Top Ten Quotes From Jesse Helms

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1. "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." - Ad created by campaign strategist Helms and friends for the blatantly racist (and successful) U.S. Senate campaign of Willis Smith in 1950. During the same campaign, Helms described UNC as "the University of Negroes and Communists."

2. "I didn't see any point in a naked man cavorting around on the stage." - Jesse giving his learned opinion on, and opposition to, a Charlotte Repertory Theatre production of Angels In America.

3."The Negro cannot count forever on the kind of restraint that's thus far left him free to clog the streets, disrupt traffic, and interfere with other men's rights."

4. "Crime rates and irresponsibility among Negroes are a fact of life which must be faced." - Helms responses in TV editorials at WRAL-TV in Raleigh during the Civil Rights movement, which he also described as filled with "moral degenerates."

5. "Watch me make her cry. I'm going to make her cry. I'm going to sing 'Dixie' until she cries." - Said to US Sen. Orrin Hatch about Sen. Carol Moseley-Braun, an African-American.

6. "The government should spend less money on people with AIDS because they got sick as a result of deliberate, disgusting, revolting conduct."

7. "Your tax dollars are being used to pay for grade school classes that teach our children that CANNIBALISM, WIFE-SWAPPING, and the MURDER of infants and the elderly are acceptable behavior." - Included in fundraising letter sent by the Helms campaign in 1996.

8. "The [Washington] Post caters to homosexual groups. Just about every person down there is homosexual or lesbian."

9. "Mr. Clinton better watch out if he comes down here. He'd better have a bodyguard." - In response to a question about a possible visit by President Clinton to Fort Bragg.

10. During his career, Helms supported brutal rightwing military dictators, including the notorious Roberto D'Aubuisson of El Salvador. When confronted with irrefutable evidence that D'Aubuisson directed Salvadoran death squads that murdered thousands of civilians, Helms replied, "All I know is D'Aubuisson is a free enterprise man and deeply religious."

Tomorrow: Top Ten Quotes About Jesse Helms.