The President appointed four members today to the J. William Fulbright Foreign Scholarship Board, which selects students, scholars, teachers, and trainees to participate in educational exchanges as Fulbright scholars. It also finances educational activities for Americans abroad and for foreign citizens in the United States and promotes American studies in foreign countries and foreign language training and area training in the United States. The Board is comprised of 12 members, appointed by the President. The new members appointed today are Victoria Murphy of Maine, Hoyt Purvis of Arkansas, Robert Rose of Connecticut, and Lee Williams of Arkansas.

“Like many Arkansans, I have long regarded Senator William Fulbright as both a role model and a mentor,” said the President. “The Fulbright scholarships are his most lasting achievement.

Bill Clinton

For most of his life and public service, Fulbright was a supporter of racial segregation. He signed The Southern Manifesto opposing the Supreme Court’s historic 1954 Brown v. Board of Education decision. He subsequently joined with the Dixiecrats in filibustering the Civil Rights Act of 1957 and the Civil Rights Act of 1964, as well as voting against the 1965 Voting Rights Act.

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[Clinton’s] Dancing with Segregationists - By Mark Levin - December 20, 2002 - In case y’all did not know or forgot…

Some disturbing historical facts.

1. Bill Clinton interned for J. William Fulbright in 1966-67, when Fulbright was still a segregationist. Fulbright became Clinton’s “mentor.” By comparison, Lott worked for a segregationist congressman.

2. In April 1985, Governor Bill Clinton signed Act 985 into law, making the birthdates of Martin Luther King Jr. (the preeminent leader of the civil-rights movement) and Robert E. Lee (the general who led the Confederate army) state holidays on the same day. Of course, the word “segregation” never passed Clinton’s considerable lips, but the (uncoded) message he was sending to certain of his white constituents could not have be clearer. His support for the Lee day seems as bad — if not worse — than a gaffe at an old man’s birthday party and Lott’s opposition to an MLK day.

Lott’s 1983 vote against making King’s birthday a national holiday — which he opposed for reasons other than race (as did Warren Rudman) — is now said by some to be further evidence of his racism or insensitivity to race.

3. Clinton had a Confederate flag-like issue of his own. Arkansas Code Annotated, Section 1-5-107, provides as follows:

(a) The Saturday immediately preceding Easter Sunday of each year is designated as ‘Confederate Flag Day’ in this state.

(b) No person, firm, or corporation shall display an Confederate flag or replica thereof in connection with any advertisement of any commercial enterprise, or in any manner for any purpose except to honor the Confederate States of America. [Emphasis added.]

(c) Any person, firm, or corporation violating the provisions of this section shall be guilty of a misdemeanor and upon conviction shall be fined not less than one hundred dollars ($100) nor more than one thousand dollars ($1,000).

Clinton took no steps during his twelve years as governor to repeal this law. And we know why, don’t we? He didn’t want to offend certain of his constituents.

4. Newsmax.com recently reminded us that in her 1998 book, Lift Every Voice, Lani Guinier wrote of another disturbing event involving Clinton. She stated, in part:

In the late 1980’s, in a particularly tense meeting in southeastern Arkansas — a section of the Mississippi Delta region where antebellum social relations are still in many respects the order of the day — Dayna [Cunningham] and a local [NAACP Legal Defense Fund] cooperating lawyer were part of a handful of black people there to discuss remedies for a highly contentious [Legal Defense Fund] voting rights suit.

The meeting turned sour when one of the local whites demanded to know why, in his view, the whites were always made to pay for others’ problems. Other whites in the group began to echo his charge. . . .

Bill Clinton, the lead defendant in the case, took to the podium to respond. In a tone of resignation, Clinton said, “We have to pay because we lost.”

“Clinton had so irresponsibly pandered to the backwards feeling of the white constituency,” Cunningham told Guinier.

Clinton’s “we lost” comment referred to the South losing the Civil War. Let’s imagine if the South had won the Civil War. Among other things, was Clinton endorsing segregation, or much worse? Yes, I know, what a “dumb” suggestion, albeit made to demonstrate the selective moral outrage surrounding Lott’s comments.

The truth is that during much of his political career, Clinton has been dancing with segregationists. But Mr. Beinart assumed Clinton hadn’t, so he didn’t bother to investigate, or he simply didn’t want to know, or he simply dismissed the evidence. And herein lies the hypocrisy.