Word: mississippi
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...flew from Key West to his home in the shipbuilding and shrimping town of Pascagoula on Mississippi's Gulf Coast and opened a news conference by saying his comments at the Thurmond party were "totally unacceptable and insensitive, and I apologize for that." He added, "I grew up in an environment that condoned policies and views that we now know were wrong and immoral, and I repudiate them. Let me be clear: segregation and racism are immoral." Lott asked for "forbearance and forgiveness as I continue to learn from my own mistakes." But once he got beyond his script...
...matters did not get much national attention until last week. It also helps explain why he was so slow to address the controversy over his comments on Thurmond. Except for brief flare-ups when his name was associated with fringe groups, the people who really mattered to him--his Mississippi supporters and Republicans in the Senate and White House--had seldom complained about such comments in the past. "The most important thing to understand about Trent Lott is that he never left Mississippi," says a Republican politician who has worked with him for decades. "He did not grow...
...that's not entirely fair--not fair, that is, to Mississippi. There are still Confederate souvenirs in many curio shops, but most of the state has moved into the 21st century with an entrepreneurial zeal. You can see blacks and whites eating together, shopping together and studying together to a greater extent than in many northern cities and suburbs. And as Lott pointed out at his press conference, Mississippi boasts more black elected officials--897 as of July--than any other state...
...after making his hometown apology last week, Lott told TIME in an interview that he has been transformed along with his state. "I have changed. People in Mississippi have changed. You grow up in one kind of society and know a certain kind of people and their views, and then as you mature, you meet other kinds of people." He pointed to his press conference as evidence. "Think about the statements I made there. I stood in Pascagoula, Mississippi, and repudiated racism of all kinds and apologized for things I've said that hurt African Americans. If Mississippi hadn...
...understand that, it helps to look at the rock bottom he came from. Chester Trent Lott was born in October 1941 in the north-central Mississippi hill town of Grenada, 246 miles from Pascagoula--and a world away, economically and socially. He was, from the start, considered a "miracle" boy. He was born six years after his parents began trying to conceive a child. They were never able to have another. Lott's first name, like his father's, came from the county in South Carolina where the Lotts first settled after emigrating from England, making their...