By George E. Curry, NNPA Columnist - If you’ve watched any of the Republican debates, you’ll remember Ron Paul, the 76-year-old libertarian congressman from Texas whose oversized suit coats look like they are about to fall off his frail shoulders. You’ll also remember that no debate questioner asked him about the overtly racist views that appeared in his newsletters for two decades.

But now that Paul has surged to front-runner status in Iowa, he is being grilled about comments that range from denigrating Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. to objecting to passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

In the 1990s, he described Dr. King as a “world-class philanderer who beat up his paramours” and “seduced underage girls and boys.” He even claimed – without a hint of proof – that Dr. King “made a pass at” fellow civil rights warrior Ralph Abernathy, who succeeded King as president of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC).

When Ronald Reagan signed the Martin Luther King Holiday bill into law, Paul wrote, “What an infamy Ronald Reagan approved it!” He added, “We can thank him for our annual Hate Whitey Day.”

The controversial remarks were published in various for-profit Ron Paul newsletters in the 1980s and 1990s. The newsletters included: Ron Paul’s Political Report, Ron Paul’s Freedom Report, Ron Paul’s Survival Report and the Ron Paul’s Investment Letter.

On January 8, 2008, The New Republic ran an article on Paul titled, “Angry White Man.” It was accompanied by an illustration of Paul wearing a confederate necktie and rebel hat. The story, written by James Kirchick, noted that Ron Paul’s newsletters were published on a monthly basis from 1978 to at least 1999. Most are on file in the right-wing extremists literature collections at the Wisconsin Historical Society and the University of Kansas.

Here are some excerpts from the newsletters, which were said to earn Paul at least $1million a year:

· After the uprising in Watts, the Ron Paul Political Report said in June 1992, “Order was only restored in L.A. when it came time for the blacks to pick up their welfare checks three days after rioting began.”

·      According to the newsletter, the uprising was caused by government-backed “’civil rights,’ quotas, mandated hiring preferences, set-asides for government contracts, gerrymandered voting districts, black bureaucracies, black mayors, black curricula in schools, black tv shows, black tv anchors, hate crime laws, and public humiliation for anyone who dares question the black agenda.”

· “*… If you have ever been robbed by a black teen-age male, you know how unbelievably fleet-footed they can be,” one report said.

·    According to a newsletter bearing Paul’s name, “…Opinion polls consistently show only about 5% of blacks have sensible political opinions.”

· The late congresswoman Barbara Jordon of Texas was called the “archetypical half-educated victimologist.”

· I*  a December 1989 edition of Ron Paul’s Investment Letter, it was predicted that “Racial Violence Will Fill Our Cities.” According to the publication, “…Mostly black welfare recipients will feel justified in stealing from mostly white ‘haves.’”

· I* In June 1991, following a racial incident in the Adams Morgan section of Washington, D.C., one headline screamed, “Animals Take Over the D.C. Zoo.”

· I* In October of 1992, a newsletter bearing Paul’s name stated, “I’ve urged everyone in my family to know how to use a gun in self defense. For the animals are coming.”

· “* Given the inefficiencies of what DC laughingly calls the criminal justice system, I think we can safely assume that 95 percent of black males in that city are semi-criminal if not entirely criminal,” one Ron Paul newsletter asserts.

· * Praising former Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke in 1990, Ron Paul said through his newsletter that “our priority should be to take the anti-government, anti-tax, anti-crime, anti-welfare loafers, anti-race-privilege, anti-foreign meddling message of Duke, and enclose it in a more consistent package of freedom.”

Ron Paul’s venom was not limited to his newsletters.  While many were celebrating the 40th anniversary of the 1964 Civil Rights Act in 2004, Ron Paul was still objecting to it, saying June 4, 2004 on the floor of Congress, “…the Civil Rights Act of 1964 did not improve race relations or enhance freedom. Instead, the forced integration dictated by the Civil Rights Act of 1964 increased racial tensions while diminishing individual liberty.”

Incredulously, Ron Paul wants us to believe that not only did he not write the un-bylined racist comments in the newsletters that carried his name, but that he was unaware they appeared in his publications.

“I didn’t write them, I didn’t read them at the time, and I disavow them,” he told Gloria Borger of CNN. “I never read that stuff. I was probably unaware of it 10 years after it was written, and it’s been going on 20 years that people have pestered me about this. CNN does it every single time. When are you going to wear yourself out?”

When Borger continued to press Paul, he abruptly terminated the interview. “These are pretty incendiary,” she told Paul. Unclipping his microphone, he said, “Only because of people like you.”

No, only because of Ron Paul’s documented record of racism.

George E. Curry, former editor-in-chief of Emerge magazine and the NNPA News Service, is a keynote speaker, moderator, and media coach. He can be reached through his Web site, www.georgecurry.com You can also follow him at www.twitter.com/currygeorge.