The New York Times reports that the great Lerone Bennett Jr. has died. In their obituary they attack him:
Despite his reputation as an emancipator, Mr. Bennett wrote, Lincoln was actually a white supremacist who thought that the races would be better off separated, “preferably with the Atlantic Ocean or some other large, deep body of water between them.”You'll want to watch this interview, although establishment historians hope you don't . Even in his death , Lerone Bennett is a threat to the established order..
“The man’s character, his way with words and his assassination, together with the psychological needs of a racist society, have obscured his contradictions under a mountain of myths,” he added.
In an interview after the article was published, he stuck to his guns. “Last year, during the riot season, President Johnson said he hoped he would handle himself as Lincoln did during the Civil War,” he said. “If he does, it will be a disaster.”
Mr. Bennett expanded on his argument in 2000 in the book “Forced Into Glory: Abraham Lincoln’s White Dream.” The historian James M. McPherson found it a flawed work.
“Bennett,” he wrote in reviewing the book in The New York Times, “fails to appreciate the acuity and empathy that enabled Lincoln to transcend his prejudices and to preside over the greatest social revolution in American history.”
