The Real Racist Roots of the Lott Affair
It's worth remembering that Trent Lott got his start in politics by working for a pro-segregationist Democrat congressman. It's also worth remembering that Strom Thurmond ran for president in 1948 as a "Dixiecrat" - and the Dixiecrats were a spinoff of the Democratic Party. It's also worth noting, says Charles Paul Freund, senior editor of Reason, that one of the Democrats's most honored former presidents, Woodrow Wilson, was a racist who made segregation of blacks federal policy.

Wilson's historical reputation is that of a far-sighted progressive. That role has been assigned to him by historians based on his battle for the League of Nations, and the opposition he faced from isolationist Republicans. Indeed, the adjective "Wilsonian," still in use, implies a positive if idealistic vision for the extension of justice and democratic values throughout the world. Domestically, however, Wilson was a racist retrograde, one who attempted to engineer the diminution of both justice and democracy for American blacks—who were enjoying little of either to begin with.

Obviously, Southern hopes that Wilson could force blacks into servility were always delusional. Nevertheless, Wilson's Jim Crow presidency remained an available model for segregationists and supremacists who came later. Thurmond and his fellow Dixiecrats didn't necessarily require a model of triumphalist racism, but the point is that in Wilson they had one. The Lott Affair has been treated as if its origins lie in 1948; they don't. The past isn't dead, said Mississippian William Faulkner. "It's not even the past." He might have added that the past we attempt to grapple with usually isn't even the real past.