Talk:Charles W. Pickering

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Fodder for the article: Judge Pickering has been depicted by groups like the NAACP and People For the American Way as an enemy of civil rights. But black residents of Laurel, Miss., his hometown, say these assertions are false. Two years ago, New York Times correspondent David Firestone conducted scores of interviews with black residents of the city. He wrote that "on the streets of his small and largely black hometown, far from the bitterness of partisan agendas and position papers, Charles Pickering is a widely admired figure." Blacks praised him for helping to set up after-school programs in the city and for directing federal money to low-income areas. Black city officials praised him for persuading white-owned banks to lend money to black entrepreneurs.

Four of the five blacks on the seven- member city council favored Judge Pickering's promotion to the appeals court. Black residents pointed to the fact that, in 1967, Judge Pickering testified against Sam Bowers, a Ku Klux Klan leader on trial for the firebombing death of a local civil rights worker. They noted that, by testifying against Bowers (currently in prison for murdering another civil rights leader more than 30 years ago), Judge Pickering risked his life. "I can't believe the man they're describing in Washington is the same one I've known for years," Thaddeus Edmonson, a former president of the Laurel chapter of the NAACP, told the New York Times. [1]

--Unsolved Equation 15:24, 21 Jan 2004 (UTC)