Interesting Stuff: Strom Thurmond

I don’t think many outside the US have heard about Strom Thurmond. Maybe not many in the US either. He was a fascinating relic (and non-relic, as I’ll explain) of history and bigotry.

Thurmond was a US Senator who died in 2003, 6 month short of his 101st birthday. This made him the oldest senator and the longest serving senator. In 1948 he ran for president on a segregationist platform. He ran on behalf of the Dixiecrats, southern faction of the Democrats that broke away to pursue a segregationist, states’ rights and [more] social conservative platform.

In the 1948 election, the Dixiecrats were only labeled as the main Democratic Party ticket in Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, and South Carolina, being 3rd party tickets in other states. They obviously couldn’t win but their strategy was to force the discourse further in the direction of segregation. And so, Thurmond ran on strong support of the Jim Crowe laws and racial segregation as the MAIN election issue. A choice exerpt from one of his campaign speeches:

I wanna tell you, ladies and gentlemen, that there’s not enough troops in the army to force the Southern people to break down segregation and admit the nigger race into our theaters, into our swimming pools, into our homes, and into our churches.

Thurmond won 2.4% of the popular vote but got 39/531 (ie. 7%) of the electoral seats, evidently winning 4 states. Click here for a map of the 1948 election showing which counties elected Thurmond in green.

Thurmond also holds the record for the longest filibuster. For those who don’t know a filibuster is when a politician is against some proposed legislation and derails it by making a very long speech in response to said legislation. The aim is usually to delay the vote on the legislation and to hold the legislation hostage thereby at least securing yourself some changes/concessions to what might have passed.

In the US, a full-blown filibuster goes on for as long as the speaker is speaking and has not left the floor. Thurmond’s 1957 speech lasted just over 24 hours. He filibustered against the policy of the Dixiecrats. “[T]o prepare himself, he took steam baths every day to dehydrate his body so it could absorb fluids without his having to leave the Senate chamber for the bathroom…Aides tried to avoid defeat by the toilet by setting up a bucket in the cloakroom where Thurmond could pee, keeping one foot on the Senate floor while doing so.” [Source] The photo on the right is him during the filibuster. What was he filibustering? Why the Civil Rights Act of course!

You might think of Thurmond as a relic from the past, where racism was so much more blatantly widespread and blunt than today. But the point is that Thurmond kept being elected to the Senate all the way up to his death. That is, he won an election to represent North South Carolina every 6 years until he was no longer alive to win elections. And although he had “softened” his view on race since the 70s and “even” appointed some black staff, he remained largely unrepentant. Well done North South Carolina.

I think a lot of people are sometimes reluctant to see racism in particular instances because they find it hard to imagine that someone could be that racist (in that instance). Thurmond is a great counterexample, not only because of the extreme nature of his views but because they remained so mainstream right up until he died in 2003. At his 100th birthday party in 2002, Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott had this to say: “When Strom Thurmond ran for president, [Mississippi] voted for him. We’re proud of it. And if the rest of the country had followed our lead, we wouldn’t have had all these problems over the years, either.” Thankfully at least this generated enough outrage to stop Lott from being Majority Leader.

And just to show how much of a cartoon cliche of a Southern racist Strom was: after his death 78 year old retired teacher Essie Mae Washington-Williams revealed that she was his illegitimate daughter. One that Strom fathered with his 16 year old African American maid.