The transgressions of the Representative for Iowa’s 4th Congressional district are well-known: his derogatory characterizations of Mexican migrants, his nativist streak, and, most recently, his wondering remarks about just when it was that white supremacy became offensive. He has consistently, and increasingly, embarrassed Iowans on the national stage by tipping his hat towards the racist and the extreme.

This is not what Iowa has been about, and the fact that it has gone on as long as it has is a blemish on the story of our state at this hour of history. Every day that Rep. Steve King is in office is a betrayal of Iowa’s deeper tradition of welcoming people of various races, classes, and backgrounds. If there is something worth conserving, if there is a tradition worth honoring in our state, it is this.

In its first ever case, the Iowa Supreme Court declared that people of all colors have equal protection between our borders, and that any slave who so much as set foot on our soil was to be considered a free man and under the safety of our laws. Iowa never needed a case like Loving v. Virginia (which struck down anti-miscegenation laws) because Iowa never passed a law against interracial marriage, and the Iowa Court had already ruled against segregation nearly a century before Brown vs. Board of Education was handed down in 1954. The University of Iowa was the first university in the United States to admit women and people of color on an equal basis and it was the first to graduate them from law school; additionally, the first varsity college athlete of color was a Hawkeye.

Iowa has also been for many a refuge and a home. George Washington Carver found in Iowa safety, education, and the first place that made him feel, in his words, like he was a human being. The soldiers of the 17th Provisional Training Regiment (who lead units in France in WWI) found welcome here as the first class of black military officers ever commissioned in this country. The Tai Dam refugees and victims of the Yugoslav conflict found safe harbor here from war. And when Muslim Americans built the country’s first Mosque, it was in Cedar Rapids that they did it. But Iowa has also stood for those beyond her borders, too. It was an Iowa farmer who extended the very first hand of friendship to Japan after World War II, when he organized an airlift of hogs and seed-corn for the typhoon-stricken people of Yamanashi, and it was Governor Robert D. Ray who went to Washington to plead on behalf of the “boat people” fleeing the Vietnam conflict.