From Tim Kaine’s speech to the National Urban League a bit earlier today:
[My wife Anne Holton’s] dad Lynwood Holton…was the Republican governor of Virginia from 1970 to 1974 who made the decision to desegregate Virginia’s schools…Then he and his wife…they sent their own kids to the newly-integrated public schools in the heart of the city of Richmond; that sent a strong signal to the people of Virginia that their governor wasn’t going to back down…There’s a front-page picture in the New York Times of the day Gov. Holton was escorting his daughter into what had previously been a single-race all-African-American school in Richmond with a big smile on his face…There were many photos of Southern governors standing in the schoolhouse door blocking kids from going to school; as far as I know, there was only one of a governor with a smile on his face escorting his children into integrated schools. I’m proud to say that many years later, Anne and I sent our three kids to the same Richmond public schools that their grandfather had opened to everybody 40 years before…
[Kaine then talks about his own extensive experience over many years fighting racial discrimination, including “redlining,” in housing. Among other things, Kaine notes that he “won the largest jury verdict in a civil rights case in American history.” Kaine also discusses Hillary Clinton’s work against racial segregation in the Alabama schools, etc.]
But I’ve got to paint a contrast here. Because…our opponent in this race, Donald Trump, was taking a different path; here’s what he was doing around this time, around the time my father-in-law desegregated Virginia schools…In 1973, the New York Times reported that the Justice Department had filed suit after Donald Trump and his father for refusing to rent apartments to African Americans…When federal investigators spoke to Trump’s employees, they said they were instructed to mark rental applications from African-American people on the back of the application with a “‘C” — “‘C” for ‘colored” — so that they would know who they wanted to rent to and who they didn’t…This was a huge lawsuit, the government took action…at 39 different properties owned by the company…
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