Having been raised in the South, I was familiar with Ted Kennedy first through the lens of fights over desegregation.  I lived in a small town with a de facto segregated school system for the first and second grade.  Desegregation hit my town in 1972 and caused a rift.  Some whites decided that they needed to create a "Christian" school for whites only.  Others, such as my parents, welcomed the desegregated school system.  In my Second grade class, there were less than 5 black people in the whole grade.  In my Third grade class, whites were a minority instead.

That same year, a man named Jesse Helms was elected to represent North Carolina to the United States Senate.  Helms had been a radio and television commentator prior to running for office.  In one of his noted editorials, he had called for a wall to be placed around the University of North Carolina, which he claimed stood for the "University of Negroes and Communists."  In addition to his diatribes against higher education and civil rights, Helms made straw man attacks against Senator Kennedy.

It was a transparent ploy: call forth the old rebel spirit against the tide of Yankee marauders.  Helms mastered it and rode that ploy for five terms.  Each campaign was more subtle in its use of the ploy, but the ploy remained the same: scare the white people of North Carolina against the threats posed by non-whites at home and Yankee liberals from up North.

Jesse 's attacks had the opposite effect on me.  The harder he hit at Ted Kennedy, the more I grew to respect a Senator who was a true gentleman.  Jesse was portrayed by his supporters as a gentleman, but he had mean streak.  Helms used Kennedy's support for civil rights as a campaign wedge issue.  When he opposed the MLK holiday, he referred to  Ted Kennedy's support as a beef he should have taken up with "his dead brother who was president and his dead brother who was attorney general" because Hoover's FBI had wiretapped Dr. King.  Now that's class! 

Senator Kennedy rose above the insults heaped on him by Helms.  As a measure of the man,  Senator Kennedy afforded more respect than Helms offered.  Senator Kennedy was the true gentleman.

Lay down, my dear brother, lay down and take your rest...