Biden Claims He Marched To Protest Segregation; Where’s the Proof?

Former Vice President Joe Biden remains the front-runner for the Democratic presidential nomination largely because of massive support from black voters.

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But do most blacks know that for decades Biden has bragged about “marching” and “protesting” to fight to “desegregate movie theaters and things like that” — and that there is zero evidence of any of this?

Campaigning in Iowa last week, Biden said: “Well, I got my education . . . in the black church. Not a joke — because when we used to get organized on Sundays to go out and desegregate movie theaters and things like that, we’d do it through the black church. I got to admit to you I’d go to my Catholic mass at 7:30 first, and then I’d show up in the black church.”

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In 1983, at the New Jersey Democratic Convention, Biden said: “When I was 17, I participated in sit-ins to desegregate restaurants and movie houses.” {snip} He ended his speech by wiping tears from his eyes. The Baltimore Sun interviewed Biden in 1986 and reported, “As a young man, he took part in sit-ins to desegregate restaurants along U.S. 40 in Delaware.” A Morning News article in September 1975 said that Biden “joined in sit-ins to desegregate restaurants along U.S. 40 before he joined the Senate.” In February 1987, at the California Democratic convention, Biden repeated, “When I was 17 years old, I participated in sit-ins to desegregate restaurants and movie houses of Wilmington, Delaware.”

A few months ago, The New York Times wrote: “In . . . 1987 . . . more than once, advisers had gently reminded Mr. Biden of the problem with this formulation: He had not actually marched during the civil rights movement. And more than once, Mr. Biden assured them he understood — and kept telling the story anyway.” According to an article in The Atlantic: “By September 1987, his campaign press secretary clarified to The New York Times that Biden ‘did participate in action to desegregate one restaurant and one movie theater.’ Or as Biden once explained at a 1987 news conference, he’d been concerned about civil rights as a teenager, but he ‘was not out marching.'”

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