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2009-11-21

2009-11-18

2009-11-05

Agriculture

Lifestyles

Tuesday, September 01, 2009 11:00 AM

File photo/The Ottawa Herald

Rep. Lynn Jenkins, R-Kan., responds to questions from the public Thursday at a health care forum at the Franklin County Office Annex.

Jenkins says she supported resolution, didn’t read it

House measure referenced phrase ‘great white hope,’ its racial context

By The Herald Staff

U.S. Rep. Lynn Jenkins has acknowledged she didn’t read a resolution that refrenced the phrase “great white hope,” her press secretary said Monday.

Jenkins stirred controversy recently for using the phrase “great white hope” to describe Republican’s search for a new leader, and said she didn’t know it had a negative connotation.

However, Jenkins supported a resolution referencing that same phrase — a resolution that also outlined its history regarding the first black American boxer to earn the title of Heavyweight Champion of the World — less than a month before she made the statement.

The House approved by unanimous consent a measure urging President Obama to pardon black U.S. boxer Jack Johnson. Johnson, who died in 1946, was the target of an early 1900s racist plot and convicted in 1913 of transporting a white woman across state lines for immoral reasons.

Within the resolution passed by the House July 29 was a passage that read, “Whereas the victory by Jack Johnson over Tommy Burns prompted a search for a White boxer who could beat Jack Johnson, a recruitment effort that was dubbed the search for the ‘great white hope.’”

The resolution was sponsored by Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., and co-sponsored by Sen. Sam Brownback, R-Kan., in the Senate. The House version was co-sponsored by Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr., D-Ill.

Jenkins’ press secretary Mary Geiger told The Topeka Capital Journal Monday Jenkins did not read the resolution. She said the resolution was on the House floor about three minutes before a vote was taken, and it would have been “nearly impossible” for anyone to read the resolution before it was approved.

Geiger told The Ottawa Herald last week Jenkins supported the resolution, which was passed on unanimous consent rather than a roll-call vote, and indicated Jenkins’ Aug. 19 comments and subsequent explanation do not conflict with her knowledge and support of Johnson’s pardon.

“As the Congresswoman said, she was not aware of the play of any other meaning for the term than as how she intended it — to refer to bright young leaders in the Republican Party in the House of Representatives,” Geiger told The Herald.

Jenkins apologized for the “great white hope” comment after a Democratic Party supporter, who shot a video of the lawmaker at a Hiawatha forum Aug. 19, shared her remarks with the state party.

“Republicans are struggling right now to find the great white hope,” Jenkins said at the Hiawatha forum. “I suggest to any of you who are concerned about that, who are Republican, there are some great young Republican minds in Washington.”