He never repudicated his segregationist beliefs, unlike most folks. If your parents and grandparents still believe this crap, they can rot in hell, too. http://slate.msn.com/id/2075453/ . . . But there never was any such expression of remorse or plea for forgiveness. Thurmond has never publicly repudiated his segregationist past, and with his 100th birthday and a Senate career behind him, it's doubtful he ever will. The legend of Strom's Remorse was invented, by common unspoken consent within the Beltway culture, in order to provide a plausible explanation why Thurmond should continue to hold power and command at least marginal respectability well past the time when history had condemned Thurmond's most significant political contribution. Now that Thurmond is finally leaving Washington, the lie serves no further purpose and will fade away. . . .
In the interest of balance (not because I am defending Thurmond): Thurmond's segregationism seems to have been more a product of his times than a matter of genuine conviction. By the 1980s he had adopted moderate-to-liberal stances on some racial issues, voting for a national holiday in honor of Martin Luther King, for the 1982 extension of the 1965 Voting Rights Act and for the Civil Rights Act of 1991. Even in his segregationist heyday, Thurmond's record was not all invidious, as his Washington Post obituary points out: As governor of South Carolina in the late 1940s, he took the lead in abolishing the state's poll tax. He also increased expenditures on education, including education for blacks, and he established a higher minimum wage. He threw all the state's resources behind an effort to bring a lynch mob to justice. But he was a fierce opponent of President Truman's civil-rights program, which he described as "the most un-American law ever proposed. It was borrowed from the communists, who know well that they can never gain control of America as long as our fundamental rights are preserved to the states." http://www.opinionjournal.com/best/
RIP Strom. It is fascinating to me that Malcolm X, one of the most racist and divisive figures in our history, can have a change of heart before his assassination (at the hands of the racist NOI) and then be regarded as a hero, yet white racists are never given the same benefit of the doubt after their conversion. Strom Thurmond was a product of his times, yet he had the courage to later admit that his racism was wrong. I respect that. Everybody has a right to their opinion about Strom Thurmond, but some of the views in this thread make me feel that Strom's attackers might need to look inside themselves and examine the reason for their classless attacks. Ask yourself who the real bigot is- Strom or you?
John, I don't know that much about Strom. Someone said he had never renounced his racist past, but you say he admitted it was wrong. Do you have proof that he ever admitted it was wrong? Thx
Who mentioned Malcolm X???? How do you know how people feel about that, oh you're assuming or in other words making an a$$ out of yourself. And isn't assuming how people act the definition of bigotry? Makes you say hmmm Strom or You??? HMMM
I'm shocked and saddened by some of the vitriol being spewed in this thread. I found Strom's segregationst views highly offensive, to say the least. But I'm not filled with malevolent glee at his passing, because I find it difficult to take pleasure in the misfortune of others. I take no pleasure in the fact that blacks were subject to segregation and prejudice, but at the same time I take no pleasure in the fact that an old man went to his grave never reaching a deeper understanding about the importance of caring for people of all races. Perhaps instead of using this as an occasion to pour more hatred and anger into the world, we can work to make sure that the mindset that produced Strom Thurmond remains a tattered relic of a bygone era. I wish all of you (and your children and parents and grandparents) happiness and peace.
Actually Goophers, Thurmond's racist past is WAY overstated. For a Southern white man in the 1940's, he was actually a moderate. http://hnn.us/articles/1166.html Senator Byrd, the Democrat from West Virginia who was a recruiter for the Klan had a MUCH WORSE record than Thurmond, but that doesn't seem to bother SOME of the Dems around here. They have been conditioned to hate people like Thurmond, and they don't even have clear knowledge of the man's actual record. It was Thurmond who saved the Martin Luther King Jr. Commision, which is dedicated to preserving the memory of Dr. King. After a phone to Thurmond from Coretta Scott King, Thurmond not only stopped the commission from being defunded, but he help to DOUBLE its budget. Actions speak louder than words, and Strom Thurmond proved that he had a change of heart.
No, actually he proved that he knew how to superficially show support for minorities, to keep his senate seat. Dig through his record and find anything he supported or spearheaded that would actually make a difference in the surpressed day to day lives of blacks in South Carolina?
Does anyone ever try to convince Jewish people to forgive and forget the Germans that participate in their near destruction . .. YET . .. black folx are just suppose to turn the other cheek [hell we done it so long. . . .. why not continue] Well I won't Strom was Evil Strom was VILE Strom showed NO REMORSE or ANYTHING Rocket River
I could have sworn that you were among those in here celebrating when we were supposed to have bombed Saddam Hussein. I know...it's only a human being when it's not done something you think is very, very wrong... " Comparing Strom Thurmond to a murderous tyrant is beyond....yadda yadda." Save it, I can see it coming. You made the statement...stand by it, or, as I expect, put in qualifiers that make 'insulting a recently deceased human being' all right if you consider his actions such that you yourself don't consider him worthy of the title...Of course, it's not right for others to do the same...
Manny...This I don't get. Was it better of him to marry her , which was obviously because he admired her as a person and an equal? Why is marrying a man for his money so much worse than marrying a woman for her bod?
Sorry Sam, but his actions for Coretta Scott King speak volumes, and drown out your situational quotes.
.....sigh.....Juan, sometimes you just make it too easy: Here's more: The Legend of Strom's Remorse A Washington lie is laid to rest. By Timothy Noah Posted Monday, December 16, 2002, at 9:09 AM PT For many years, there's been a cherished Washington lie about Strom Thurmond. The lie is that Thurmond, though once a leading segregationist, later renounced that view as morally wrong. Trent Lott repeated the lie at his Dec. 13 press conference. Thurmond, he said, came to understand the evil of segregation and the wrongness of his own views. And to his credit, he's said as much himself. … By the time I came to know Strom Thurmond, some 40 years after he ran for president … he had long since renounced many of the views of the past, the repugnant views he had had. It isn't just conservatives who believe this fairy tale about sin, remorse, and redemption. The New York Times buys into it, too. David Halbfinger's story in the Dec. 15 Times pointedly quoted the above passage from Lott's remarks and then noted that "when asked to describe, and place in time, his own conversion from supporting segregation to repudiating it, Mr. Lott demurred." (After further prodding, Lott said, "Way back there," and attributed his change of mind to "Maturity," "experience," and "learning.") The implication was that Lott was reluctant to render the heartfelt public apology that even mossy ol' Strom served up many years ago. But there never was any such expression of remorse or plea for forgiveness. Thurmond has never publicly repudiated his segregationist past, and with his 100th birthday and a Senate career behind him, it's doubtful he ever will. The legend of Strom's Remorse was invented, by common unspoken consent within the Beltway culture, in order to provide a plausible explanation why Thurmond should continue to hold power and command at least marginal respectability well past the time when history had condemned Thurmond's most significant political contribution. Now that Thurmond is finally leaving Washington, the lie serves no further purpose and will fade away. Is Chatterbox saying that the Strom of today (what's left of him) is identical to the Strom who ran for president in 1948 on the pro-segregationist Dixiecrat platform? He is not. Clearly, Thurmond made shrewd accommodations late in life to changing times. In the 1970s, he became the first Southern senator to hire a black staff aide and to sponsor a black man for a federal judgeship. In the 1980s, he voted to reauthorize the Voting Rights Act (not because he agreed with it but in belated deference to "the common perception that a vote against the bill indicates opposition to the right to vote"). Strom also came to support making the birthday of Martin Luther King (about whom he'd once said, "King demeans his race and r****ds the advancement of his people") a federal holiday. Thurmond didn't do much else to promote equality among the races, but these token gestures were enough to demonstrate that he was no longer the 1948 Dixiecrat who had said, "There's not enough troops in the Army to force the Southern people to break down segregation and admit the Nigra race into our theaters, into our swimming pools, into our homes, and into our churches." (Pedantic aside: Standard accounts of the speech render "Nigra" as "Negro," but when listening to an NPR sound clip, Chatterbox wondered whether the word Thurmond uttered was "******." In transcribing, Chatterbox gave Thurmond, who even in his worst days was not known publicly to throw that ugly epithet around, the benefit of the doubt. To judge for yourself, click here.) Nor was Thurmond any longer the 1948 Dixiecrat who had invited audiences to ponder working for a company or belonging to a union forbidden by law to discriminate against blacks. "Think about the situation which would exist," he said back then, "when the annual office party is held or the union sponsors a dance." Nor was Thurmond any longer the 1948 Dixiecrat who, when it was revealed that he had invited the governor of the Virgin Islands to visit him without knowing that he was black, hastily explained, "I would not have written him if I knew he was a Negro. Of course, it would have been ridiculous to invite him." The quotations cited above demonstrate that Thurmond has quite a lot to apologize for. But on those rare occasions when Thurmond can be induced to talk about the 1948 campaign at all, his first line of defense is usually to misrepresent it. "In that race I was just trying to protect the rights of the states and the rights of the people," Thurmond insisted to the Washington Post's Jim Naughton in 1988. "Some in the news media tried to make it a race fight, but it was not that." Around the same time, when Thurmond biographer Nadine Cohodas asked him about the "troops in the Army" speech, which is Thurmond's only likely future entry in Bartlett's, Thurmond responded with "incredulity." When she finally "convinced" Thurmond that he'd really said it, all he would say was the following: "If I had to run that race again, some of the wording I used would not be used. I would word it differently." Early in 1991, Thurmond observed, "When I grew up, the black people were just all servants. Now they've developed and developed and come up and we've got to acknowledge people when they deserve to be acknowledged, and the black people deserve to be acknowledged." There's no hint in any of these statements that Thurmond believes, much less will acknowledge, that his prior policies were morally wrong. Thurmond's much-hyped "reconciliation" with the black community over the years has come about not because Thurmond became a civil rights supporter—he clearly isn't—but because Thurmond bought off a few key blacks with pork-barrel spending, political appointments, and the like. (Thurmond was always the kind of conservative who believed in the aggressive redistribution of wealth to his home state from the other 49.) It hardly made Thurmond the candidate of choice among South Carolina's African-Americans, but it muted black opposition sufficiently to keep him from being voted out of the Senate. Thurmond's refusal to treat segregationism as anything worse than an outdated fashion may have helped convince Lott that he, too, would never have to make a similar accounting for his own (far milder) segregationist past. Conceivably Lott could have dodged that bullet just as easily as Thurmond did. But Lott wasn't smart enough to grasp something Strom understood even in his dotage: If you don't want to apologize for something you did that was truly awful, try not to discuss it at all.
Sam, I am sorry if I don't roll over because you happen to agree with the opinion of Timothy Noah, but the answer lies right in the article. Thurmond changed his life and his hiring and voting patterns reflect his change. THINK! Would a segregationist hire black on his staff? Of course not! ACTIONS Sam- that is what matters. Besides, the people who are dancing on Strom's grave would never have accepted his apology anyway, and I am sure that he knew that.
This thread is an instant classic. I never would have guessed that Nomar, TJ, and johnheath would be in here defending the honor of that "courageous" racist scumbag Strom Thurmond. We even have some partisan throw ins and a Malcom X reference. Hilarious...
