President Biden on Tuesday again claimed that he was part of the civil rights movement of the 1960s — a story he has repeatedly rewritten and even debunked himself in the 1980s.
Mr. Biden’s latest version of the story came during a White House ceremony where he established a national monument to Emmet Till, whose 1955 murder sparked the civil rights movement. The president boasted about his legacy of civil rights advocacy to the largely Black crowd.
“Telling the truth and the full history of our nation is important. … It’s a lesson I learned coming out of — not like real leaders in the civil rights movement — but when I came out of the civil rights movement as a kid, as a public defender,” Mr. Biden said.
However, Mr. Biden acknowledged in 1987 that he was not engaged in the civil rights movement and never marched for equality.
“During the 1960s, I was, in fact, very concerned about the civil rights movement,” Mr. Biden said during a campaign speech for his 1988 presidential run. “I was not an activist. I worked at all all-Black swimming pool in the east side of Wilmington, Delaware. I was involved in what they were thinking, in what they were feeling.”
“But I was not out marching. I was not down in Selma. I was not anywhere else,” he said. “I was a suburbanite kid who got a dose of exposure to what was happening to black Americans in my own city.”
That same year, the Miami Herald wrote a story noting that Biden was not an “activist” or marched in support of civil rights...
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