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Robert Byrd: States
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Byrd continued his look at the United States' ethnic identity with Apart and Together, an examination of race relations that received a Silver Plaque award at the Chicago International Film Festival in 1993. The piece began with two separate discussions on race in the United States, one among whites only and the other among blacks. Byrd then brought the two groups together for a discussion he described as, "at times explosive and at other times revealing." He told CBB that this format was the only way to get people-- especially whites--to be completely honest about their views on race.
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Byrd's discomfort with racial issues outlived his youth. He filibustered the 1964 Civil Rights Act, at one point citing a study that purportedly proved whites had heavier brains than blacks. He used a racial epithet in a 2001 Fox News interview. He later apologized, but there is a bizarre passage in his autobiography describing America's white ethnics as "former minorities," and implicitly contrasting them with today's minorities. The former minorities "sought no special status," he writes. "They did not push and shove and demand something for nothing."
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In 1965, the Robert C. Byrd Honors Scholarship Program was created by Congress as a federally funded, state-administered program. It awards $1,500 a year to graduating high school seniors who continue on to higher education on the basis of academic merit.
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After a short time, Byrd was offered a job as produce boy with the Koppers Company in his hometown. The Koppers Company owned the coal operation in Stotesbury as well as the gas station in Helen. He was happy to change jobs because he would no longer have to travel several miles to work.
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Byrd is well known for steering federal dollars to West Virginia, one of the country's poorest states. In fact, he is called by some the "King of Pork."[18] After becoming chair of the Appropriations Committee in 1989, Byrd sought to steer, over time, a total of $1 billion for public works in the state.
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Byrd didn't seem to be listening. But Rogers knew Byrd was a published historian, renowned for his stentorian speeches about the statesmen of yore, so he tried quoting Abraham Lincoln to the effect that great men must change with the times.
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