NAACP presses Collins, Snowe to seek Lott ouster

PORTLAND – The Portland chapter of the NAACP on Thursday said Maine’s two U.S. senators aren’t doing enough in response to Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott’s remarks indicating support for segregation.

In response to an NAACP request Wednesday that they ask Lott to resign as majority leader, Republican Sens. Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins said Senate Republicans would meet Jan. 6 to discuss the matter.

At a press conference Thursday at Portland City Hall, local NAACP leaders said that isn’t enough. They urged Mainers to e-mail, fax and write the senators urging that they demand Lott’s resignation as Senate majority leader.

“A clear statement must be made, not based on party politics but based on human dignity and morality,” said Winston McGill, president of the NAACP.

Lott, R-Miss., has been under fire since he boasted at Sen. Strom Thurmond’s 100th birthday party that Mississippi voted for Thurmond in his 1948 run for president on a segregationist agenda. Lott further said if the country had followed Mississippi’s lead, it wouldn’t “have had all these problems over all these years.”

Nearly a dozen Senate Republicans have publicly expressed support for Lott, while others have refused to come to his defense. Republican Sen. Lincoln Chafee of Rhode Island has publicly called for new party leadership.

In a joint statement to the NAACP, Snowe and Collins said they “appreciate the NAACP’s views” and are continuing to discuss with colleagues the impact of Lott’s “reprehensible remarks.”

They said Senate Republicans would meet on Jan. 6 to deliberate and decide on the future leadership of the Republican Party in the Senate.

Rachel Talbot Ross, vice president of the local NAACP chapter, said the senators need not wait until Jan. 6 to show “moral leadership in calling for the end of leaders who proudly display the legacy of segregation, discrimination and racism.”