Cindy Hyde-Smith apologizes for her comment on the "public hanging"

A white Republican Senator from Mississippi made partial excuses after publicly declaring that she would be "in the front row" of a "public hanging" if she was invited by a political supporter.

Senator Cindy Hyde-Smith's commentary created an online firestorm after her viral virulence for potentially trivializing the lynching story in the southern United States and provoking a violent reaction even among some other Republicans.

The controversy around her remark opened the race, which was previously thought to be a shoo-in for her. The race is for the last undecided seat of the 2018 midterms.

But Hyde-Smith, who faces former Congressman Mike Espy, a black Democrat, running for the election of a Senate seat in Mississippi on Nov. 27, also said that his words had been "used as a weapon" against her.

In the initial commentary, filmed, Hyde-Smith kissed a political supporter, a rancher, saying, "When he invited me to a public hanging, I would be in the first row."

Mississippi has a long and painful history of publicly lynching blacks by white, racist crowds.

After multiple refusals to apologize, and with the words becoming a central part of the political battle around the second round, Hyde-Smith finally made a partial apology during a debate on Tuesday.

"For all those who have been offended by my comments, I apologize," she said. "There was no ill will, no intention in my statements."

She then noted that "this comment was twisted and it was turned into a weapon to use against me".

But Espy quickly pushed back: "Nobody twists your comments, because the comments came out of your mouth … I do not know what you have in your heart, but we know what came out of your mouth."

Hyde-Smith had previously stated that his words were an "exaggerated expression of respect" for a friend and that "any attempt to turn that into a negative connotation [sic] is ridiculous. "

She also asked that no audience or media be allowed to attend the debate on Tuesday, according to an article in the Jackson newspaper. Free Press.

According to the NAACP, 581 people were lynched in Mississippi between 1882 and 1968, the highest number of any state.

Write to Billy Perrigo at [email protected].