on the legitimate grounds of his callowness and lack of legislative accomplishments, some dredged up his "high yellow" skin color to discredit him with darker-skinned blacks. Others, like a certain well-known civil rights leader who ought to know better, described Ford as "another Clarence Thomas" — the same as swatting him down as an Uncle”

Gee being able to get black people to attack black people so the white people can keep their hands clean, nope no racism there. They are still attacking him, Chris Matthews, May, 13, 2009, is calling him a Cheney supporter. Attacking him 7 years later. Mr. Ford has been marginalized.

Did you see that ad? I liked it, it was dirty, it was not racist. When you have civil rights activists calling you an uncle tom is racist! The money that Ford needed was withheld from him when he needed it. Just like they did to the black man that ran for governor of New York. Promised money arrived late or never arrived at all. They do it all the time and you happily sit there saying it is the republicans that are racist.

i don't recall hearing or reading that particular statement--or anything similar--attributed to goldwater during the 64 campaign or afterwards.  nor do i recall goldwater being labeled a racist despite his opposition to the 1964 civil rights act.  while i never missed an opportunity to express my support for the 1964 civil rights act (or an opportunity to get my ass kicked for doing so) i was also actively campaigning for goldwater (knocking on doors, block after block after block for months prior to that election, reminding people to register and urging them to vote for barry).  i understood his reasoning then as i do now and truly believe his position had nothing at all to do with racism and everything to do with principle. 

unfortunately my perception wasn't widely shared. those closest to him have described goldwater--whose early career included aggressive promotion of local civil rights ordinances--as being horrified to discover how his principle was intentionally corrupted by those racists--including george wallace--who prospered by proclaiming themselves 'conservatives'.

as the national democratic party was actively marginalizing its dixiecrat racists, what would soon become today's republican party was openly recruiting them at the behest of richard nixon and support of ronald reagan. 

nixon strategist, kevin phillips, openly stated in 1971:

"From now on, the Republicans are never going to get more than 10 to 20 percent of the Negro vote and they don't need any more than that... but Republicans would be shortsighted if they weakened enforcement of the Voting Rights Act. The more Negroes who register as Democrats in the South, the sooner the Negrophobe whites will quit the Democrats and become Republicans. That's where the votes are. Without that prodding from the blacks, the whites will backslide into their old comfortable arrangement with the local Democrats."

republicans should be fuckin ashamed of the fact that reagan's first official campaign event in 1980 was staged in the same county in which three liberal civil rights workers gave their lives in the cause of equal voting rights some 16 years earlier and included a speech in which reagan pandered to mississippi's white racists with this kinda codespeak:

"Programs like education and others should be turned back to the states and local communities with the tax sources to fund them. I believe in states’ rights. I believe in people doing as much as they can at the community level and the private level" as well as a promise to "restore to states and local governments the power that properly belongs to them."

wouldn't surpise me to discover you've decided lynching was really a way for local communities demonstrate support for blacks who aspired to high places.

Exactly right, well left. liberal thinking and logic, while you promoted Goldwater, I promoted LBJ, our side said some nasty things about him, What i find interesting is that most of the time the democrats eat thier own. what i mean to say is that they will destroy someone for shor term goals that they could have used in the long term.

Mr. Ford was told he was not going to get support for re-election, they put up someone to run against him so he ran for the senate, funding dried up. he lost not because of that ad but because the party no longer needed him.

ford's election to the senate was key to the 2006 strategy and there's no reliable source for your conclusion.   any chance at all you know what position he currently holds in the party organization???? or are you ignoring it because it proves you're out in space once again?

Democratic Senator Joe Lieberman of Connecticut was originally thought to be a shoo-in, but his reelection prospects were complicated by political cross-currents. Lieberman drew fire from the more anti-war elements within the Democratic party for his continual support for the foreign policy of President George W. Bush and for statements in which he has criticized other Democrats for "undermining the President" during a time of war. Greenwich telecom-networking businessman Ned Lamont declared his candidacy for the Democratic nomination in March, and while the Democratic state convention in May overwhelmingly endorsed Lieberman, Lamont's 33.4% support was more than twice the 15% needed to force a primary.

So they try to get rid of Senator Lieberman but needed Ford?