And the Voting Rights lies that are posted above by some folks who just don't know what the hell they are talking about.
In 1931, Reagan was on Eureka College's football team. One night, Reagan biographer Lou Cannon recalls, an Elmhurst, Illinois hotelier refused lodging to two of Reagan's black teammates. Reagan invited them to stay at his parents' home, where Mr. and Mrs. Reagan welcomed them. Reagan "and one of the players, William Franklin Burghardt, remained friends and correspondents until Mr. Burghardt died in 1981," Cannon wrote Sunday.
As an adult, Reagan had a long history of bias-free fair-mindedness. As Cannon added:
As a sports announcer in Iowa in the 1930s, Mr. Reagan opposed the segregation of Major League Baseball. As an actor in Hollywood, he quit a Los Angeles country club because it did not admit Jews. In 1978, when preparing to run for president, Mr. Reagan opposed a California ballot initiative that would have barred homosexuals from teaching in the state's public schools.
Ronald Reagan Jr. recalls the day at a California barbecue when his father dived into a pool to save a black child from drowning.
As president, Reagan named Samuel Pierce, a black man, as his secretary of Housing and Urban Development. While Pierce was outside Reagan's inner circle, he was in Reagan's Cabinet. In 1982, Reagan promoted Roscoe Robinson to become the Army's first black four-star general. Reagan also helped place Clarence Thomas on his path to the United States Supreme Court by naming him chairman of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.
Reagan's critics may dismiss these appointees as "tokens." Of course, they also would denounce Reagan for racism if he had zero appointees of color. Either way, Reagan loses.
Bob Herbert's deceptions notwithstanding, on June 29, 1982, President Reagan approved a 25-year extension of the Voting Rights Act of 1965.
The right to vote is the crown jewel of American liberties, and we will not see its luster diminished,'' Reagan said that day. "Citizens must have complete confidence in the sanctity of their right to vote, and that's what this legislation is all about.'' He added: As long as I am in a position to uphold the Constitution, no barrier will come between our citizens and the voting booth.''
Reagan signed this measure at a White House ceremony attended by some 300 people including Senator Kennedy and bipartisan members of Congress. Civil-rights veterans were there, too, including the Rev. Jesse Jackson; Benjamin Hooks, then-president of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People; Urban League president John Jacob; the Rev. Joseph Lowery, head of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference; and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.'s widow, Coretta Scott King.
Krugman whines that "Reagan opposed making Martin Luther King Day a national holiday." Earth to Planet Krugman: On November 2, 1983, President Reagan made Dr. King's birthday a federal holiday, the first and only such honor for a black American.
