My LTTE to Nashville, Chattanooga papers re: Repugs playing race card

I sent this letter to both Nashville and Chattanooga papers. Here's hoping one (or both) of them run it.
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To the editor:

In 1963 (before Bob Corker moved to Tennessee), I was privileged to attend one
of the first integrated high schools in our state, Notre Dame in Chattanooga. I
learned much that year about equality, fairmindedness, courage and acting on
your convictions. All of us at Notre Dame – Black and White –
faced much racism on and off the athletic fields that year, and we all became
better people, better Americans, through fighting that injustice together.

Then when I enrolled at Vanderbilt, I was proud to attend a Tennessee
university that led the Southeastern Conference in integrating its athletic
teams, a school unafraid to invite Martin Luther King to address its sons and
daughters of (mostly) white, Southern privilege. While there, I learned that
Tennessee had been pivotal in overturning Jim Crow segregation and that my
Senator at the time (Albert Gore Sr.) had been one of the few Southern Senators
to support the national civil rights legislation that helped transform our
country for the better.

That is why, as someone who is proud of my state’s history of extending and
protecting the civil rights of all people and of electing leaders who are
courageous and persuasive enough to lead that effort, I am so ashamed that the
national Republican Party believes it can still win elections here by playing
once again to the race card. And I am very disappointed that Bob Corker has
shown that he lacks either the courage or the persuasiveness necessary to stop
his own political party from slandering our state with this “old school”
redneck rhetoric.

Tennesseans expect and deserve better from our leaders than Bob Corker has
demonstrated. Tennessee is a better place than the national Republicans believe
and, if they don’t know that by now, they will learn something on November 7.
We shall overcome, even if that means (finally) overcoming tired racist
stereotypes of our Volunteer State.

(Fly by night)

PS: I am a 57 year old white man who grew up out on East Brainard Road and
hitchhiked every day to the "old" Notre Dame, one block off 9th Street. I have
fond memories of Chattanooga, including the memories I shared above. We are a
better place than Ken Mehlman wants to portray us as. Thanks for considering
this letter for your editorial page. Feel free to edit it as needed.

Thank you for printing it out and sharing with us and also local papers. I hope papers print it. You should try the Chattanooga Times Free Press for sure since they endorsed Ford not too long ago and I also suggest the chattanoogan.com which is a great website. I'm in Chattanooga too and just love it here and I hope we do kick out the republicans who have their racists ways. And also their bigotry.