Thread by @michaelharriot

Some people thought this was a snarky remark, so I'll answer:

A LOT of people thought @BeschlossDC meant OPENLY "violence-prone, racist anti-Semites" striding around the U.S. Capitol as elected members.

But here's your answer.

A thread:

So we won't be here all day, let's start with post-Civil War Congressional members. I'm not picking & choosing. I could easily mention slaveowners like Preston Brooks, who almost clubbed Charles Sumner to death ON THE SENATE FLOOR for an anti-slavery speech

That's too easy.

When the Civil War ended, Sen. James Guthrie was in office. Guthrie didn't own a lot of slaves but he was in favor of whipping the ones he had and keeping them enslaved.

Why?

Well, here's how he explained it to THE UNITED STATES SENATE:

By the time Guthrie was out of office, Oregon's James Nesmith was in office. He represented Oregon—originally founded as an all-white Utopia—in both chambers from 1861 until 1875.

Nesmith suggested the mass extermination of Native Americans to the Bureau of Indian Affairs.

Except for a brief sting as Georgia's governor, John Brown Gordon served as the state's senator from 1873-1897

He also boasted IN CONGRESS that he founded a secret "peace police" organization in Georgia

You might have even heard of it.

It's called the Ku Klux Klan.

By the time Gordon left office, Alabama's John T. Morgan had been in the Senate for 20 years. He was reportedly Alabama's KKK Grand dragon. I can't prove, it though.

I don't have to.

Before he retired in 1907, he'd introduced at least 3 bills advocating legal lynchings.

Morgan served with another Grand Dragon. You might know his name from a violent assault on a Black civil rights activist named John Lewis. The Senator wasn't involved but the attack took place on the bridge named for Alabama Senator and KKK Grand Dragon...

Sen. Edmund Pettus.

Morgan and Pettus both left the Senate in 1907. The day they left, Tennessee's George W. Gordon became a congressman, serving until 1911.

Historians say Nathan Bedford Forest was Grand Wizard of the KKK but Gordon's wife says he was the first because everyone agrees:

Gordon CREATED the title when he wrote the "prescript"— or the Constitution of the Ku Klux Klan, serving until 1911.

By that time, Murphy Foster was Louisiana's Senator. This was after Foster served as governor, writing laws that would disenfranchise Blacks in La. for 100 yrs

The law that barred Blacks from serving on juries? Foster presided over that. The literacy test? Foster. The "grandfather" law that excluded whites from literacy tests? Foster. The law that removed unanimous verdicts? Foster.

I'm probably wrong for calling them "laws"

They were ENSHRINED IN THE STATE constitution.

Then Foster signed off on it.

THEN he went to the Senate to promote these "Black Codes" laws nationwide. To be fair, Foster preferred a more genteel name:

"Jim Crow"

Kinda like James K. Vardaman, the Mississippi Sen. whose racist political supporters identified themselves by wearing red. Most Miss. malls didn't sell baseball caps, though, so they tied red handkerchiefs around their necks.

The "White Chief" served his "rednecks" until 1913

From here, it gets easy:

Carl Vinson served Ga. in Congress from 1914-1965

After Brown v. Board of Education. Vinson was one of 19 Senators and 82 congressmen to sign the "Southern Manifesto," which said white politicians would put up a "massive resistance" to ending Jim Crow.

The Southern Manifesto was organized by Robert Byrd, the staunch segregationist who served W. Va. until 2010.

Byrd also founded the Sophia, W. Va. chapter of the KKK and once wrote this:

He served until 2010, along with Strom Thurmond, who singlehandedly orchestrated the flip of the "Solid South." Thurmond left the Democratic party to work with Lee Atwater & the GOP to create the white identity politics employed by Republicans we now call the "Southern Strategy"

It's always important to note that while being an explicit segregationist to prevent "race-mixing," Thurmond was hiding a secret Black child that he had fathered with his 16-year-old Black maid.

washingtonpost.com/blogs/she-the-…

But of course, by the time they were gone Steve King was already in Congress holding up the white nationalist mantle.

He served until 2021.

theroot.com/steve-king-ask…

I hope this explained it. There has never been a moment in American history where"violence-prone, racist anti-Semites" weren't "striding around as elected members"

And for the TL;DR crowd, the answer is:

It's an American tradition