Robert Byrd was a Democrat senator who had once led a chapter of the KKK as an Exalted Cyclops. Joe Biden and Bill Clinton both spoke at his funeral in 2010.
Biden stated, “As also noted, Robert C. Byrd was a parliamentary library keeper at the institution of the Senate and he was the institution itself. But to me and many people here today, like guys I see, Bill Bradley and Jim Sasser, who long left the Senate for greener pastures and I hope better remuneration. We used to care about that, too. But I, for a lot of us, he was a friend and he was a mentor and he was a guide.”
Bill Clinton shared, “There are a lot of people who wrote these eulogies for Senator Byrd in newspapers, and I read a bunch of them and they mentioned that he once had a fleeting association with Ku Klux Klan. What does that mean? I’ll tell you what it means. He was a country boy from the hills and hollows of West Virginia. He was trying to get elected. And maybe he did something he shouldn’t have done and he spent the rest of his life making it up. And that’s what a good person does. There are no perfect people. There are certainly no perfect politicians.”
Byrd initially got involved with the KKK in his home state of West Virginia in the early 1940s. Bird recounted in his autobiography that, “many of the ‘best’ people were members- even senators and other high officials.”
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Byrd recounted in his autobiography that he wrote a letter to Joel L. Baskin, the klan’s grand dragon, asking to join in order to start a Klan chapter or ‘klavern,’ in his town. A klavern is a local unit of the Klan. Byrd was tasked with recruiting 150 people to the Klan.
When he involved enough people to start a klavern ,a unanimous vote among the recruits names him ‘exalted cyclops.’ Which is the highest-ranking position in a chapter.
Byrd later renounced his membership of the KKK and he also endorsed President Obama’s campaign in 2008.
Former President Barack Obama stated, “Robert Byrd possessed that quintessential American quality. And that is a capacity to change.”
Biden shared, “He never stopped thinking about his people and the things he cared about. Speaking several weeks ago this week actually, when Robert Byrd said, quote, ‘like Jefferson and Adams, I’m inspired to continue serving the land I love to the very best of my abilities through the whole of my-. For the whole of my years.”
Biden continued, “Well he serve the land he loved. He serve the people he loved. He served the people who were in his blood. And because of that service, you have gained greatly. And with his loss, you’re the first who will feel that loss. But it’s not just West Virginia alone. It’s all of us.”
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