Sen. Robert C. Byrd is a great friend to the people of West Virginia. Recently, national Republicans, conservative columnists and radio talk-show hosts have been lampooning Byrd about his stint as a member of the Ku Klux Klan in the 1940s. In political discourse, all things in one's past are fair game - but enough is enough.

I am a 46-year-old African-American reared in Southern West Virginia. I have dabbled in business, politics and state government. Having had the opportunity to observe Sen. Byrd my whole adult life, I would rather deal with a reformed KKK member in Byrd than all of the closeted, bigoted hypocrites of the extreme right of this country. You can keep the likes of Strom Thurmond, Trent Lott, Jesse Helms, etc., as far away as possible.

I have no need for my political philosophy to be served to me each day by Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, G. Gordon Liddy or any other conservative charlatan proclaiming to be a voice of reason on issues they know little or nothing about.

On Oct. 20, 2000, before the state NAACP Freedom Fund Dinner on the campus of West Virginia State University, Sen. Byrd spoke these words:

"I was raised in rural Southern West Virginia. In the teens and 20s, it was a long way away, in more ways than one, from the urban beginnings of the NAACP in New York City in 1909. I grew up in an atmosphere that probably had not changed substantially since Reconstruction. As I look back now, I can see that many of the attitudes and influences that surrounded me in my aunt and uncle's boarding house would now be termed racist. But, to me at the time, these attitudes were normal, so common that they went unquestioned and unexamined. I absorbed those lessons in the air that I breathed, even though my own direct dealings with blacks while growing up were positive.

"Without conscious effort, we poor pathetic humans, trapped within our own skulls, can view life only from the prism of our own surroundings. We cannot lift ourselves out of particular biases, we cannot question our prejudices, we cannot loose our bonds of rigid and wrong thinking without letting the light of knowledge cut the darkness. Education is the way to open our minds and our hearts. Understanding and empathy usually follow, and those two qualities nourish the soul as well as the mind. It is largely because of organizations like the NAACP, and your efforts to educate a nation about equality and fairness, that attitudes have so changed."

President Lyndon Johnson knew in 1964 after signing the Civil Rights Act that political division would follow, and Richard Nixon perfected the continued division of people along racial lines in elections. Many Republicans pretend to scratch their heads as if they do not understand why upward of 90 percent of African-Americans remain with the Democratic Party in national elections. These architects of race division coin catch phrases such as "Real Americans," "Bring back the good old days," and "Win America Back" or they wax eloquent about the original intent of the Founding Fathers.

We see it in election ads about Willie Horton (a black man convicted of raping a white woman) as if Gov. Michael Dukakis or other Democrats really espoused such despicable acts. We hear it in campaign talk about affirmative action, signaling to the poor and ignorant how Republicans are fighting to get your jobs back from the lowdown blacks, Hispanics and other immigrants of color who have stolen them with the help of a corrupt federal judiciary.

I also understand that there are people of color who proclaim to be conservative. Armstrong Williams, Thomas Sowell, Walter Williams and Clarence Thomas, to name a few. Politics - it is a free marketplace, and while all of us may have been sold, we all cannot be bought!

Yes, Robert C. Byrd started out in life in a bad place. Some might say it was in land forgotten by time. By his own admission, in his formative years, race relations in this poor place seemed to conjure up some of the worst actors, with a view of human life in stark contrast to anything decent or civil. But he has grown. I encourage anyone who questions his transformation to spend some time talking to Sen. Byrd. Speak with his staff about the senator's generosity and his statesmanlike qualities, which add definition and purpose to his convictions.

Check out his family members to see if any of the vestiges of the Old South taint the senator's judgment. The conservative and sanctimonious detractors who profess to sit at the right hand of God evidently have never heard the term forgiveness - except when it applies to a fallen Republican majority leader or a 100-year-old GOP senator unable to own up to a mixed-race child of his youth.

Sen. Byrd is not in this battle because of the sins of his youth, but rather because of his credibility and his stellar debating skills concerning the wrong-headed policy shifts of this Republican administration. Byrd was correct on the policy of pre-emption. He was correct on the lack of evidence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. He was correct on the pre-election rush to war in Iraq. He has been right time after time. The extreme right has a need to silence this stalwart of historical knowledge and intelligent truth.

I want to speak to people of color of this country about Sen. Byrd. He has not always voted the way I would wish, but his voting record of the last 40 plus years has gone a long way to help us realize the American dream. To those of you on the right masquerading as purveyors of freedom and justice, I've known some racists here in my state. I've lived with some racists, and yes, I've had confrontations with racists. But I say to you, Sen. Byrd is no racist. That dog won't hunt. Rather than attack him on sins of the past, why not join him in the ring of public opinion on the facts?

Johnson, a former delegate in the Legislature, is a state development official.

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