Yesterday as his closed casket, covered by a U.S. flag and flanked by two state highway patrol troopers, lay in front of the pews of Hayes-Barton Baptist Church where he worshipped for decades and served as a deacon, I could not help but wonder if there is such thing as life after death and if it does exist where is the former senator today?
The Republican and former North Carolina Sen. Jesse Helms, 86-year-old, served in the Senate from 1973 to 2003. He was born in Monroe on Oct. 18, 1921. A son of a police chief, he attended Wingate College and Wake Forest College, but never graduated and went on to serve in the Navy during World War II. Among his first forays into politics was working in 1950 to elect segregationist candidate Willis Smith to the Senate, and he later fought against much of the civil rights movement. He switched from the Democratic to the Republican Party when the Democrats began pressing for civil rights legislation in the 1960s.
According to the former senator, "My legacy will be up to others to describe." He is right, his legacy is not a history to be sanitized. He spent three terms in the U.S. Senate, and is remembered by many for his bigot, homophobic, racist statements and opposition to the 1964 Civil Rights Act. Similar to the presumptive GOP Presidential nominee, Sen. John McCain, Mr. Helms stood by his decision to oppose strenuously the establishment of a national holiday honoring the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Those who wanted to advance King’s goals "would have done well to expend their energies in providing more education, more job training and more cooperation in building understanding instead of establishing a day off that costs the country many millions in lost productivity each year," Mr. Helms said.
North Carolina voters first learned of Helms through his newspaper and television commentaries that were a forerunner of what was to come. He won election to the Senate in 1972 and rose to become a powerful committee chairman before deciding not to seek a sixth term in 2002.
He never lost a political race, but his margin of victory was never large, reflecting his image as a polarizing figure both at home and in Washington. In the Senate, he forced roll-call votes that required Democrats to take politically difficult votes on cultural issues, such as federal funding for art he deemed pornographic, school busing and flag-burning.
He ran racially shaded campaigns in his last two runs for Senate, defeating former Charlotte Mayor Harvey Gantt, who is black, in 1990 and 1996. In the first race, a Helms commercial showed a white fist crumpling up a job application, these words underneath: "You needed that job … but they had to give it to a minority because of a racial quota." "The tension that he creates, the fear he creates in people, is how he’s won campaigns," Gantt said several years later.
It was noted that soon after the Senate voted on the Confederate flag insignia, Sen. Jesse Helms ran into Moseley-Braun, an African-American Senator from Illinois in a Capitol elevator. Helms turned to his friend, Sen. Orrin Hatch (R.-Utah), and said, "Watch me make her cry. I’m going to make her cry. I’m going to sing ‘Dixie’ until she cries." He then proceeded to sing the song about "the good life" during slavery to Moseley-Braun.
In 1993, when then-President Clinton sought confirmation for an openly homosexual assistant secretary at the Department of Housing and Urban Development, Helms registered his disgust. "I’m not going to put a lesbian in a position like that," he said in a newspaper interview at the time. "If you want to call me a bigot, fine." During the 1990s, Helms clashed frequently with President Clinton, whom he deemed unqualified to be commander in chief. Even some Republicans cringed when Helms said Clinton was so unpopular he would need a bodyguard on North Carolina military bases. Helms said he hadn’t meant it as a threat.
"Senator No", nicknamed because he regularly opposed initiatives promoted by both Republican and Democratic administrations recounted how he came to change his views on the spread of AIDS and to support using federal money to fight the disease. "It had been my feeling that AIDS was a disease largely spread by reckless and voluntary sexual and drug-abusing behavior, and that it would probably be confined to those in high-risk populations," Mr. Helms said. "I was wrong."
Some of Helms’ admirers sugar-coated his racist and bigotry behaviors by referring to it as holding a clear convictions and championing them without regard for the mood of the moment. What is unique about Helms from my point of view is his unforgivable and his willingness to pick at the scab of the evil of American history, the legacy of slavery and segregation, and to inflame racial resentment against African Americans.
The chocolatecity.cc/blog extends condolences to the Helms family, who are not responsible for his racist and homophobic views and ask that we all pray that the Good Lord may have mercy on his poor soul where ever he may be.
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It’s sad that Jesse Helms went to his grave without repenting to his God, that is if one existed.