OLD JESSE WOULD BE PROUD
By Cash Michaels
Boy, oh boy, Sen. Jesse Helms must be smiling wide from the grave, crooked glasses and all, right now.
Especially after the recent ruling by the US Supreme Court in the Louisiana redistricting case effectively killing the Voting Rights Act, and the Trump administration’s overall bad attitude towards Democrats, liberals and black people…all of Old Jesse’s pet peeves.
In case either you don’t recall, or just don’t know, Sen. Helms was the one-man wrecking ball of Republican Party politics back in the day (he spent 30 years in the US Senate starting in the 1970’s). One thing about the man from Monroe, though, you always knew where he stood on the issues, and he didn’t give a lick what you thought about it, or him.
That was especially true of his stand on racial politics.
To say Jesse Helms had a serious problem with the ’60s civil rights movement, which he opined was filled with communists and “moral degenerates,” is an understatement. All one had to do was listen to some of his infamous hot button editorials on WRAL-TV in the ’60’s to realize that “We Shall Overcome” was NOT one of his favorite tunes.
Jesse even called liberal UNC at Chapel Hill "The University of Negroes and Communists.” Bet THAT went over well with the alumni association.
While most of the world thought highly of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and his courageous leadership in trying to end racial segregation in the South through nonviolence, Helms blatantly tagged Dr. King as a “communist sympathizer”; alleged that King dishonestly used nonviolence “as a provocation;” unsuccessfully attempted to block passage of the MLK national federal holiday, while openly supporting the racist white separatist regime in South Africa; and had the gall to say that “Too often, racism is used as a smear word.”
To put a nice ribbon on this certainly incomplete Jesse Helms racial politics package, “Senator No,” as he was so affectionately known as, infamously filibustered against renewal of the 1965 Voting Rights Act in 1982 “until the cows [came] home,” he then blustered.
In his fundraising letters to conservative supporters, Helms plainly admitted, "I'm not going to get any black votes, period."
Clearly just by this very limited list alone, Jesse Helms certainly had no love for, or interest in, bettering the lives and civil rights of African-American citizens in this country, and proudly made that no secret.
Just like the aging, out of control Republican narcissist we have in the White House today.
I agree with respected NC Spin columnist and former advisor and political consultant to Gov. Jim Hunt, Gary Pearce, when he wrote in a January 2024 column, “Helms would be perfectly at home in Donald Trump’s Republican Party. Like Trump, Helms was a racist.”
Like Trump, Helms was devoted to stopping black political and social progress at any cost.
As Mr. Pearce astutely asserted then, Old Jesse would have been right at home today with what’s going on in our country, and pleased as punch that we’ve turned the clock back to before the 1965 Voting Rights Act even existed.
Indeed, it would take someone with Old Jesse’s brazen opposition to racial equality to pat themselves on the back after the Supreme Court’s stupefying ruling demolishing the VRA, effectively diluting the voting rights of African-Americans in this country, especially throughout the South. But that’s exactly what we saw and heard from at least one gleeful Republican last week.
Guess who?
“The kind of ruling I like,” bellowed a grinning Trump, who is pushing as many red states in the South as possible to start redistricting for the upcoming midterms to hopefully keep control of Congress, using black voting rights as a doormat to do it.
For example, the ruby red state of Tennessee, which last week was the first to redraw its only black Democratic majority-minority voting district in Memphis, is now adding insult to injury by, as of this writing, preparing a “…change to the law that may make it harder for many of these [black] voters to cast their ballots. Republicans are pushing to remove the requirement that [black] voters be notified when their assigned polling places change, a move which will likely cause confusion and prevent eligible [black] voters from casting their ballots,” according to Blavity News and other news outlets.
Tennessee officials claim the move is to “save money” by not having to inform black voters about where their new polling places in Memphis will be, but political scientist Norman Ornstein, a contributing editor to The Atlantic magazine, called the proposed change in the law “Jim Crow on steroids.”
I bet Trump will like that ruling too! Old Jesse certainly would!
Let’s be fair here, and also check Trump’s record on shamelessly weaponizing race against black people, starting with his war…not against Iran, but diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI).
Since taking office for his second term in 2025, Trump has used his power of executive orders to outlaw DEI in federal agencies across the government, and also to force colleges and universities, private corporations and state governments like North Carolina to also drop and prohibit their DEI policies that ensured workplace equity, proper research funding, and educational programs that promoted black history.
Those anti-DEI orders also put a stop to programs like workforce training and equity-focused grants that directly helped black communities. Trump’s anti-DEI orders also cut the federal workforce by an estimate of some 342,000, many of whom were African-Americans. And a considerable number of those were women, particularly in the Dept of Education, which was ultimately dismantled.
One of the most prominent black terminations, and there were many, was Ms. Carla Hayden, Librarian of Congress, the first woman and first African-American ever to hold that distinguished position. Published reports say she was fired by email for being perceived as “woke.”
Over at Trump’s “Dept. of War,” his secretary in charge, Pete Hegseth, has made no secret of his disdain for blacks and women in the upper ranks, firing as many as he can get away with, even during an ongoing war, and apparently with his boss’s approval.
That included General Charles Q. Brown Jr., Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, a four-star general with over 40 years of service as a fighter pilot, among others.
Needless to say, Trump hasn’t said a word about the sharp rise in black unemployment on his watch. When he took office in January 2025, it was 6.2. Last November, 8.2. And just last month, 7.3.
Think those unemployed African-Americans can even afford to look for work with gas prices now staring at five dollars a gallon, and the cost of living overall going up?
Back at the White House, published reports note that “ Trump has overturned an executive order signed by Lyndon B. Johnson in 1965 to jettison a requirement that federal contractors must enforce rules against segregation in their workplaces”
Yes, you read that right. LBJ issued an executive order in 1965 that required federal contractors to ensure rules against segregation in their workplaces, and Trump threw it out, meaning if a private company being paid with your tax dollars decides to allow whites to use a certain bathroom, and forces blacks to use another, like back during the days of Jim Crow, that would not be illegal. It could start a movement to undo decades of anti-discrimination laws per the 1964 Civil Rights Act, and in states with similar civil rights protections across the country.
The ACLU condemned Trump’s pro-segregation order, saying it “is not only undoing decades of federal anti-discrimination policy, spanning Democratic and Republican presidential administrations alike, but also marshaling federal enforcement agencies to bully both private and government entities into abandoning legal efforts to promote equity and remedy systemic discrimination."
None of that can happen, you say? The Trump Administration has already ordered the Departments of Homeland Security, Commerce, and the National Institute of Health to notify staff “…overseeing federal contracts that they should begin instituting the changes outlined in Trump's executive order,” according to The Independent and other news outlets.
Trump knows this will eventually end up in a federal court someplace, and most likely his conservative-led U.S. Supreme Court one day. We’ve already seen where the high court majority’s heads are at, so don’t think right-wing geniuses like Roberts, Alito and Thomas couldn’t, again, justify giving Trump just what he wants. We’re already headed down that road.
Besides, Trump is on record telling The New York Times last January that as a result of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, white people, and white men particularly, were treated “very badly.” So he’s game for bear.
Several opinion writers beyond yours truly have been tracking what Andrew Greene of NewsBreak said best, “…the fuller picture of Trump’s second term [has come] into focus. It is a picture of targeting. A picture of erasure. A picture of a president who ran on “law and order” but has systematically dismantled the laws designed to protect Black Americans from discrimination, and the people who enforce them. The verdict is not subtle: Donald Trump has waged a war on Black Americans unmatched in modern presidential history. From his first day back in the White House, he has used the machinery of the federal government to target, remove, and silence Black leadership, erase civil rights protections that stood for decades, and accelerate an economic reversal that is leaving Black families behind.
By the way, it is by no accident that the same man who was charged with racial discrimination by the U.S. Dept. of Housing and Urban Development way back in the late 1970’s when both he and his Ku Klux Klan father, realtor Fred Trump, refused to rent apartments to black people in NY, has now ordered an end to federal enforcement actions based on racial discrimination housing complaints, thus deliberately undermining the Fair Housing Act of 1968.
Shamefully, I could go on and on with further, documented evidence of President Trump’s disdain for black people, from openly saying stuff like certain less desirable people from “s--thole countries like Haiti” who come here, are “eating the cats and eating the dogs”; to posting artificial intelligence memes portraying Barack and Michelle Obama, the black former president and First Lady of the United States, as apes, and refusing to apologize for it.
But you get the picture. All of this racist stuff, part of Trump’s MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN mantra and movement, is actually making America a disgrace. But as I said before, if Old Jesse Helms were here, he’d take one look around, and then turn to Trump and say, “Donald, I just love what you’ve done with the place! And to whom you’ve done it to!
There was a refreshing difference between Helms’ tenure during the 70’s - 90’s, and Trump’s tenure of disaster now, however.
During Helms’ time in the U.S. Senate, even though he was raising all sorts of hell trying to make life tougher for black people, he was usually yanked back by moderate Republicans like senators Howard Baker, Lowell Weicker and Ted Stevens - reasonable people who joined with Democratic senators like Teddy Kennedy and yes, Joe Biden, to make good, sound public policy, like the 1982 renewal of the landmark 1965 Voting Rights Act - considered the most important piece of legislation in American history because it gave both teeth and empowerment to the citizenship status of African-Americans before the U.S. Supreme Court chiseled most of it away.
Yes, back when conservative dinosaurs like Jesse Helms and Sen. Strom Thurmond of South Carolina roamed the Earth, we had societal and political protections in place, like moderate, principled Republicans who had the good sense to put country before party and obey the Constitution.
Not anymore!
Today, we’ve got lily-livered right-wing GOP’ers like Speaker Mike Johnston who wear the pinkest panties imaginable when it comes to standing up for the Constitution, and standing up to Donald Trump, letting him get any damn thing he wants, including possibly a billion dollar White House ballroom now, while Americans are suffering from sea to shining sea.
There are no moderate, principled Republicans willing to even show their faces in public today. That would require real courage and class. Nothing to reliably pull us back from the brink…unless ALL people of good will get out there and vote to save this country this November!
You know, I’m kinda surprised that Helms and Trump didn't meet at a campaign fundraising event something, like during the 1970’s, when Trump was going to all of those Jeffrey Epstein parties. But I’m pretty sure Old Jesse has never been to one of those. Not his style. His segregationist buddy Strom Thurmond may have, however. He liked you girls. After all, didn’t Strom father a child with his black teenage housekeeper in 1925 or something? And we didn't find out about Strom's biracial daughter until 2003, long after he died, did we?
I tell ya, these loudmouth racists with their high moral hate and better-than-thou pseudo-"Christian" values, sometimes can’t even stick to the script, can they?
Anyway, with the coast clear now for conservatives, someone just like Old Jesse is having the time of his life as long as he wants to with his angry, ugly racist policies.
And someone just like Old Jesse, in fact, is!
Hey, shhh! Keep the noise down, or else you’ll miss hearing Old Jesse down under. He’s stopped smiling.
In fact, I can hear him laughing out loud now.
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