We can all rest easy today because a man who somehow got elected, Maine Governor Paul LePage, is here to give us the real history of the American Civil Rights Movement.
LePage participated in an interview with local radio station WVOM early this morning where he made a bewildering effort to educate congressman and civil rights icon John Lewis.
“John Lewis ought to look at history,” LePage said. “It was Abraham Lincoln who freed the slaves. It was Rutherford B. Hayes and Ulysses S. Grant who fought the Jim Crow laws. A simple thank you would suffice.”
President Grant died 79 years before the Civil Rights Act of 1964. President Hayes paved the way for Jim Crow by withdrawing from the former Confederacy.
Look, I don't know the curriculum in Maine, but even in my conservative home state of Kentucky we learned about the Civil War and Reconstruction between 5th and 6th grade. Maine Governor Paul LePage would fail my elementary school's history exam.
The good news is John Lewis doesn't need to look at LePage's unhinged version of history. Lewis actually lived it.