<a href='http://www.ajc.com/news/content/news/1103/14zell.html' target='_blank'>Miller's talk of 'lynching' is criticized </a>

Quote:WASHINGTON -- A civil rights leader demanded Thursday that Sen. Zell Miller (D-Ga.) apologize for using the word "lynching" to describe the opposition to the judicial nomination of an African-American woman.

In a 2 a.m. speech during the Republican talkathon in support of President Bush's stalled judicial nominees, Miller made the comparison in describing the treatment of California Supreme Court Justice Janice Rogers Brown.

<span style='color:red'>"This African-American woman will not be given an up-or-down vote, because the Democrats in this chamber refuse to stand and let her do it," Miller said. "They're standing in the doorway, and they've got a sign: conservative African-American women need not apply. And if you have the temerity to do so, your reputation will be shattered and your dignity will be shredded. Gal, you will be lynched."</span>

Wade Henderson, executive director of the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights, took sharp exception to Miller's words.

"Senator Zell Miller's comment equating opposition to the nomination of Janice Rogers Brown to a lynching is despicable on its face," said Henderson. "Either Senator Miller has conveniently forgotten a frightening period of American history, or he is willfully demeaning all those African-Americans who were hung from trees throughout the period of racial segregation in the South."

Miller stuck by his vocabulary.

"I am not the first to use this analogy," the senator replied Thursday in a prepared statement. "African-American columnist Thomas Sowell first used it in a column on October 24, 2003, and I think it sums up the situation accurately."

Brown's confirmation has been opposed by the Congressional Black Caucus and some civil rights groups.

"The tragedy here does not lie in my floor speech this morning," said Miller. Rogers Brown, he said, "is the daughter of an Alabama sharecropper who decided to become a lawyer after seeing African-American attorneys in the civil rights movement praised for their courage.

"Now, this courageous woman is about to become the latest victim in Washington's fierce, partisan game of personal attacks and character assassinations."

Henderson demanded an apology "to all those whose family members were murdered by members of the Ku Klux Klan and White Citizens Councils and those who fought to end lynch mob violence," he said in his own prepared statement.

Miller defended his record and his rhetoric.

<span style='color:red'>"I would put my record on civil rights up against anyone's. As Georgia's governor, I named more African-Americans to state boards than any Georgia governor, and I named more African-Americans to judgeships than all previous governors combined. I named an African-American female as the first to serve on the Georgia Supreme Court. I also appointed an African-American as state attorney general, the first one in the nation at the time."</span>

Way to go Zell! That man doesn't back down from anyone.

...can't believe I said "It damn sure don't".

Hey, he said "lynch"....

Lynch him!!!!

metro6775 Wrote:Hey, he said "lynch"....

Lynch him!!!!

They have had that planned since his book, "A National Party No More: The Conscience of a Conservative Democrat".