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(JACKSON, Miss.) – A recently released video shows a white Republican US Senator from Mississippi praising someone saying: "When he invited me to a public hanging, I would be in the first row. "
Senator Cindy Hyde-Smith, who faces a black Democrat challenger on Nov. 27, said Sunday that her Nov. 2 remark was an "exaggerated expression of respect" for someone who invited her to speak. and a negative connotation is ridiculous. "
Mississippi has a history of lynching black people with racial motivation. The NAACP website indicates that between 1882 and 1968, there were 4,743 lynchings in the United States, and nearly 73% of the victims were blacks. Mississippi had 581 during this period, the highest number of any state.
Hyde-Smith is challenged by Mike Espy, former Congressman and former US Secretary of Agriculture.
"Cindy Hyde-Smith's comments are reprehensible," Sunday's Espy campaign spokesman Danny Blanton said in a statement. "They have no place in our political speech, in Mississippi or in our country. We need leaders, not separators, and her words show that she lacks understanding and judgment to represent the people of our state. "
The video was shot in Tupelo, in front of a statue of Elvis Presley, born in the northeastern city of Mississippi. He shows a small group of Whites applauding politely for Hyde-Smith after a cattle rancher introduced him.
"I mentioned the acceptance of an invitation to speak," said Hyde-Smith, also a livestock rancher, in a statement released Sunday. "In referring to the one who invited me, I used an expression of exaggerated respect, and any attempt to turn that into a negative connotation is ridiculous."
Hyde-Smith and Espy each received about 41% of the vote during a four-man race that took place Tuesday to qualify for the second round. The winner wins the last two years of a warrant initiated by Republican Sen. Thad Cochran.
Republican Governor Phil Bryant named Hyde-Smith a temporary successor to Cochran, who retired in April due to health problems. It will serve until the special election is resolved.
In 1986, Espy became the first African-American since the Reconstruction to win a seat at the US House of Mississippi. If he beat Hyde-Smith, he would be the first African-American to represent the state in the United States Senate.
Hyde-Smith, who is approved by President Donald Trump, is the first woman to represent Mississippi in either House of Congress and, after her nomination, attempts to become the first woman to be elected to the Senate American by the state.
Lamar White Jr., publisher of the Louisiana news site, The Bayou Brief, posted the video Sunday on social media. White told The Associated Press that he had received the late Saturday video of "a very reliable and trusted source," but that it would not reveal the person's name. He said that this source had received from the person who had filmed the video.
White said that he thought he had received the video because he was writing about racism in the South for a dozen years or so.
"There is no excuse for saying what she said," White said of Hyde-Smith.
NAACP National President Derrick Johnson of Mississippi said Hyde-Smith's comment showed a lack of judgment.
"The shameful words of Senator Cindy Hyde-Smith prove once again that Trump has created a social and political climate that normalizes hateful and racist rhetoric," Johnson said in a statement. "Hyde-Smith's decision to joke about" hanging "in a state known for its violent and terrorist history towards African Americans is sick. To imagine this type of brutal and degenerated framework at a time when blacks, Jews and immigrants are still the target of violence by nationalists and white racists is hateful and hurtful. "
A Republican activist who initially backed another candidate for the US Senate special election said he would vote for Hyde-Smith at the end of the second round, even though he considers her a candidate. low.
"This comment on" a public hanging "is a lot of noise for nothing," said Scott Brewster of Brandon, who is white. "She is not very smart and made a dull comment. It does not make her racist. "
The representative of the Republican state in Mississippi, the representative Karl Oliver, was sharply criticized in May 2017 after posting on Facebook that people should be lynched for removing the Confederate monuments.
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