Several Georgia Republicans with whom Newsmax spoke regarding the death September 13 of former Rep. Fletcher Thompson, R-Ga. did not even know that the former lawmaker died.
To a person, they blamed the Atlanta mainstream media for following the lead of its national counterpart in all but omitting reminiscences of a figure who had been a consequential conservative in the politics of the Peach State.
“I didn’t realize Fletcher died until you just told me,” Phil Kent, publisher of the Atlanta-based Insider Advantage Georgia Magazine, told Newsmax, “He was a great patriot and congressman. I didn’t see any publicity about his death back in September. There was one obituary in the Atlanta paper in mid- October.”
Former Rep. John Linder, R-Ga., recalled “I knew Fletcher well and considered him a friend. This is the first I’ve heard about him passing. A couple of days ago I was remembering visiting with him and [former Georgia Republican Chairman] Bob Shaw at [former Georgia State Rep.] Harry Geisinger’s funeral [in 2015]. I have been in Mexico for the past two months and was not plugged in here, but I checked in on Atlanta news daily. Missed it, if there was any obituary of Fletcher.”
Atlanta attorney Thompson made headlines throughout the South in 1964, when he unseated Democratic State Sen. Charlie Brown and thus became one of only four Republicans in the Georgia senate. Two years later, he set out to unseat Democratic Rep. Charles Weltner. A centrist Democrat with a strong civil rights record, Weltner stunned Atlantans by resigning his party’s nomination for Congress rather than sign a “loyalty oath” to the Democratic ticket that was led by arch-segregationist gubernatorial nominee Lester Maddox. With three weeks to go before the general election, 5th District Democrats tapped Fulton County Commission Chairman Archie Lindsey as Weltner’s replacement. Thompson beat him with 60 percent and thus became Georgia’s second Republican in Congress since Reconstruction.
Thompson campaigned and voted as a stalwart conservative — calling for all-out victory in Vietnam, opposing President Lyndon Johnson’s big-spending Great Society agenda, and taking a strong “law and order” stance as big cities across America exploded in riots over race and Vietnam. But the Georgia Republican was also a strong civil rights advocate and, in his initial House race in 1966, he got roughly 30 percent of the black vote. He held town meetings among the growing black neighborhoods in his district. He also voted for the controversial Civil Rights Act of 1968 that outlawed discrimination in the sale and renting of housing. C.A. Scott, publisher of the Atlanta World — the only newspaper in Georgia owned by blacks --"was a Republican and 'The World' always endorsed me when I ran for Congress,” Thompson recalled to us in 2013.
He never met his most famous constituent, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., but Thompson did tell us "I believe Dr. King was a Republican. Most of the blacks in the late 1950s and at least up to 1960 were Republican. Our party was sympathetic to them and the Democrats were the ones enforcing 'Jim Crow' laws and segregation."
In 1972, Thompson left the House to run for the Senate. Republicans made little secret of their desire for him to face incumbent Democrat David Gambrell, who had been appointed to fill a vacancy a year before by then-Gov. Jimmy Carter. With Carter’s approval ratings in the cellar, they felt, Gambrell would be identified with the governor and thus very vulnerable.
But in an unexpected development, Democratic primary voters rejected Gambrell in favor of 34-year-old State Rep. Sam Nunn. Thompson tried to link Nunn to arch-liberal Democratic presidential nominee George McGovern and to actress Jane Fonda and former Attorney General Ramsey Clark — both of whom, Thompson said, should be charged with treason for going to North Vietnam.
This linkage didn’t work. As the late Washington Post political reporter David Broder wrote, “[Nunn] flew to Alabama in mid campaign to receive [Gov. George] Wallace’s endorsement…’George Wallace represents the real views of Georgians,’ Nunn said. He echoed Wallace’s rhetoric in his attacks on ‘judicial tyranny,’ his denunciation of school busing orders, and his calls for referendum elections on federal judges every six years.”
Despite his alliance with Wallace, Nunn also had the support of state legislator Julian Bond, a national civil rights figure, and carried 90 percent of the black vote in Atlanta and Macon. Overall, he won with 54 percent of the vote against Thompson.
One volunteer in Thompson’s campaign was a twenty-something educator named Newt Gingrich. Looking back at the race, the future House speaker told Newsmax “Nunn worked for Fletcher’s election ... Nunn simply had too many ties in a Georgia which was still very Democratic. Nixon did not run a polarizing campaign on issues and generally Republicans did not translate the presidential landslide into a senatorial landslide.”
Politics aside, Fletcher Thompson’s great passions were the military and the law. He vividly remembered how, as a student at Russell High School in East Point, he listened in class to President Roosevelt’s speech to Congress seeking a declaration of war after Japan bombed Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941.
“I was so moved when he concluded by saying ‘we will gain the inevitable triumph, so help us God,’” he told us, calling the last four words “powerful.” He promptly joined the U.S. Army Air Corps. He went on to earn seven service stars as a combat pilot. After graduating from Emory University, Thompson went back in uniform as a U.S. Air Force pilot during the Korean War.
In his twilight years, Thompson was always available for interviews to discuss any part of his storied career. He once told us how when serving on the House Committee on Un-American Activities, a colleague asked if he wanted to see the FBI file delineating King’s ties to onetime Communist Party member Stanley Levison and other controversial figures.
"I told him no," said Thompson. "I looked at Dr. King fighting for civil rights as I would someone swimming alone in the ocean. When someone comes along in a lifeboat and reaches out, he's not going to ask if he is, or was, a Communist."
John Gizzi is chief political columnist and White House correspondent for Newsmax. For more of his reports, Go Here Now.
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