Sincere Wishes for Peace for a Man Who Would Have Hated Our Work

We are saddened to learn of the passing of former U.S. Senator Jesse Helms of North Carolina. While his professional life was filled with animosity toward those different than him, his personal life appears to have been paradoxically compassionate. (Many people outside of North Carolina are not aware, for instance, that more than twenty years into their marriage, the Helmses adopted their nine-year-old son, Charles, who had cerebral palsy.)

Senator Helms was one of the last politicians (to date) to explicitly appeal to bigotry and resentment without fear of reprisal. He steadfastly fought for rights of those who had power to keep it, and for those who were denied access to the system to remain on the outside. He openly discriminated against racial minorities and homosexuals, fed off others’ fears of members of these groups to remain in office, and used his power to maintain systems of oppression. (For more analysis of Jesse Helms's racism and bigotry, we direct readers to our 10/26/07 entry.)

During his 1990 campaign against African American Harvey Gantt, Helms ran what has come to be known infamously as the “hands ad,” where he depicted a fictitious white, working-class, married man being denied for a position for which he was “the best qualified” because “they gave it to a minority because of a racial quota.” Admitting that he was only appealing to white voters in a state with a sizable minority population, the narrator in the ad uses second person (i.e., “You needed that job"), which is illustrative of the exclusionary vision of Helms’s America. In his first race for the U.S. Senate, Helms urged voters to elect him because he was “one of us,” as opposed to the “liberals” who he felt were contributing to the erosion of his version of American values.

As a Christian, Senator Helms wished openly to be welcomed to the Kingdom of Heaven. We hope that he gets his ultimate wish, and that the God he loved but so gravely misunderstood during his time on Earth is forgiving and compassionate toward him. It is unclear whether the illness that so debilitated him during his last months allowed him to be aware of what was transpiring politically, but we are confident that being alive and alert to witness the possible swearing in of a black man to the White House would have been more than this proud segregationist would have been able to take.

It has been said that the most important way to give is to forgive, and we urge our contemporaries who are similarly committed to social justice to do just that. We sincerely hope that Senator Jesse Helms find the peace that he worked so hard to deny to so many others during his professional career. Moreover, we wish the senator’s family strength during this difficult time, as he was clearly a loving and compassionate father and husband; there are many who will miss him and who are grieving this Independence Day weekend.