Busing Case Hurt Jock Scott's Political Aspirations
Jock Scott (1947–2009) was elected to a third four-year term in the legislature in 1983 despite the desegregation controversy from 1980-1981. He switched his partisan allegiance from Democrat to Republican in 1985. In 1987, he ran for the Louisiana State Senate but was defeated by Democrat William Joseph "Joe" McPherson, Jr., of Pineville. Jock Scott said that his loss may have been partly attributed to opposition in rural areas of Rapides Parish to his father's busing orders even though seven years had passed since the decision.
Judge Scott continued in senior status almost until his death and relished recounting to family, friends and associates the difficult days and circumstances of his celebrated cases. Even many years after these decisions, he remained concerned about their implementation and defended their correctness. He was conflicted about his place in the civil rights history of the region and understood the emotions his decisions caused among so many. His nephew Reverend Pike Thomas recalled a favorite memory, that Scott, in spite of his highly controversial persona, never delisted his telephone or public listing in the local telephone book and often courteously received the most reviling calls, even death threats, from local irate residents. "He was an example of rock-ribbed integrity mingles with compassion," Thomas stated.
Read more about this topic: Nauman Scott
Famous quotes containing the words case, hurt, scott, political and/or aspirations:
“My case is a species of madness, only that it is a derangement of the Volition, & not of the intellectual faculties.”
—Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772–1834)
“It’s what you do, unthinking,
That makes the quick tear start;
The tear may be forgotten—
But the hurt stays in the heart.”
—Ella Higginson (1862–1940)
“One writes of scars healed, a loose parallel to the pathology of the skin, but there is no such thing in the life of an individual. There are open wounds, shrunk sometimes to the size of a pin-prick but wounds still. The marks of suffering are more comparable to the loss of a finger, or the sight of an eye. We may not miss them, either, for one minute in a year, but if we should there is nothing to be done about it.”
—F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896–1940)
“The State is the altar of political freedom and, like the religious altar, it is maintained for the purpose of human sacrifice.”
—Emma Goldman (1869–1940)
“My business is to teach my aspirations to confirm themselves to fact, not to try and make facts harmonize with my aspirations.”
—Thomas Henry Huxley (1825–95)