Joe Biden's praise for segregationists followed him to the Democratic presidential debate on Thursday evening and exploded into a racial controversy that could put a huge dent in his candidacy after Kamala Harris lectured him on busing.

Harris, who is Jamaican-American, inserted herself into a discussion on the thorny topic, saying, 'As the only black person on this stage, I would like to speak, on the issue of race.'

She said it was 'hurtful' that Biden had praised two notorious, Democratic segregationists who he served with in the Senate in the 1970s.

One, James Eastland, from Mississippi, called African-Americans 'flesh eaters'; the other, Herman Talmadge, ran for the Senate on a pledge to stop blacks and whites eating together in the Capitol itself.

Biden revealed at a private fundraising event that Eastland 'didn't call me boy,' and said of their time in the Senate: 'At least there was some civility.'

Harris confronted Biden about the remarks and his stance in the '70s against busing encourage racial integration in schools – he worked with the two segregationists to try to prevent federal imposition of the policy.

She told him, 'I do not believe you are a racist. And I agree with you, when you commit yourself to the importance of finding common ground.

'But I also believe – and it’s personal, and I was actually very – it was hurtful, to hear you talk about the reputations of two United States senators who built their reputations and career on the segregation of race in this country,' she said.

I WOULD LIKE TO SPEAK: Joe Biden 's praise for segregationists followed him to the Democratic presidential debate on Thursday evening and exploded into a racial controversy that could sink his candidacy after Kamala Harris lectured him on busing

Shock and awe: Kamala Harris' attack on Biden turned into a personal recounting of her experience and left the former vice-president struggling to respond

In a terse exchange that had her starring down the stage at the 76-year-old senator who represented Delaware, she reminded him that she was a beneficiary of busing.

'And it was not only that, but you also worked with them to oppose busing. And, you know, there was a little girl in California who was part of the second class to integrate her public schools, and she was bused to school every day.

'And that little girl was me. So I will tell you that on this subject, it cannot be an intellectual debate among Democrats. We have to take it seriously. We have to act swiftly. As Attorney General of California, I was very proud to put in place a requirement that all my special agents would wear body cameras and keep those cameras on,' she asserted.

Harris expanded on her point in a post-debate interview with MSNBC host Chris Matthews that was conducted inside the spin room.

She told him, 'If those men, those segregationists had had their way, I would not be a member of the United States Senate, and I certainly would not be a serious candidate for President of the United States.

'And so the harm that they did, and that they attempted to do, because frankly they built not only their careers but their reputation off of that, which is their quest to ensure the segregation of the races,' she said. 'Had they their way, there's so much that would not have happened.'

She said debate moderator and NBC news anchor Lester Holt would not have his job.

'Barack Obama would not have been in the position to appoint Joe Biden Vice President of the United States,' she noted. 'So the consequences of their actions were very real and on the shoulders of a history in our country of really a very bad, awful, dark, dangerous and lethal time.'

She claimed she otherwise has a 'great deal of respect' for Biden as an elder statesman.

'I do not believe he's a racist. But his perspective on those senators was something that was hurtful, and it had consequences,' she said.

She said the pain of her past remains raw. 'It is a real emotion that a child feels,' she said. 'I have to speak truth about it. The consequences are not only about what is wrong morally and legally... but the pain is very real, emotionally.'

‘I told a story tonight that is first hand and is about an experience that I had. And it was through the lens of a personal experience that I have an opinion about what he said about people who have lived a life of of segregation and or segregation and race segregation,' she told other TV cameras in the spin room. 'And so that is the conversation I was having.’

Biden was nearly out of a hole he dug for himself last week at a donor function, when he said disagreed with segregationist senators who opposed civil rights, but at least they were able to move legislation.

He claimed that one of the men 'never called me "boy," he always called me "son" ' in remarks that were ripped by Sen. Cory Booker as racially insensitive.

Claiming his comments had been taken out of context, Biden refused to apologize for the remarks after Booker called him out. The two men had a chat over the phone, and agreed to stop bickering with one another.

Harris declined to let Biden off that easily. She directed stinging commentary on her own racial history at the former vice president who served the first African-American president and regularly touts their continued relationship.

Biden told her she was off base. 'It’s a mischaracterization, my position across the board, I did not praise racists. That is not true, number one. Number two, if we want to have this campaign litigated on who supports civil rights and whether I did or not, I’m happy to do that,' he stated.

Powerful moment: Kamala Harris did not let up on Biden as she spoke of race

'I was a public defender – I didn’t become a prosecutor. I came out and I left a good law firm to become a public defender, when in fact, when in fact my city was in flames because of the assassination of Dr. King, number one.

'Now number two, as the Vice President of the United States, I worked with a man who in fact, we worked very hard to see to it we dealt with these issues in a major, major way.

He claimed: 'The fact is that – in terms of busing, the busing – I never – you would have been able to go to school, the same exact way, because it was a local decision made by your city council.'

Biden ultimately told her, 'The bottom line here is, look, everything I’ve done in my career, I ran because of civil rights, I continue to think we have to make fundamental changes in civil rights. And those civil rights, by the way, include, not only African Americans, but the LGBT community.'

He continued to claim later, to network host MSNBC, that Harris mangled his record.

'Yes, she did,' he answered. 'I don't think she intended to do it. She mischaracterized it because I supported busing to eliminate de jure segregation.'

Interviewer Garrett Hakke interrupted to ask for clarification on what it is that Harris got wrong when she took advantage of the clash and told her deeply personal story.

And he asked Biden directly if the federal government should have a role in enforcing anti-discrimination laws.

'Well, it should. It should have a role by breaking down the barriers that exist in institutional racism. That's what I did when I was a local official and a county official,' Biden said. 'But what we were talking about is whether or not the Department of Education as opposed to the courts could order de jure segregation, meaning segregation imposed by law.'

He said he supported the court's legal ruling on busing and was the deciding vote on an amendment that would have taken away the power of the court to stop segregation.

Biden admitted to being annoyed that the busing vote had reemerged as a campaign issue after failing to resurface in a meaningful way in the last decade.

It swelled in the weeks before he announced his 2020 campaign for the presidency but abridged by the time he became a formal candidate.

That is, until he talked about his segregationist colleagues, and Harris brought the topic back up.

'Yeah, it should be about the future. It should be about what we're going to do to deal with institutional racism, and it's real,' he told MSNBC of his frustration. 'We should be talking about what we should be doing in the prison system.'

The former senator who sat atop the Senate Judiciary Committee when he was a legislator said private prisons should be disallowed.

'The fact of the matter is, I think we should not be sending anyone with a drug problem into a prison. They should go into a rehabilitation system. We should be training people in jail how to read and write. When they get out they not only should have their rights restored to vote, they should have all their benefits available to them. Pell grants, and so on.'

Biden said, before he walked away, 'We're going at this backwards. But it has to start. It has to start by allowing children – that's my wife. Anyway, sorry, sorry.'

A crime bill that Biden helped to write in 1994 has also been under attack - by Donald Trump, who signed a bipartisan prison reform bill into law that Booker helped to champion.

Biden's crime legislation has meanwhile been blamed to skyrocketing incarceration rates. In Miami, it was barely a blip for Biden, who was taking spears on other topics.

In addition to Harris, he had a battle with California Congressman Eric Swalwell, who made the argument that Biden was behind the times and needed to 'pass the torch' to a new generation of leaders like himself.

But even Swalwell told DailyMail.com after the brutalizing debate that Biden's presidential career is not over.

'No. no, no, no. It’s early,' he said of the fight with Harris as a final blow.

Harris who put the screws to Biden in a premeditated attack on race.

She gave him an opportunity to say he was 'wrong to oppose busing' but he refused to give in.

'No, I did not oppose busing in America. What I opposed was busing ordered by the Department of Education. That’s what I opposed,' he told her.

She responded, 'Well there was a failure of states to integrate public schools in America. I was part of the second class to integrate Berkeley California public schools almost two decades after Brown v. Board of Education.'

Biden repeatedly blamed Harris' local government for her community's slow pace of integrating students. 'It was a local decision,' he insisted.

'So that’s where the federal government must step in,' she said. 'That’s why we have the Voting Rights Act and the Civil Rights Act. That’s why we need to pass the Equality Act, that’s why we need to pass the VRA, because there are moments in history where states fail to preserve the civil rights of all people.'

He said, 'I have supported the ERA from the very beginning. I’m the guy that extended the Voting Rights Act for 25 years. We got to the place where we got 98 out of 98 votes in the United States Senate doing it. I’ve also argued very strongly that we in fact deal with the notion of denying people access to the ballot box. I agree that everybody wants that – in fact, they should – anyway, my time’s up. I’m sorry. '

Biden didn't make his way to the spin room after the two-hour marathon, leaving clean-up duties to campaign aides and surrogates.

Deputy campaign manager Kate Bedingfield said she was 'satisfied with the outcome of the debate' after DailyMail.com asked her in the spin room if she was 'satisfied with the outcome of the exchange' with Harris.

'I would say we were satisfied with the outcome of the debate. I think the vice president made his case. I think he spoke with conviction. I think he spoke with passion about the future of the country. I think he laid out specific plans and offered a clear vision for the kind of leadership that he would offer.

'I think as he said going into the debate, he was not going to engage in personal back and forth. He didn't with Sen. Harris,' she said.

But the exchange did turn personal. 'And he said he was not right. And he said he was not going to engage in the personal back and forth,' Bedingfield shot back.

'Look, he's the frontrunner. People were going to take swings at him, trying to create a moment, trying to score their points. It's a debate. We understand that. He listened respectfully. She told her story very powerfully. But he was clear that he was not going to engage,' the senior aide said.

She downplayed the hit that Biden was predicted by pundits to take as a result of the dispute that Harris was perceived as having won.

'I do not. I think that people saw him listening intently and honestly to a very powerful story from Sen. Harris,' she said.

Biden has said Trump must be replaced because he's a racist and continued to hammer that theme in the debate, even after Harris savaged him for racial blunders.

The argument may have been weakened Thursday by Biden's racial controversies, although he remains the top-ranking Democratic candidate – at least until a poll carried out after the Thursday debate arrives and shows a different result.

Senior adviser to the former senator Symone Sanders told a reporter in the spin room that Biden will weather the storm, because voters know he can be trusted to do the right thing on major issues.

'The politics of busing were very complicated at the time. There were folks on multiple sides of the issue, both in the African-American community and the religious community and the education community,' the highest-ranking African-American on Biden's campaign said.

She tried to shift the conversation to Biden's agenda and away from busing during the conversation.

'Vice President Biden believes that every child should have the opportunity for a quality education, and should have the same start. No one should have a head start based upon their zip code or where they’re from or who their parents are, what their economic situation is,' she argued.

'And so I think if the question is: Is he someone that folks can trust on education, is he someone that communities of color can trust? I would say: yeah.'

Segregationist senator Joe Biden praised for 'civility' worked with him to ban busing and called African Americans 'flesh eaters and said whites have right to 'pursuit of dead n*****s'

One of the segregationist senators Joe Biden bragged about working with called African Americans 'flesh eaters' and said white people have the right to pursue 'dead n*****s,' it emerged Friday.

Mississippi Senator James Eastland made the references when he spoke at a 1956 pro-segregation rally during the Montgomery bus boycott led by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

'In every stage of the bus boycott we have been oppressed and degraded because of black, slimy, juicy, unbearably stinky n*****s ... African flesh-eaters. When in the course of human events it becomes necessary to abolish the Negro race, proper methods should be used.

'Among these are guns, bows and arrows, slingshots and knives. ... All whites are created equal with certain rights, among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of dead n*****s,' Eastland said, according to Robert Caro's biography of Lyndon B. Johnson, 'Master of the Senate.'

The comments resurfaced amid mounting calls for Biden to apologize for boasting about working with Eastland and other Democratic segregationists – and as he travels to South Carolina to court African-American votes.

James Eastland in his Washington D.C. office with photos of Confederate leaders on the wall: from top left: Jefferson Davis, the Confederate president; Thomas Jefferson, who and John C. Calhoun. Bottom row from left: Gen. Nathan Bedford Forrest, Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson

The careers of Eastland and the late Georgia Senator Henry Talmadge are back in the spotlight after Biden highlighted his work with them at a fundraiser in New York earlier this week.

Caro's description of Eastland's words at the White Citizens Council in the Montgomery Coliseum – 'the largest pro-segregation rally in history' – underline the danger being associated with Eastland represent to Biden.

His rivals for the 2020 nomination pounced on his praise of the two men, who were leading proponents of segregation in their time.

Biden and his campaign is dealing with the fallout of the former vice president's praise of the two Southern politicians as they prepare to land in South Carolina Friday.

The former vice president is scheduled to appear at a closed-door round-table of black leaders Friday afternoon.

The careers of the segregationist senators, both of whom owned plantations and opposed the Civil Rights Act, has been well documented in books about that time.

Caro's book also revealed Eastland, known as the 'Voice of the White South,' told Jewish Sen. Jacob Javits of New York: 'I don't like you – or your kind.'

Eastland's obituary in Los Angeles Times, recounts the effort by President John F Kennedy to nominate Thurgood Marshall to a court seat from which Marshall ultimately was named as the first black on the Supreme Court.

In return for supporting the president, Eastland wanted his old crony, Harold Cox, named to the federal bench.

According to one account, which originated with Robert F. Kennedy, Eastland told the then-attorney general: 'You tell your brother if he gives me Cox, I will give him his n****r.'

Herman Talmadge has a similar history.

When President Dwight Eisenhower sent in federal troops to enforce school desegregation in Arkansas while angry white mobs protested, Talmadge likened it to 'Russian tanks and troops in the streets of Budapest.'

And Talmadge also said of the desegregation movement: 'They couldn't send enough bayonets down here to compel the people to send their children to school with n***as.'

Eastland lost his 1978 re-election bid and said he 'didn't regret a thing' in his public career.

Biden also invoked the name of Senator Herman E. Talmadge in his controversial remarks

Talmadge lost his re-election bid in 1980 after his wife testified against him in an investigation of his finances, which led to his censure in the Senate and, ultimately, his political down fall.

Biden has stood by his praise and refused to apologize for it.

And he'll face more questions about it during his public appearance at a fish fry held Friday night by Representative James Clyburn, the highest-ranking African American lawmaker in the House.

Clyburn has defended Biden and his record on race relations even as the former vice president's past actions have returned to the spotlight – including his opposition to school busing, which sent children to schools in different neighborhoods to promote racial diversity.

Biden, when he was a freshman senator in Delaware during the 1970s, spoke out against the practice.

'I do not buy the concept, popular in the '60s, which said, 'We have suppressed the black man for 300 years and the white man is now far ahead in the race for everything our society offers. In order to even the score, we must now give the black man a head start, or even hold the white man back, to even the race,' ' Biden told a Delaware-based weekly newspaper in 1975. 'I don't buy that.'