Reactions to Glenn Beck at civil rights museum panel discussion

At a panel discussion today at the International Civil Rights Center and Museum in Greensboro entitled “From the 1963 March on Washington to the 1965 Voting Rights Act” it was probably inevitable that sooner or the subject of conservative commentator Glenn Beck’s mass rally at the Lincoln Memorial would be broached.

Hal Sieber, former public relations director for the Greensboro Chamber of Commerce and former editor of the Carolina Peacemaker, was the first to go there.

“We have no business protecting this country – this beautiful country – from rascals, crooks, scum like Mr. Beck – just to mention someone casually – and even some of these great political leaders of our Congress who are playing acting because they don’t want the issue raised," he said. "You’re going to see bills passed very shortly that are being raised to shut people like me up. I’m not going to be shut up.”

The comment was elicited by a question about how the election of the first African-American president has affected race relations in the United States. Panelist Linda Brown, professor of English at Bennett College, also answered the question by remarking on Beck’s popularity.

“Obviously, we were all looking for that reaction,” she said. “If we didn’t know that would happen, we’re pretty naïve and innocent. I think this about it: I think that the election of Obama has revealed what was already there. The wound that started with the Middle Passage – and I don’t mean this lightly – the wound that started with slavery and the Middle Passage that culminated in the Civil War, that resulted in Jim Crow and segregation has never been healed. And folks who are going to Mr. Beck’s rally are still fighting the Civil War and want to open up the Civil War again. And what it has done for us – although it is extremely painful to live through – is to say, ‘Wake up and stop being in denial about how deep this ugliness runs in your country.’

“Poor President Obama, I think about him every day, that he is the catalyst for the healing of America, which is the most positive way that you can look at this ugliness that we have to live with. So yes, his election has not made it worse; his election has made it true.”