red is worse than black

thurmond strikes (struck) again

U.S. Sen. Strom Thurmond and his staff tried to get the FBI to build a case against civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. in 1965 on the grounds that King was "controlled by communists," according to a recently released FBI memo on the late senator from South Carolina.

(snip)

Dan Carter, a nationally known civil rights historian at the University of South Carolina, attested to the power of the communist smear upon the civil rights movement.

"As late as 1962 or 1963, a majority of Americans actually believed that communists were involved or were instigators of the civil rights movement," he said.

Moreover, he said, the segregationist White Citizens Councils - in their appeals to Northerners - stressed the supposed communist leanings of civil rights workers rather than segregation.

"The segregationists played the anti-communist card," Carter said. "It was the one card they could deal to both Northerners and Southerners."