Attended ‘anti-integration’ school
As President Trump tweeted Sunday that he would stump for a Republican US Senate candidate in Mississippi who said she’d happily attend a “public hanging,” disturbing new reports emerged about her past.
Cindy Hyde-Smith, 59, who’s running against Democrat Mike Espy in Tuesday’s runoff election, attended an all-white high school and praised a Confederate soldier for defending his “homeland,” according to separate reports.
She graduated from the private Lawrence County Academy, which was founded in 1970 specifically so white parents wouldn’t have to send their children to schools with black students during court-ordered racial integration at public schools, the Jackson Free Press reported Friday.
The newspaper published a photo of Hyde-Smith and other cheerleaders from the school’s 1975 “The Rebel” yearbook — posing with a mascot wearing a Confederate uniform and holding a Confederate flag.
Lawrence County was one of several private institutions opened around Mississippi after then-Gov. John Bell Williams, in reluctant compliance with the court order, ordered the desegregation of public schools in 1969.
Williams touted the new schools as an option for white families and the state Legislature approved vouchers for parents to offset the costs of sending their children to the private schools.
“Lawrence County Academy started because people didn’t want their kids going to school with minorities,” Lawrence County NAACP President Wesley Bridges told the newspaper.
Meanwhile, CNN reported on Sunday that then-state Sen. HydeSmith introduced a resolution in 2007 to honor a 92-year-old woman as the last “Real Daughter of the Confederacy living in Mississippi.” She referred to the woman’s father, a Confederate soldier in the Civil War, as fighting to “defend his homeland.”
Hyde-Smith’s campaign blamed the “liberal media” for trying to discredit her.
Hyde-Smith (above) was hailed as “outstanding” in a tweet by the president, who plans to hold two rallies for her on the eve of the vote in the deep-red state he won by 17 percentage points.
The latest revelations are roiling the election in which Espy is hoping to upset Hyde-Smith to become the first black US senator from Mississippi since Reconstruction.
Hyde-Smith’s campaign has been confronted by a number of donors — including Major League Baseball, Walmart, AT&T and Union Pacific — asking her to return the contributions because of the revelations.
In a debate last week with Espy, former President Bill Clinton’s agriculture secretary, Hyde-Smith offered a qualified apology for the hanging remark.
“For anyone that was offended by my comments, I certainly apologize. There was no ill will, no intent whatsoever in my statements,” she said, adding that her political opponents “twisted” the remark and used it against her. Espy fired back. “No one twisted your comments, because the comments came out of your mouth,” he said. “I don’t know what’s in your heart, but we know what came out of your mouth.”
Hyde-Smith made the hanging comment earlier this month when she embraced the support of a political backer by saying, “If he invited me to a public hanging, I’d be in the front row.”
Hyde-Smith was appointed to fill the seat of GOP Sen. Thad Cochran, who stepped down on April 1 for health reasons.