The Reality of Segregation

The Washington Post's Richard Cohen wrote a column last week that closed with this unsettling anecdote:

"Years ago, a Howard University professor told me that as a boy in the South he was forced to buy shoes without first trying them on for fit. Only whites could do that. Think of that and then think of what [Trent] Lott said. The majority leader of the Senate may not be a racist, but he is remarkably incapable of appreciating what it was like to walk in those shoes."

And for those interested in history, here's an audio snippet from a Strom Thurmond stump speech in 1948, featuring the grand old man fulminating against integration on the grounds that it would lead inexorably to "admitting" blacks' [not Thurmond's choice of words] into white theaters, swimming pools, homes and churches.

Lott will appear tonight at 8 p.m. ET on BET, for an interview that should be pretty damn interesting, to say the least.