Jesse Helms, flaming racist Republican dies

Helms' referred to the University of North Carolina as the "University of Negroes and Communists"

Former North Carolina Republican senator Jesse Helms, a racist and bigot loved by conservatives, despised by nearly everyone else, died Friday at the age of 86.

Helms had been ill and in pain in recent years.

Helms retired in 2002 at the end of his fifth term in the Senate.

When the Republicans were the majority party in the Senate, Helms was chairman of the powerful Foreign Relations Committee, where he consistently moved U.S. policy toward the right, especially regarding the United Nations and Cuba.

Helms had an operation in 2002, at age 80, to replace a faulty prosthetic heart valve put in place in 1992, when he also had quadruple-bypass surgery.

Helms' racism and bigotry (partial list from Wikipedia)

Helms was particularly vitriolic when speaking of gays and lesbians, blaming them for "the proliferation of AIDS," and stating that he disliked using the word "gay" to refer to them since, "...there's nothing gay about them."

Helms opposed the Martin Luther King Day bill in 1983 on grounds that King had two associates with communist ties, Stanley Levison and Jack O'Dell; as well, he voiced disapproval of King's alleged philandering.

Helms' referred to the University of North Carolina (UNC) as the "University of Negroes and Communists." (Charleston Gazette, 9/15/95)

While working on the 1950 campaign of Republican Willis Smith against Democrat Frank Porter Graham, Helms helped create an ad that read "White people, wake up before it is too late. Do you want Negroes working beside you, your wife and your daughters, in your mills and factories? Frank Graham favors mingling of the races." Another ad featured photographs Helms himself had doctored to illustrate the allegation that Graham's wife had danced with a black man. (FAIR 9/1/01, The News and Observer 8/26/01)

Helms was an ardent supporter of the late brutal Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet.

When Roberta Achtenberg was appointed Assistant Secretary of the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development in 1993 by President Bill Clinton, Helms attempted to block her confirmation, stating that he refused to vote for "that damned lesbian".

After a protest during his 1986 visit to Mexico, Helms opined: "All Latins are volatile people. Hence, I was not surprised at the volatile reaction."

Helms once claimed that "The New York Times and Washington Post are both infested with homosexuals themselves. Just about every person down there is a homosexual or lesbian."