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Jesse Helms 1921-2008
It's easy to pigeonhole Jesse Helms as a one dimensional ideologue. But he was much more complex a figure than either his friends or enemies gave him credit.
It is very easy to see former North Carolina Senator Jesse Helms, who died today at the age of 86, through a one-dimensional looking glass. No political figure since Joseph McCarthy has been so vilified by the opposition. And few have been as lionized by supporters.
He was a champion of Christian conservatives, a fierce opponent of Castro, a tireless worker for bringing freedom to the captive nations of the old Soviet Union, a bulldog about waste and fraud at the United Nations, and a thorn in the side to liberals for 30 years in the Senate.
He was also a homophobe, an avowed sexist, and many would say a “white racist.” That last blow was delivered by the dean of Washington columnists, David Broder, in a 2001 piece after Helms announced his retirement:
There are plenty of powerful conservatives in government. A few, such as Don Rumsfeld and Henry Hyde, have been around as long as Helms and have their own significant roles in 20th century political history. What really sets Jesse Helms apart is that he is the last prominent unabashed white racist politician in this country — a title that one hopes will now be permanently retired. A few editorials and columns came close to saying that. But the squeamishness of much of the press in characterizing Helms for what he is suggests an unwillingness to confront the reality of race in our national life.
Helms opposed civil rights and affirmative action legislation. This in and of itself did not make him a racist. But there is little doubt that the North Carolina senator used race as a wedge in his campaigns, nor is there any argument that early in his career he allied himself with some of the most nauseating segregationists of the era.
And yet, his Senate office was, if not a model of diversity, a place that was at odds with his perceived bigotry. No less a personage than James Meredith, the first black student at the University of Mississippi, was employed by Helms as a special assistant from 1989-91. His press secretary was black as were several administrative assistants.
And contrast Broder’s characterization of Helms with this by Madeleine Albright:
Jesse Helms and I have a special — even an odd — friendship. We both believe in America’s greatness, but we often have very different ideas about what makes America great. We have become friends out of acknowledgement of our differences — out of respect, really. When we agree we accomplish a great deal, as on the enlargement of NATO or the streamlining of the State Department. When we do not agree, as on the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty or agreements protecting women and children, neither of us wins. That illustrates a truth many of us learn soon after coming to Washington. Not even friendship — not even a dance at my 60th birthday party — could make Jesse Helms an arms controller. But our friendship demonstrates another truth that too many people in Washington forget: As he always said, we can disagree agreeably. For that example I will always be grateful to the man who was the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee while I was the secretary of state, and who will remain my friend.
As with most everything in life, things — and people — are not always as they appear. Helms could be the courtly southern gentleman as he apparently was with Albright, while being an absolute snake as he was with former Illinois Senator Carol Moseley Braun.
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Rick Moran is PJM Chicago editor; his own blog is Right Wing Nut House.
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32 Comments
1. dougf:“It’s easy to pigeonhole Jesse Helms as a one dimensional ideologue.”
Yes it is.
End of story.
Jul 4, 2008 - 12:57 pm 2. Daniel Anderson:Rick, you left out his role in the conservative movement shame! You alluded to it and you still had to dig at him.He was just cool kinda in the Rush mode that made lefties froth. He brought me into politics with the understanding that if you fund the man the liberals hate the most you get great TV.
Jul 4, 2008 - 1:46 pm 3. marsouin:I get a kick out of his socialist critics who accuse him of race-baiting. Who are they to talk! The NAACP along with other “civil rights” and sundry Progressive leaders have ridden the race-hustling poverty-pimping train to enormous success over the last few decades. The degradation of the inner cities have been manna from Heaven at the election booth. Last year, when a leading presidential candidate was before an all black audience at Howard Univ. here in DC and was asked why AIDS is so terribly high among blacks, she didn’t blame it on thoroughly irresponsible sexual behavior but white racism. And don’t get started on the “civil rights” leader and presidential candidate Rev. Al Sharpton.
Jul 4, 2008 - 2:13 pm 4. Roy M:This, for me is the strangest part…
“As with most everything in life, things — and people — are not always as they appear. Helms could be the courtly southern gentleman as he apparently was with Albright, while being an absolute snake as he was with former Illinois Senator Carol Moseley Braun.”
How is it that a man such Jesse Helms can treat Senator Braun so vilely
and yet treat another political opponent, Albright, with such manners?
http://www.brown.edu/Administration/News_Bureau/2003-04/03-017.html
http://www.unc.edu/news/pics/event/commencement/2007/albright_madeline.jpg
Rick Moran says that the best explanation is the depth and complexity of the man that was Jesse Helms.
Jul 4, 2008 - 2:26 pm 5. Feministe » I’m not one to be happy someone’s dead, but:[...] course, these are the same people who claim that Helms’ opposition of civil rights legislation “did not in and of itself did not [...]
Jul 4, 2008 - 4:17 pm 6. Richard Miniter:Moran has not done his homework. Helms was not elected official when the 1964 Civil Rights Act was considered. As a result, he did not vote for or against it. The later so-called civil rights acts (1991 and so on) concern affirmative action in various forms. As for Helms’ opposition to affirmative action, one can easily contend that opposition to affirmative action is the anti-racist position. Those who favor affirmative action believe that race should be used to reward certain races in compensation for past mistreatment. Opponents of affirmative action believe that to consider race as a factor violates equality before the law and is, inherently, racist. At best, one would have to say that anti-racists are divided on affirmative action, with favoring and others opposing. But mere opposition to affirmative action cannot be racist.
What segregationalists and pro-affirmative action folks share is a belief that race should be a factor in making public policy.
What Helms learned from watching the civil rights era transform the south is that race should never be a factor.
Doesn’t Mr. Moran owe Helms’ family an apology?
Jul 4, 2008 - 4:23 pm 7. Dave Surls:“How is it that a man such Jesse Helms can treat Senator Braun so vilely”
Probably, because she is as corrupt as it gets.
Jul 4, 2008 - 5:20 pm 8. ernie medeiros:Jesse Helms was a despicable pile of manure, masquerading as a human being. He was hate filled racist, a neo-fascist reactionary and a blight on the face of this nation. The only regret regarding his death is that it didn’t happen sooner. Definitely a good argument for legalized abortion. His mother should have had one.
Jul 4, 2008 - 6:26 pm 9. Gerald Ball:Dave Surls:
“How is it that a man such Jesse Helms can treat Senator Braun so vilely”
Probably, because she is as corrupt as it gets.
Oh please. Mosely Braun was far from the first or last corrupt person on Capitol Hill. Didn’t you notice all the scandals that helped cause the GOP to lose control of Congress? Helms treated Braun the way he did because she was BLACK. Had she been a black woman in her place, a cleaning woman or perhaps working on his staff, he would have treated her fine. Or had she been someone who agreed with his agenda, he would have treated her fine. But Helms could not accept that a black woman who disagreed with his views was opposing him in the United States Senate AS HIS EQUAL.
Richard Miniter:
The worst thing about affirmative action is that it allows people like you to attribute the views of every racist and segregationist to opposing it. Look, Miniter, at the time that affirmative action, preference, and quota programs were adopted, they were NECESSARY because people like Helms were running businesses, workplaces, and colleges AND THEY WERE NOT ADMITTING OR HIRING BLACK PEOPLE. My goodness, even AFTER the Bakke decision you had major institutions refusing to hire and promote blacks. That was why the Bakke decision had an exception: affirmative action could still be used to remedy past and current discrimination.
People who opposed affirmative action in the 60s, 70s, and 80s opposed it for the same reason that Jesse Helms voted against allowing a black man to join his church: because they were racist. The reason is that because before affirmative action blacks weren’t getting opportunities no matter how qualified they were, and people like Helms liked it that way and wanted to keep it that way.
Until conservatives start admitting the truth on people like Strom Thurmond, Ed Meese, Helms, etc. you won’t get any appreciable minority support, and what is more you won’t deserve it. And before you start talking about people like Jeremiah Wright … 1. Jeremiah Wright DID NOT SIT IN THE UNITED STATES SENATE FOR 30 YEARS AS A SEGREGATIONIST and 2. Jeremiah Wright exists only because people like Jesse Helms (and Ed Meese and Robert Byrd) not only existed but are in positions of much greater power and influence to act on their racism and harm a lot of people that Jeremiah Wright, Jesse Jackson, or anyone else you can name will ever have.
The main reason why so many of you are so afraid of Obama is that you think that he will start doing to whites what people like Jesse Helms and Ed Meese spent decades doing to blacks. Well, if you didn’t stand against segregationists back then when it mattered, it is no less than what you deserve.
Jul 4, 2008 - 6:47 pm 10. Dave Surls:“Mosely Braun was far from the first or last corrupt person on Capitol Hill.”
No doubt.
She’s still corrupt though, and she was a terrible senator, and an extremely poor choice as ambassador to New Zealand, and Senator Helms was correct to try and block her appointment, which was no more than a naked and transparent political payoff by the Clintonistas to one of their corrupt supporters.
“being an absolute snake as he was with former Illinois Senator Carol Moseley Braun.”
Crap. Voting against someone becoming ambassador isn’t “being an absolute snake”, it’s just voting against them being an ambassador.
Jul 4, 2008 - 8:31 pm 11. Richard Miniter:Gerald Ball:
Words have meanings. Calling Helms a segregationist means that he actively supported legal segregation. He joined the Senate in 1972, when segregation was abolished and affirmative action was being codified. The matter of legal segregation never appeared before the senate during Helms’ tenure; it was abolished years before–over the opposition of Southern Democrats. If Mr. Ball has any evidence (transcripts, articles) of Helms’ views prior to election, he should supply them. Otherwise, let’s leave off the slurs.
If by segregationist he means that Helms opposed affirmative action, than the appropriate term is “anti-racist.” Only racists consider race as an important matter for public policy.
As for keeping a black man out of his church, I think Mr. Ball is the victim of a hoax. Helms’ church had black members–as did his senate staff.
Why do liberals find it impossible to disagree with someone without thinking them evil?
Jul 4, 2008 - 10:34 pm 12. Roy M:“White people, wake up before it is too late. Do you want Negroes working beside you, your wife and your daughters, in your mills and factories?”
Is that segregationist?
Jul 4, 2008 - 11:39 pm 13. Don:What was the relationship late in his government life with Bono of U2 (unless I am mistaken in identifying the right “right Wing” southerner?)?
Jul 5, 2008 - 6:11 am 14. Rick Moran:Richard:
It is sophistry to suggeset Helms did not support “legal” segregation since much of Jim Crow was unwritten.’
And is it your position that Mr. Helms did not have political views prior to his entering the Senate? He was a TV commentator who called the civil rights act “the single most dangerous piece of legislation ever introduced in the Congress.” (Sounds like he’s opposing it to me.)As a Senator, he voted against the Voting Rights Act extension. He opposed to the two most important pieces of civil rights legislation in American history. What does that make him?
Roy M’s quote above was taken from one of his commentaries. But hey! Jesse wasn’t no segregationist. He loved the darkies.
Better not start throwing around demands for apologies. You might end up dishing out a few yourself.
Jul 5, 2008 - 6:34 am 15. Jerry Green:Helms was a bitter, ugly man. A rascist that hated Martin Luther King and blatantly used southern rascism of the day (and I believe that has diminished significantly today) to beat his Black opponent twice; a homophobe that took his hate so far that he even fought against government research about aids (even falsely claiming that there wasn’t one case of aids that couldn’t be tied to sodomy…even as if that would be a valid reason to fight against aids research); AND he was in the pocket of the tobacco industry full-time…and, as such, was personally responsible for his fair share…a percentage of… tobacco-related deaths (some would say murders) in this country. The cold war would have ended, and communism would have died just as fast without the likes of Helms. For conservatives to stand up for the priciples of his life and career as he lived and worked it does nothing but put conservatives on the absolutely wrong…the ugly side of history. Don’t line up behind this guy. When you drive on the wrong side of the road, you’ll die in a crash.
Jul 5, 2008 - 8:12 am 16. Herr Morgenholz:“ernie medeiros:
Jesse Helms was a despicable pile of manure, masquerading as a human being. He was hate filled racist, a neo-fascist reactionary and a blight on the face of this nation. The only regret regarding his death is that it didn’t happen sooner. Definitely a good argument for legalized abortion. His mother should have had one.
Jul 4, 2008 – 6:26 pm”
So his support (which was not insignificant in the US Senate) for helping Africa with its AIDS problem was racist, right? Jesse Helms was many things, but most of all he was a character. Racist? No.
Jul 5, 2008 - 9:48 am 17. Dave Surls:“Don’t line up behind this guy.”
There’s a lot of issues I wouldn’t line up behind Helms on (tobacco subsidies, for example), but I’d sure line up behind him on the issue of the appointment of Carol Moseley Braun to an ambassadorship.
Jul 5, 2008 - 12:14 pm 18. Roy M:New Zealand is about as far away from Washington as it’s possible to be.
Jul 5, 2008 - 1:53 pm 19. Dave Surls:“God didn’t call America to engage in a senseless, unjust war. . . . And we are criminals in that war. We’ve committed more war crimes almost than any nation in the world…”–MLK, bloviating on the Vietnam War
Under no circumstances would I support giving this guy a National Holiday, because he doesn’t deserve the honor. He was a fatuous idiot on just about every subject, except one, and not an especially decent person in his private life.
So, on the issue of Helms trying to block a national day honoring MLK, I’m fully in agreement.
I wouldn’t support a national holiday honoring Helms either. Like, MLK, he doesn’t deserve it.
Jul 5, 2008 - 1:58 pm 20. Dave Surls:‘[Jesse]Helms is now an international AIDS activist. He says he is “ashamed that I’ve done so little” to spare babies from the deadly virus, which is now the No. 1 killer of children in Africa. He has introduced emergency legislation to send half-a-billion dollars to developing nations. This is not an April Fool’s joke…’
‘…Helms recently went public with his epiphany on one of Bono’s cherished topics, which is battling AIDS in developing nations. After fighting foreign assistance proposals for much of his 30 years in the Senate, Helms has suddenly decided that America has a higher calling.’
‘”I’m not going to lay it aside on my agenda for the remaining months I have, ” Helms told a group of Christian activists in February. “I have been too lax too long in doing something really significant about AIDS.”‘
‘Last week, Helms got more specific. The senator, who once condemned foreign aid programs as “ratholes,” proposed an emergency appropriation of $500 million to add to the $850 million in global AIDS funds already contained in next year’s federal budget proposal.’
‘”(I)n the end, our conscience is answerable to God,” Helms wrote on the editorial pages of the Washington Post. “Perhaps, in my 81st year, I am too mindful of soon meeting Him, but I know that, like the samaritan traveling from Jerusalem to Jericho, we cannot turn away when we see our fellow man in need.”‘
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2002/04/01/ED2779.DTL
Make of it what you will.
Jul 5, 2008 - 2:38 pm 21. Jerry Green:After 30 years of using all his considerable power to block aids relief and even research about the disease; promoting the use of tobacco in many ways by unsuspecting young Americans in return for money by tobacco companies given to places of his choice; and keeping black people living apart as second class people to satisfy either his constituencly or his own personal bigotry, he had an epiphany or two. Well, if you believe his beliefs, he has met his judgment day, and his God will make a decision. He’s lucky I’m not his God. As a conservative, there are so many people that deserve your pride, but Jesse Helms is not one of them.
Jul 5, 2008 - 5:54 pm 22. iconoclast:Richard
“Roy M’s quote above was taken from one of his commentaries. But hey! Jesse wasn’t no segregationist. He loved the darkies.”
By my research, that quote was from a campaign flyer for a candidate (Willis Smith). Helms was ALLEGED to have worked on it, but he never appeared to have claimed that it was his work.
Jul 5, 2008 - 11:55 pm 23. Mike:Richard Miniter:
I agree with your point that one can oppose affirmative action without being a racist. But come on, are you seriously arguing that Helms wasn’t a segregationist (and a racist)? I mean, his record speaks pretty loudly for itself. Just one anecdote plucked at random from Wikipedia (not an unimpeachable source, but I’ve read this elsewhere too):
Then there was his race-baiting ads in his own campaign, and the whistling Dixie to Carol Mosely Braun, etc. And plenty of other anecdotes / quotes / so forth.
And how do you *think* he would have voted on the 1964 Civil Right Act if he had been in office then? You’re a pundit- do some reverse punditry.
Yes, he had black staffers. So, fine, he was willing to have black people working under him. And maybe his racism and segregationism was complicated in a way that people who like to have kneejerk moral reactions don’t like to think about. But it seems crazy to me to suggest he wasn’t a racist and segregationist.
Jul 6, 2008 - 7:14 am 24. Moultrie:Someday the truth about Jesse Helms will be written but not by a bunch of dimwit bloggers or even big name bloggers like Moran…and certainly not by the crop of lefty Academic ‘Historians’. I suggest that all opinions should wait until at least the man is in his grave. Have a bit of decency for a change.
Jul 6, 2008 - 8:10 am 25. Gerald Ball:Mike:
People like Richard Miniter are simply lying. Jesse Helms began to soften his image in his last Senate years and then retired, so he has been out of the news for going on 10 years. They are also basically trying to limit his racist views, tactics, and statements to opposition to affirmative action and busing. Even when you do mention the MANY specific things that Helms said and positions that he took, the liars challenge its authenticity or try to contextualize it away.
The best little trick that they have going on is to blame all segregation on the Democrats. To hear the current revisionist line, no one was a racist and no one was a segregationist but the Democrats, and oh yeah segregation and racism effectively ended with Brown versus Board of Education in 1954, so why are we talking about this anyway.
The worst thing is that people like this don’t even need to try to whitewash guys like Jesse Helms, because the GOP long moved past their willingness to defend segregation anyway just as the Democrats did. I cannot understand what these people honestly think that they are going to gain by claiming that an obvious segregationist and racist was just another one of the 70% of white Americans that oppose affirmative action and political correctness.
If people want to lie, just go ahead and let them. It is their own character and their own standing before a righteous God that will burn all liars in the lake of fire for an eternity (go read your Book of Revelation, it is there, so as for Helms’ claim in his biography that he was only opposed to busing and affirmative action … oh well I really hope the guy went to the altar and repented). As to whether God will burn for an eternity the people who – like Jesse Helms – left First Baptist Church when it admitted a black member as Helms did I am sorry but the Bible is not very clear on such matters.
And yes, Miniter, that did happen. Helms claimed that he didn’t vote against the guy because he was black, but because he was a troublemaker. How was he a troublemaker? By trying to integrate the church. So Helms switched his affiliation to a church that had black people in it already. Miniter, you fail to acknowledge the mindset of people like Helms. The SECOND black person to do something? They will love him and embrace him as an American hero. It is the FIRST black person who does something that the segregationists disliked, because the FIRST black person to do something was the one who tried to ruin the party, to challenge the existing order, who was trying to make people and things change. (It often isn’t about hating PEOPLE so much as it is about hating change.) Which, of course, is very understandable why Helms did not think that much of Harvey Gantt. Gantt was the first black man to attend Clemson University (needing a court order to do so), ran the first prominent black architecture/construction firm in North Carolina (and yes he did use affirmative action, because how else was a black man going to get a contract in a state filled with people like Helms running all the banks, businesses, and government agencies … opposing affirmative action in 1972 when this country was still very much segregated and racist is very different from opposing it today) and was the very popular and successful first black mayor of Charlotte.
That was the worst thing about the whole deal: conservatives claim to want a colorblind society where we are viewed by our character and individual merit rather than their color. Well, Gantt integrated Clemson University (Bob Jones University chose not to integrate around the same time by the way), was an award winning architect, was a very successful businessman, was a successful and popular mayor of North Carolina’s largest city supported and respected by blacks and whites Democrats and Republicans, and had very moderate views that were well within the mainstream of most North Carolinians. Helms’ ad turned Gantt into another Al Sharpton, Willie Horton, Sister Souljah, or Ricky Ray Rector and set race relations in North Carolina back years.
In a different country, a pro – business hard working very competent fellow like Harvey Gantt would have been a REPUBLICAN. People like Jesse Helms are the reason why 90% of all blacks cling to the Democratic Party for dear life. (You are free to continue to pretend that it is because blacks want welfare checks like “the black avenger” Kenneth Hamblin claims if you want.) With a mere 35% of the black vote, conservativism could A) be a bipartisan movement just like environmentalism is right now and B) constitute a permanent governing majority. But it is thanks to guys like Helms, Strom Thurmond, Ed Meese, etc. that conservatives can’t even nominate one of their own to represent the Republican Party in presidential elections. Well guys, I hope it was worth it …
Jul 6, 2008 - 2:23 pm 26. Dave Surls:“The best little trick that they have going on is to blame all segregation on the Democrats.”
Luckily, that’s not much of a challenge.
Jul 6, 2008 - 5:32 pm 27. Dave Surls:“People like Jesse Helms are the reason why 90% of all blacks cling to the Democratic Party for dear life.”
Hogwash. It’s because the Dems promise free handouts, and the Republicans generally don’t.
Jul 6, 2008 - 7:14 pm 28. Solon:Let’s not forget Jesse’s long standing support for South Africa and his bitter hatred on Martin Luthe King Jr., Nelson Mandela and . . . miscegenation.
Here’s an anecdote:
http://matthewyglesias.theatlantic.com/archives/2008/07/a_jesse_helms_anecdote.php
“I was a senior when Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated in 1968. Roughly 2,000 of us joined a vigil on the quad for several days. The vigil was an instrument of our grieving and a voice for racial justice on Duke’s campus. Higher wages and union recognition for the non-academic employees—cooks, food-servers, maids, and janitors, most of whom were black—became the focal issue. We sat peacefully and largely silent day and night, studying for finals, listening to Dr. King’s speeches and singing “We Shall Overcome” every hour. To this day I count it as a major event in my spiritual formation.
Jesse Helms came on the television and said that all of the students sitting on the quad at Duke should ask their parents if it would be all right for their son or daughter to “marry a Negro” (Duke students were practically all white in those days). Unless the student’s parents approved of that prospect, Helms advised, he or she should go back to class. We all took the words as vindication for our cause.”
The man was a racist and a sucking chest wound of a human being. The conservative movement befouls itself once again by embracing him.
Jul 7, 2008 - 5:44 pm 29. CJD:He’s not a racist. Jesse, Al, Howard Dean, Pelosi and other liberals who hate whites and keep blacks on the modern “plantation” are.
Jul 8, 2008 - 12:57 pm 30. F3 Coalition - [Faith. Family. Freedom.] » Blog Archive » Jesse Helms: A Complex Man:[...] pointed out that Jesse Helms never apologized for his segregationist views. No, but as Rick Moran points out: And yet, his Senate office was, if not a model of diversity, a place that was at odds with his [...]
Jul 8, 2008 - 5:10 pm 31. Los:To Solon:
Jul 9, 2008 - 8:41 am 32. sean:Thanks for sharing your anecdote about Helms. I went to Duke in the late 90’s and remember feeling sick when I saw him sitting in the stands for basketball games. What a piece of garbage he was.
i have a question.will the liberal lefties like roland martin be talking about the “racist past” of someone like robert KKK byrd whenever this gentleman leaves this earth? of course not,HE’S A DEMOCRAT!
Jul 9, 2008 - 8:44 am