Strom Thurmond -- Poor Good Ol' Boy Has a Cold

Strom Thurmond: Pool Good Ol' Boy Has a Cold
by Mac MacArthur

Strom Thurmond, boy racist

TUESDAY, DECEMBER 30th, 1997 -- NEW YORK (APJP) -- The mainstream media seems to be upset that Senator Strom Thurmond is in hospital suffering from a cold. A lot of people, especially Black Americans wish he'd never been born, or his father before him.

Thurmond 95, was hospitalized with a mild respiratory infection, at the Eisenhower Medical Center Sunday night complaining of laryngitis and a bad cough. Doctors diagnosed the senator as suffering from the mild respiratory infection, or "a bad cold."

Thurmond, who had been at his home in Akin for the holidays, is expected to be released today or tomorrow.

The nation's longest-serving senator was hospitalized for a day in Washington in October after getting dizzy during the Promise Keepers rally. Dizzy with power, I suppose.

According to his staff members, the senator, who still heads the Armed Services Committee, yet recounts the most minute details of his 68 years in politics. According to these members, he is always on top of his duties and never fails to read from a "prepared text." What his staff members fail to mention is that during these meetings when discussion veers from his prepared text, Thurmond will become disoriented and start reading the stage directions scribbled in the margins.

Return of the French-speaking octogenarian in "Joe Tynan" ?

But this is not the only action that has made the senator's incompetence undeniably obvious. In April, Thurmond shoved a USAir flight attendant when the attendant refused to allow him to store his coat in the first-class coat closet (he was flying coach).

At a recent rotary meeting, the senator rose to introduce fellow senator Phil Gramm and forgot Gramm's name and anything else he might have said.

After being pushed by a vagrant in a subway station two years ago, Thurmond walked on, completely oblivious that the senator he was traveling with was wrestling the man to the ground.

The Thurmond situation is absurd not only because a confused 93-year-old senator is considered competent enough to serve, but because he is a senator at all, and one who holds the senate record for the longest filibuster -- 24 hours and 18 minutes against a 1957 civil rights bill -- and claims to represent the image of the "New South." One can only guess what his staff must be like.

As Washington and the mainstream media pampers and protects this man, ensuring that he has a personal driver for the remainder of his days in politics, Bob Dole, fresh from a septuagenarian facelift himself, proves to be one of Thurmond's biggest protectors.

Washington is Thurmond's personal nursing home.

Thurmond conducted the longest filibuster in history railing, for more than 24 hours against civil rights legislation that would forced the federal government to treat people of all races equally nearly 50 years ago. Because of Thurmond, civil rights legislation of any import had to wait until LBJ the 1964 Civil Rights Act sponsored by LBJ.

In the mean time hundreds of Black and White freedom marchers died, were tortured or torched and landed in Thurmond's jail in their fight for civil rights for this nation. While I feel for the old man, he should have stepped down long before now -- in disgrace. Thurmond "confesses that his stand on civil rights was one of his worst moments -- but don't be fooled, the man is known to make the same slurs he did 70 years ago when among friends and trusted colleagues.

Thurmond was once head of the "Dixiecrats," a splinter group of Southern Democrats in the U.S. elections of 1948, who rejected President Harry S. Truman's civil rights program and revolted against the civil rights plank adopted at the Democratic National Convention. A conference of states' rights leaders then met in Birmingham, appropriately, and suggested then Governor J. Strom Thurmond of South Carolina run for president and Governor Fielding Wright of Mississippi for vice president. The group hoped to force the election into the House by preventing either Truman or his Republican opponent, Thomas E. Dewey, from obtaining a majority of the Electoral votes.

The plan failed of course. Although Thurmond electors ran and won as the official Democratic candidates in four states -- Alabama, Louisiana, Mississippi, and South Carolina -- other Thurmond electors running as "States Rights Democrats" lost to Truman slates. Thurmond polled 22.5% of the total Southern vote to Truman's 50.1%. Nationally, Thurmond obtained 39 electoral votes with 1,169,032 popular votes. The Dixiecrat movement encouraged Northern blacks to vote for Truman, but it ultimately strengthened the Republican party in the South, for many Dixiecrats as did Thurmond, became Republicans. It reminds me of Rep. Lu Hardin who switched parties this year, for purely selfish reasons.

Could this be Newt's plan to bootstrap himself into the Senate?

Read this account by South Carolina Locals to get a feel for the kind of man Thurmond must be:

"I agreed with a lot of things Thurmond stood for," Mr. Tracy said. "I just didn't think he stood a chance as a third party person - which he proved himself."

Instead, Mr. Tracey threw his support to Mr. Dewey.
"Everybody thought (Dewey) was going to win," he
said. "I think he lost the election himself. He
just gave the impression of not being friendly or
down-to-earth."

Mr. Thurmond, now 96 and the oldest senator
ever to serve in Washington, was governor of
South Carolina and a Democrat in 1948.

But when President Truman announced plans for a broad range of civil rights programs, many southern Democrat racists balked at the party.
At a convention of disgruntled "states' rights Democrats," Mr. Thurmond was chosen to run for president with Gov. Fielding Wright of Mississippi as vice president.

"As long as the so-called civil rights program is part of the platform the people of the South are not going to support the national Democratic nominees," Mr. Thurmond told the Augusta crowd. "To do so would be to invite political suicide. We know our rights as a sovereign state and we are going to maintain them."

Band music and group signing were part of the rally, and the speech was broadcast nationwide by radio, pre-empting such popular shows as the Kraft Music Hall.

Even though 51 years have passed, many people are still reluctant to talk about the divisive 1948
election.

Mr. Thurmond's challenge meant that many Democrats had to choose between loyalty to the Democratic Party and loyalty to the South.
That was the case for Roscoe Coleman of Thompson, who was running for the General Assembly as a Democrat in 1948.

"I agreed to support the Democratic ticket if I was elected as a Democratic nominee to the General Assembly," he said. "That included voting for the Democratic ticket in the General Assembly."
So he voted for Mr. Truman even though he sympathized with Mr. Thurmond's campaign.
Like many other southern conservatives, Mr. Coleman eventually switched to the Republican Party.

Some voters, such as Richard Dyson of Augusta, weren't impressed with Mr. Thurmond's bid.

"I looked at him and still do as an opportunist," he said. "Truman did a good job. I think he was one of the best we ever had."

He said the civil rights issue is still a factor in contemporary politics. "There's still a problem there," he said. "A lot of so-called Republicans are only in the party because of the civil rights issue."

Nationwide, 1.1 million voters cast their ballots for
Mr. Thurmond. He won 39 electoral votes in
capturing four states during the 1948 campaign:
South Carolina, Alabama, Mississippi and
Louisiana.

That's a record even Ross Perot can't boast. Mr.
Perot's independent candidacy shook up the 1992
presidential race by winning 19 percent of the
popular vote. But he failed to win a single state.
And while Mr. Thurmond failed to win Georgia, he
took Richmond County in a landslide, beating Mr.
Truman and Mr. Dewey's combined vote by more
than 2-to-1.

Mr. Thurmond earned 8,814 votes in Richmond
County. Harry Truman was a distant second with
2,451 votes and Mr. Dewey was third with 528
votes.

The solid support for the Dixiecrats foreshadowed
the rise of the Republican party in the South, said
Dr. Ralph Walker, professor of politics at Augusta
State University.

"The Dixiecrats were the first crack in the wall of
the solid Democratic dominance," he said. "That
was the beginning of the end of the one-party
system in the South."

Mr. Thurmond switched to the Republican Party in
1964. He is currently seeking re-election against
Democratic challenger Elliott Close.

Then there is noted writer Fox Butterfield, who in one of his books creates a larger narrative (the subtitle's "American tradition of violence") tracing a family back to the slave society of Edgefield County, South Carolina -- the most violent ground in the most slave-dependent state. It was here, Butterfield explains, that the defense of "honor" by dueling was a way of life. It was a culture that spawned Preston Brooks, who famously caned Charles Sumner in the U.S. Senate in 1856, and in later decades spawned the brutal repression of Reconstruction, and lynching, and murderous public figures like J. William Thurmond, father of the current Senator, Strom. By the 1890s, the homicide rate in neighboring Saluda County exceeded New York City's a century later.

Read this piece, part of an essay by Juan Williams. It describes the Thurmond's swearing in of Thomas and shows how Brad Reynolds marked the day for liberals. Thurmond never recognized the insult Reynolds so cagily crafted. Neither did Thomas or Juan Williams.

In mid-September, Attorney General Edwin Meese, Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights Bradford Reynolds, and Senator Strom Thurmond, the former segregationist from South Carolina, came to the EEOC's offices to swear in Clarence Thomas. It was an unlikely sight -- the three white men shaking hands and slapping backs with Thomas. Reynolds had days earlier attacked Supreme Court Associate Justice William Brennan as a man seeking "unlimited judicial power to further a personalized egalitarian vision of society" through racial preferences and a "liberal social agenda." Meese was about to give a speech encouraging politicians to disregard Supreme Court rulings if they felt the rulings were wrong. Clarence Thomas, in his moment of triumph, stood shoulder-to-shoulder with his Administration colleagues. None of the three stayed more than a few minutes at Thomas's celebration. But before he left, Reynolds raised his glass. "It's a proud moment for me to stand here," he said, "because Clarence Thomas is the epitome of the right kind of affirmative action working the right way."

Clarence Thomas flinched. Some of his aides looked down and shook their heads. After all Thomas had been through in defense of the Administration position on civil rights, Reynolds had implicitly dismissed him as an affirmative action hire. And, worse, Reynolds had thought it a compliment. Thomas showed a look of cold hurt -- a look of disgust. He folded his arms across his chest and looked away from Reynolds. By the time Meese had said a few words and Thurmond had sworn him in, an uneasy smile had returned to Thomas's face. A few days later, when I asked about his reaction to Reynolds's comment, Thomas waved his hand, as if swatting away the memory. "I can't pay no attention to Brad," he said.

Roots:

Thurmond hails from Edgefield Country and nowhere was the fight to keep African Americans out of the voting booth more bitter and violent than in that county in South Carolina. During Reconstruction, rifle and saber clubs in every town operated as a terrorist wing of the Democratic Party. Armed whites took control of polling places to keep blacks from voting, and provoked riots in which blacks were killed.

Senator "Pitchfork" Ben Tillman, who went on to become governor, simply abolished local elections in order to keep blacks out. In recent times, Edgefield County was home to the late governor, and no Senator Strom Thurmond, a longtime opponent of desegregation who fought tooth and nail against the Voting Rights Act and all its amendments.

In 1974, educator Tom McCain ran for a seat on the County Council, becoming the first African American to seek elected office in the county since Reconstruction. McCain won in black districts, but since the elections were at-large and whites simply would not vote for blacks, he lost the election and another in 1976.

With the ACLU's help, McCain and a group of African Americans filed suit, charging that the county's at-large system violated the Voting Rights Act. Ten years of litigation resulted in a 1984 Supreme Court victory, and the establishment of single member district voting. When elections were held, blacks won a 3-2 majority on the council and control of Edgefield County. McCain, who had not run, was appointed by the County Council to the powerful position of County Administrator.

Between 1984 and today, Edgefield County has seen profound change -- starting with the delivery of basic services to a chronically ignored black community. For example, "Before blacks held elected office," McCain recalls, "the county always picked up white folks' garbage and sometimes it picked up black folks' garbage. Now, we just pick up the garbage."

He also recollects: "You could drive through the council chairman's community and find roads paved through peach orchards. It seems like that's where the money ended up." No more. Now poor, black communities have paved roads too, where there were none before. McCain claims, however, that his government "was not aimed at one community over the other community. We provided service for everybody, without looking at a community to see if it was black or white."

Due to the success of a school bond referendum to overhaul and update the badly deteriorated school system, two schools were completely renovated, two new schools were built and the high school was expanded. Under a comprehensive economic development plan, the county attracted new industries that invested more than $100 million in the county and generated 1,000 new jobs. A federal prison is currently under construction that is expected to provide even more jobs.

In addition, the entire face of government in the county has changed. Once the white strangle hold on local power was broken, African Americans ran and won seats not only on the County Council, but on the school board, the city council, the election commission, the registration board -- and in Congress as well. And many more blacks have been hired to work in government offices, and assume positions of authority. "Black people would go to these offices to receive service and they had never seen anybody that looked like them there before," remarks McCain.

Change has brought about the narrowing of a previously huge gap between the living conditions of blacks and whites in Edgefield County. Whether Thurmond is part of that change will be left to history. As far as I'm concerned, he's never paid his dues.

After all, we wish Senator Thurmond God's speed and a quick recovery from his cold. We hope he remembers how he was rushed to a schmaltzy hospital for the sniffles when it comes time to hammer down on Medicare payments of the rest of America's elderly.

He'll certainly need it.