Meant to post this before the Lott fiasco blew over. There's no defending Lott, as I wrote earlier, but there is this letter:

Whatever [Lott] meant, people such as Lott critics Al Gore and Jesse Jackson should remember that Thurmond was a Democrat, not a Republican, when he ran for president in 1948. Also, it was the Democratic Party that made Southern Democrats chairmen of most House and Senate committees, where they could block racial progress from the 1870s until the 1960s. And when the civil-rights bills of the 1960s were finally passed, a larger percentage of Republicans voted for them than Democrats.Remember that when Thurmond became a Republican, he had left the party of Confederate President Jefferson Davis and joined the party of Abraham Lincoln.
-Del Hambley Kalamazoo, Mich.
http://usatoday.com/usatonline/20021212/4695005s.htm

Earlier: Lott unfit for governance