“He didn’t just go to a couple of meetings…he was a Grand Cyclops! He got pretty close to the Grand Kleagle. He was an Exalted Cyclops! This was not just a casual association that Senator Byrd had…He’s described as having a ‘fleeting association’ with the Klan. An Exalted Cyclops means he was a recruiter. Robert Byrd formed a KKK chapter. He didn’t just go to a couple of meetings. A Kleagle was a recruiter, and he was a recruiter for the KKK for years. He formed his chapter in 1943. He was still writing about the ‘vital need’ for the Klan in 1946. Oh yeah. Fleeting association. Repentant. Making up for it.”
“Senator Byrd was so ‘repentant’ he opposed every civil rights movement. Senator Byrd filibustered the Civil Rights Act of 1965. He voted against both Thurgood Marshall and Clarence Thomas. It wasn’t until the death of his son in a car accident in the early 1980s that Robert Byrd said he had to rethink his feelings about black people. He said in the 1980s--that it ‘finally occurred to (him) that they might love their children, too.’ That’s Robert Byrd that Clinton said has a ‘fleeting association’ with the KKK…”
“…Robert Byrd wrote to segregationist Mississippi Senator Theodore Bilbo, in 1944, ‘I shall never fight in the armed forces with a Negro by my side. Rather, I should die a thousand times, see Old Glory trampled in the dirt never to rise again than to see this beloved land of ours become degraded by race mongrels, a throwback to the blackest specimen from the wilds.’ Robert Byrd, 1944. He was a recruiter in the Klan. He did not have a ‘fleeting association.’ What I just read to you is Robert Byrd in a letter to Senator Theodore Bilbo (Democrat, Mississippi) 1944.”
“In 1946 or ’47 Byrd wrote a letter to the Grand Wizard of the Klan saying, ‘The Klan is needed today as never before. I’m anxious to see its rebirth here in West Virginia and in every state of the nation.’ Byrd was the only senator to have voted against Thurgood Marshall and Clarence Thomas, the only two African-Americans to have been nominated to the Supreme Court, and Byrd opposed Thomas…You’ve forgotten this, I’m sure,…but Senator Byrd opposed Clarence Thomas because Byrd stated he was offended by Thomas’ use of the phrase ‘high-tech lynching’ of uppity blacks in his defense…Robert Byrd also opposed some of George W. Bush’s judicial and cabinet nominees who were black, notably, Janice Rogers Brown for judge of the U.S. Court of appeals D.C. district...He opposed Condoleezza Rice for Secretary of State.”