Posted on 08/29/2007 12:40:46 PM PDT by Borges
A half-century ago today, Strom Thurmond ended what remains the longest filibuster in the long-winded history of the U.S. Senate.
Thurmond, nine years removed from a campaign for president undertaken to protect segregation, spoke against the Civil Rights Act of 1957 for 24 hours and 18 minutes.
His filibuster irked even his fellow segregationists in the Senate, who had succeeded in watering down the act's most important protections for black voting rights.
But Thurmond went on his one-man stand against the bill anyway, condemning it as an attack on the Constitution and in the process he re-established himself as one of segregation's biggest supporters.
The filibuster is an important part of Thurmond's legacy. It captured his white-supremacy views of the time as it revealed his mastery in cloaking his opposition to integration in cultural and legal terms.
"I'm not against civil rights," Thurmond said during his marathon address. "I'm not against voting. I'm for real civil rights."
Time has obscured the context of Thurmond's filibuster.
He had run for president as a Dixiecrat in 1948, winning four Southern states and declaring that there were not enough troops in the U.S. Army to force Southern whites to accept desegregation.
But time was not on segregation's side.
In 1954, the U.S. Supreme Court struck down the concept of "separate but equal" in the school-desegregation case Brown v. Board of Education. Black political influence rose.
Republican President Dwight Eisenhower and new Senate Majority Leader Lyndon Baines Johnson, D-Texas, both had a desire to appease this emerging constituency.
Thurmond, then a Democrat, faced his own pressures.
Many white South Carolinians were dead-set against integration and wanted their representatives to fight it, no matter the future political implications.
S.C. Gov. George Timmerman, leaving office in 1959 and thought to be a potential opponent of Thurmond, said South Carolinians should "demand that their representatives stand up for what is right or step aside and let there be elected men with political courage who will."
On the day Thurmond's filibuster began, The (Columbia) State newspaper ran a front-page story describing a letter written by Robert M. Kennedy, a former state senator from Camden, urging South Carolina's leaders to oppose the 1957 Civil Rights Act.
Kennedy described the bill as "vicious" and said: "Our only hope now is in Senate filibuster."
A filibuster had already been rejected by Democratic leaders in the Senate.
Johnson and U.S. Sen. Richard Russell of Georgia, dean of the Southern senators, had struck a deal to weaken the bill.
Russell, who vigorously opposed the bill but knew he did not have the votes to sustain a filibuster, told Johnson that Southern senators would not try to talk the bill to death.
Unwittingly he left the door open for Thurmond when he said Southern senators could speak out against the bill as they saw fit.
Strom Thurmond took the Senate floor at 8:55 p.m. on Wednesday, Aug. 28, 1957.
As Thurmond stood against integration, it's doubtful anyone in the chamber knew he had a 31-year-old daughter from a relationship with his family's black maid.
Thurmond would filibuster the bill, but, perhaps sensitive to the deal Russell had cut, he would not call it a filibuster.
"I wouldn't use that word," an Associated Press story in The State quoted an unnamed Thurmond aide as saying. "The senator says he has some educating to do."
In his book "Strom," Jack Bass wrote that Thurmond knew he would be speaking for a long time. He had taken steam baths to dehydrate so that, when he drank liquids, he could absorb the fluids without going to the bathroom and losing his right to the floor.
His wife, Jean, fed him a large sirloin steak. News reports said Thurmond ate bits of sirloin at some points during his marathon speech, in violation of Senate rules banning food from the chamber floor.
Thurmond made several deviations from the strict rules of the Senate during his filibuster.
After answering a question from a colleague, he sat down, potentially losing his right to the floor. After an aide whispered to him, he sprang to his feet.
He left the chamber briefly to eat a sandwich, again creating an opening for another senator to claim the floor. But Vice President Richard Nixon, presiding over the Senate, did not notice or, out of senatorial courtesy, pretended not to notice.
Just before Thurmond's quick break ended, The Associated Press described how Nixon, examining some papers, called on him:
"The chair recognizes the gentleman from South Carolina," Nixon said, without looking up, and Thurmond came dashing back into the chamber, his mouth full of food.
As Thurmond read the voting laws of each state and read from Supreme Court decisions, others goaded and tempted him.
Thurmond had called the bill "cruel and unusual punishment."
Sen. William Knowland, R-Calif., snapped that Thurmond's speech was cruel and unusual punishment.
Sen. Paul Douglas, D-Ill., placed a large pitcher of orange juice in front of Thurmond.
Thurmond liked orange juice and took a few sips. "But," The AP reported, "an alert aide, realizing that to drink liquids could mean disaster, snatched the pitcher from the senator's desk and put it on the floor, out of reach."
Popping malted milk tablets, Thurmond did not yield the floor until 9:12 the next evening, breaking the previous filibuster record held by Sen. Wayne Morse, a Democratic senator from Oregon who in 1953 spoke against an oil-drilling bill for 22 hours and 26 minutes.
Thurmond wrapped up his filibuster with comedy.
"If I had time, I'd tell you all the decisions handed down by this Supreme Court," he said, prompting laughter from his colleagues.
Two hours after Thurmond's filibuster ended, the Senate voted 60-15 in favor of the act.
The watered-down legislation, which established a commission on civil rights and created a civil rights division in the Justice Department, is not seen today as momentous in its own right. Its importance, historians and civil rights advocates say, lies instead in its legacy as a protector of the big changes that would come later.
"It created a structure, a framework," said the Rev. Joseph Darby, a Charleston pastor and civil rights advocate. "What it did was, when there would be progress, when something would be done, you would have a commission on civil rights. You would have a Civil Rights Division in the Justice Department."
Thurmond's filibuster eased whatever political pressure he might have felt.
Gov. Timmerman held a press conference and praised Thurmond's "indomitable courage."
Timmerman did not run against Thurmond.
Blease Graham, a political science professor at the University of South Carolina, said Thurmond may have fretted that his segregationist stands left him more vulnerable as he sought re-election.
But Thurmond, who lost his first bid for the U.S. Senate in 1950, never lost another election. The filibuster and Thurmond's long tenure also showed his skill as a politician.
"When there was a need for a raving racist, he was a raving racist," Darby said. "When he saw that times had changed, he changed."
As Thurmond stood against integration, it's doubtful anyone in the chamber knew he had a 31-year-old daughter from a relationship with his family's black maid.
That makes his daughter 81 now?
Kind of amazing how bass ackwards we were about some things just 50 years ago. I’m glad Strom grew out of this... too bad a lot of people can’t see how the dems are bringing this back through the back door, all covered in icing and pretty ribbons.
I don't believe this was true of Ike.
“Grew out of it”
Contrary, thats when a FILLIBUSTER was a FILLIBUSTER.
Not the gentleman threats by the likes of Trent Lott, Bill Frist and now Mitch Mcconnell.
I am not saying Thurmond was right to filibuster THAT particular issue...but thats when Senators actually FILLIBUSTERED.
Thurman could really keep it up!
Strom Thurman also got the largest percentage of the black vote for a republican and... was also the first to have a black staffer.I guess you could say he saw the light.His Grandson from the lady who was the maid is a doctor and votes republican.How about that?
He was a Democrat in those days
Are the technically integrated urban schools of today producing better results than the segregated Black schools of 50 years ago?
Rosalynn Carter: “Strom, is that you?”
No, but what’s your point?
Folks should look beyond current conventional wisdom, and evaluate the costs and the benefits of what Ike, JFK, and LBJ created.
The problem is not just what they created. Segregation should have ended 90 years before at the close of the Civil War. How much longer should it have gone on before it “naturally” died out? Many events came to pass the lead to the situation today, and it started well before Ike. Back to the founding of this nation even. As a thinking person, I can agree that the pogroms of affirmative action, forced school desegregation, “diversity” have had horrible unintended consequences; but I am also glad that we no longer live in segregated world. That world was poison to the mind, and loss of human capital was an unimaginable waste.
Yes, you are right.
The Union had no exit strategy.
thanks to the bigots of the past
we live a with a reduced u.s. constitution.
the bigots gave the communists room to maneuver.
Way too true, and not just in the US, but in South Africa, Vietnam, ...
Strom along with Teddy and the Byrd man are great examples of why we need term limits.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.