Absalom Willis Robertson

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Absalom Willis Robertson, circa 1940s

Absalom Willis Robertson (27 May 1887 – 1 November 1971) was an American lawyer and Democratic Party politician from Lexington, Virginia. Also known as A. Willis Robertson, he represented Virginia in both the U.S. House and the United States Senate.

Willis Robertson was born in Martinsburg, West Virginia, to Franklin P. Robertson and Josephine Ragland (Willis) Robertson and he graduated from the University of Richmond in 1907. Robertson was elected to the Virginia State Senate as a Democrat in 1915 and he served from 1916 to 1922. Robertson served in the United States Army during World War I. Robertson served as Commonwealth Attorney for Rockbridge County, Virginia from 1922 to 1928.

Robertson was elected to the House of Representatives in 1932. He served from 1933 until he resigned in 1946 to enter the United States Senate. Robertson had a typically socially conservative Southern Democrat voting record and he was the chairman of the U.S. Senate Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs from 1959 until 1966. Robertson served in the Senate from 1946 until 1967. In 1956, Robertson was one of the 19 senators who signed The Southern Manifesto, condemning the U.S. Supreme Court decision in Brown vs. Board of Education and the resulting public desegregation. When President Lyndon Johnson sent the First Lady on a train trip through the South to encourage support for the Civil Rights and Voting Rights Acts, Sen. Robertson was one of four Southern Senators who refused to meet with her on the whistle stop trip. In retaliation, President Johnson arranged to unseat him. He was defeated for renomination in 1966 and resigned on 30 December 1966. He was one of the architects of the Southern Strategy, utilized by presidential candidate Richard Nixon in 1968 and a mainstay of Republican election strategy to this day.

Willis' best known son is televangelist Pat Robertson.

1 Statements on Civil Rights
- 1.1 March 10, 1956, Christian Science Monitor
- 1.2 Monday, July 9, 1956, Congressional Record
2 External link

[edit] Statements on Civil Rights

[edit] March 10, 1956, Christian Science Monitor

Asked to comment “on his region’s state of mind and any specific American attitudes he feels are necessary to avoid violence and bring healing in a deteriorating situation following the Supreme Court school desegregation order," Robertson stated:

“Virginia recognizes the correctness of the 1850 decision of the Massachusetts Supreme Court and in the 155 subsequent decisions of State and Federal courts holding that the equal rights provision of a constitution could be properly satisfied by public schools for the white and colored races which are separate but equal.

During the last 10 years notable progress has been made in the Southern States is meeting that equality requirement. But that progress will be nullified by a program of rapid, enforced desegregation. In fact, public education for both races in some Southern States would be destroyed.

The worst feature of the current desegregation effort, however, is the resulting bitterness and racial animosities in areas where harmony heretofore prevailed. Southerners believe that the cherished constitutional right of every citizen to select his personal associates is being violated.”

[edit] Monday, July 9, 1956, Congressional Record

“I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Congressional Record the weekly newsletter of my distinguished successor in the Seventh Congressional District of Virginia, Representative Burr P Harrison, in which he discussed the so-called civil rights bill now under consideration by the House. Representative Harrison’s analysis is lucid and accurate, and I fully endorse the position he has taken in opposition to it."

Harrison’s Report stated:

“Evan a casual reading of this bill, sponsored by the President, reveals it as one of the most drastic measures ever to receive consideration by the Congress.

It would set up a Federal Commission with a staff of snoopers who could roam the length and breadth of the United States, armed with subpoenas, looking for civil-rights incidents. One of the objectives of this Commission would be to advance the idea of complete racial integration in private business.”