Civil-rights days not so bad, recalls Mississippi governor

WASHINGTON — In an interview that set off a new round of debate Monday about racial attitudes and politics, Gov. Haley Barbour, R-Miss., a potential presidential candidate, recalled the 1960s civil-rights days in his hometown, Yazoo City, saying, "I just don't remember it as being that bad."

In a profile published Monday in The Weekly Standard, Barbour also talked about the White Citizens' Councils of the late 1960s, which some historians have said were organized to oppose racial integration. Barbour, who was a teenager and young adult during the 1960s, said that in his town, they were a positive force, praising them as "an organization of town leaders" who refused to tolerate the racist attitudes of the Ku Klux Klan.

"In Yazoo City they passed a resolution that said anybody who started a chapter of the Klan" would be "run out of town," Barbour said.

Derrick Johnson, president of the Mississippi NAACP, told The Huffington Post, "It's offensive that he would take that approach to the history of this state to many African Americans who had to suffer as a result of the policies and practices of the Citizens Council."

In the article Barbour recalled seeing the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. speak in his town in 1962, but said he did not remember what King said. "We just sat on our cars, watching the girls, talking, doing what boys do," he said.