New York, NY, – Roy Innis, National Chairman of the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE), deplores the Democratic Party’s return to the discredited racist tactic of filibuster to block the nomination of Justice Janice Rogers Brown and Justice Pricilla Owen. 

Throughout the civil rights struggle for a new and fair America, the filibuster technique has been the primary tool to frustrate minority rights.  It was employed to block the Eisenhower Civil Rights Bill of 1957, and even the Lyndon B. Johnson Civil Rights Bill of 1964.  In all cases the filibustering was done by a minority of Democrats seeking to deny minority rights to others.   Democrat Minority Leader, Harry Reed said that the Senate was set up not to protect majorities but to protect minorities.  Which minorities does he have in mind?  Most troubling to Mr. Innis is the silence of the civil rights establishment, in general, and the complicity of the Black Congressional Caucus, in particular, in this matter.  Mr. Innis bemoans their amnesia and or ignorance of the historic racist role of filibusters as a tactic to oppress and to deny minority rights in the old America. 

 He urges democrats (thinking and courageous ones) not to turn the clock back to the racist past; the new America has come a long way from that.