Another Anniversary Today: Strom Thurmond's 1957 Filibuster Against Voting Rights
By bluegal Tuesday Aug 28, 2007 5:32pm
(click image for larger) From American Heritage:
Fifty years ago today, on August 29, 1957, Sen. Strom Thurmond, the South’s champion of states’ rights and white supremacy, secured a place in the annals of congressional history when he finally yielded the floor after speaking for 24 hours and 18 minutes straight. His speech set the record for a Senate filibuster.
Thurmond’s filibuster made for good political theater, but it never stood a chance of derailing the bill. ...But outside the nation’s capital, many Southerners loved Thurmond’s performance. Georgia’s governor, Marvin Griffin, defiantly promised, “We’re not going to let a Federal judge tell us who can vote,” while South Carolina’s governor, George Bell Timmerman, Jr., proudly announced, “I don’t have any intention of cooperating.” Thurmond’s grandstand may have been legislatively ineffectual, but it almost certainly encouraged white Southerners in resisting federal law, as they had begun doing three years earlier after the Supreme Court’s decision in Brown v. Board of Education.
In its immediate goal, Thurmond’s stand proved unnecessary. Stripped of its teeth, the Civil Rights Act of 1957 proved an ineffective safeguard of black voting rights. It would take a much stronger measure, the 1965 Voting Rights Act, to get the job done. It’s hard to say who won in the long run. In 1964 Thurmond, a Democrat, switched political affiliation again, this time for good, leading a massive exodus of white Southerners to the Republican party.
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The long run isn't over yet. The fight for equality will continue, and progressives will win. We just don't know the timeline.
I wonder if forty years from now, Newt Gingrich, Tom Delay, and others will be held in such high "esteem."
[Deleted. Much to your surprise, it seems, Ron Paul is not the topic of this thread]
and let's not forget that this grand ol' hypocrite fathered a black daughter he never acknowledged while alive.
burt Says: and let’s not forget that this grand ol’ hypocrite fathered a black daughter he never acknowledged while alive.
Quote This Comment August 29th, 2007 at 3:44 PM - PDT
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Never publicly acknowledged. The old horn dog did financially support her though. Although it does nothing to aleaviate his hypocrisy, he didn't abandon her.
What's the difference today?
Change "Black" to "Gay" or "Hispanic" and its the same coded language to fire up he base. Activist Judges destroying the moral structure of the family?
Hell, Mitt Romney is just Strom Thurmond gone to the gym and in a 1000 dollar suit!
Republicans are, have been, and always will be, loathsome sickos.
The Party of Jesus?
Man, if he ever DOES come back, he is going to kick some serious behind on these a*holes who have been pretending they speak for him.....
Off topic but perhaps worthy of its own thread. Story on NBC News this evening is rising nationalism and anti-Americanism in Russia with a polling of a majority of Russians under 30 view America the number one threat to Russia and the world.
Thanks again Chimp!
Maybe he and Satan can have a long filibuster competition in hell. Rot you pig.
welll...i didn't know "the ol' horn dog" took care of her financially. at least he wasn't a total a$$hole...
All while Strom was getting a black woman pregnant and keeping it quiet. Another reich wing hypocrite in the mold of Vitter and Craig.
And the Supreme Court just invalidated most of Brown vs. Board of Education.
Strom Thurmond lives on.
Mike @ 2:
Ahh, Mike, speaking of dumb posts. Going back 147 + years to blame the Dems. Heckuva job Mikie!!
Civil Rights History 101:
The south is dominated by Democrats because that nasty Republican Abraham Lincoln didn't think slavery was compatible with "all men are created equal". Soo, all the racists hung out with the Dems.
1948 and somebody's boy( not mine, or northern Democrats) Strom created the Dixiecrat party, which did what no Republican had done since the Civil War, which is carry a large amount of Southern electoral votes.
From then on, except for the Eisenhower blowout of 1956, the Democrats still controlled southern politics.
Fast forward to 1964 and the Civil Rights Act. Racist Southern Dems started switching to the Republican party, and by 1972 the south was the new Republican stronghold. Except for Clinton and Carter(Southern Governors), the Dems have failed to carry the south since.
The racists left the Democratic party and went to their new nirvana, encouraged by code words and the false excuse that Democrats have forgotten, and don't care anymore about Southern "values". And Strom Thurman led the parade of Racists to the Modern Republican Party, a party that would make Abraham Lincoln PUKE if he were alive today.
Thank you Strom Thurman for taking the southern sickes from the Democratic Party and bringing them to the Republicans, except that we now keep losing national elections because the sickies of southern politics are now wagging the country as a whole.
Please be polite when you rebut this opinion.
I live in SC (Myrtle Beach) and I can tell you first hand, this is a State of Hatred and Bigotry (while claiming to be very christian).
The Democrats are starting to have a say here now, but still a minority, and I think there is a possibility that the state can be won by the progressive movement.
Most of what I hear in the street are people trying to mouth "forgiveness" for Craig who was is a self-hater, a bigot, a liar and a Republican Hack.
They still "celebrate" Strom down here, which is very embarrassing to anyone who has a brain that functions.
Fortunately, the time of the dominance of southern republicans is coming to an end.
Both the demographics of people of color changing the southern landscape, and older white southerns going off to their eternal trailer park in the sky is rotting away Nixon's Southern Strategy.
Clearly, you can write off all the south but Florida, and carry the SW and win the Whitehouse easily.
So, Bye-Bye South Carolina..Screw off Tennessee...See you later Alabama. Don't call us, we won't call you!
Personally, I'm SICK of those a-holes in the south requiring all Presidents to have a southern drawl.
Out to the permanent political backwater they so richly deserve.
WashStateBlue @ 13:
Oh, I'm sure we could figure out a way to write off Florida too.
Of course, the lasting effect of the Democrat/Republican switching of the south has been the opportunistic porking. With all the Democratic money going to military, NASA, and government agencies like the CDC through the sixties, seventies, and eighties, and the Republican money going to the same centers in the nineties and early part of this decade (the oughts?), the economies of places like Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, and South Carolina are way dependent on the federal teat (regardless of the hyperbolic rhetoric.) That will change, hopefully.
As barkeyg so nicely points out, political demographics change. I can only hope that my state (Idaho) will start the ocean liner paced turn towards a more progressive future. If so, thanks should go in part to Lavvy "wide stance" Craig and his poorly thought out stall tactics.
Data to support my post (14) above:
http://www.taxfoundation.org/files/sr139.pdf
I don't know much about this organization, but I quickly found this and it supports what I remember seeing from other organizations previously.
February 4, 1972: In a secret memo, Senator Strom Thurmond suggests to Attorney General John Mitchell that John Lennon, whom the government suspects of consorting with “known radicals,” be deported.
There is this deceitful conservitard over at youtube, "gaylecothrannn", on every single video of Ted Nugent ranting like a lunatic about Clinton and Obama, writing:
"The Democrat National Convention of 1924 was host to one of the largest Klan gatherings in American history. Dubbed the "Klanbake convention". The event was marked by speakers spewing racial hatred, celebrations of their platform victory, and ended in a cross burning. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 was opposed by 39% of the Democrats, while only 20% of the Republicans. Hmmm, Facts are like Kryptonite to the Democratic Party"
WHAT PISSES ME OFF is, while that may be true, it was CONSERVATIVE southern Democrats that did this, and this asshole is trying to make people believe that they are the same Democrats of today.
Anyone that feels like verbally and intellectually blasting away some conservitards with me at youtube go there and put in Ted Nugent Clinton Obama as key words...and help me put these dopes in their place!
►Runs-With-Dog◄ @ 12:
A friend of mine from Virginia, not exactly San Francisco mind you, moved to Myrtle Beach and said that South Carolina was right wing when compared to Virginia. He even affectionately referred to South Carolina politically as the "asshole of the nation". He has since moved to North Carolina and finds it more progressive there, by southern standards anyway.
An exodus to the Racistpublican party. Good riddance, you cretins.
The only good thing I can say about Strom Thurmond is that he did reconcile his segregation stances in the end (probably out of guilt for fathering that mixed race child). Which is more than can be said for fellow "Dixiecrat" Jesse Helms, a "Christian" bigot, racist, homophobe and hate monger to the very end.
WashStateBlue @ 5:
Yeah, you forgot Mexicans and brown people in general. If Swedes were at our southern borders and "braeking our laws" and invading a "sovereign nation" do you think half these assholes would be frothing at the mouth over it?
Ruthless People @ 19:
But WHY? Just because it has a KKK Museum, financed by the KKK Gift Shop right next door?
When LB Johnson signed the Voting Rights act of 1964, he knew that we would "lose the south for a generation." And We have...Progress is very slow. Changing racist people's hearts and minds takes seeing all people of all colors and cultures as ... well, people.
The more things change, the more they stay the same.......
burt @ 8:
How much of a total asshole do you have to be to beat Strom Thurmond? Jesus!
WashStateBlue @ 5:
the primary difference between strom and a Nazi is the tools since certainly the targets were the same.
Ruthless People @ 21:
strom did not. read his 'change of heart'. he was never contrite or truly apologetic.
his final legacy is trent lott. nuff said.
timmy_d11 @ 18:
I have spamrated his every comment. He's a fucking retard. I think he's probably paid, too. Only someone with a major financial incentive could keep that up.
This is a perfect example of why Democrats in the Senate should NOT let Republican block votes with threat of filibuster. If Republicans want to filibuster to keep the Iraq war going, LET THEM FILIBUSTER. Why can't Democrats understand this? Too long in the chummy Senate Club? Let Republicans stand up and talk for hours and hours and hours about why they won't stop the Iraq war. Let them do it!
As for the female point of view; he might have compensated her, but that didn't make an 'HONEST' woman of her like so many men proclaim to be the ONLY respectable woman these days. Just made her a mistress, or a paid hoe. But there are many women who are married these days and there is little difference. When a woman doesn't care if there is another woman? There is little or nothing to be respected.
barkleyg@11
What rebuttal? Yours was a dead bang. Nice to know that someone else pays attention to history. I always wondered how modern day republicans can claim Lincoln. The people that think it is ok to own another human being are now in the republican party. Lincoln would switch parties if he was alive today.
Tancredo the bigot is from Colorado, Cheney from Wyoming, Craig-Idaho, Santorum-PA, Rove-Utah, Gonzo-Texas (and, no Texas is not the south), etc, etc.
Yeah we had Strom, but we also had Fritz Hollins as a counter balance. There are more Klan members and white supremecists in the midwest than in the south. Instead of grousing about a dead, ancient SC senator , check out your own backyard, 'cause there are bad GOPers nationwide
And "runs-with-dog", let guess you're not from Myrtle Beach, possibly Ohio? The midwest? You do know 95 does go North? leave if you hate it so much....
Burn in hell, Strom.
Apparently, schools in America are getting more segregated. And the Supreme Court's recent decision will make it even easier for this trend to continue.
But, hey, who cares about public schools, right? Let's all have vouchers for private schools and private health care and private roads and private police and private fire departments, too! After all, if you can afford to have a house, you can afford to keep it from catching fire! Who needs community?
Robert Caro's book, Master of the Senate, details the making of that first civil rights bill in 1957. A great read if you're interested.
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