THIS DAY IN HISTORY

[IceWizard]

Former U.S. Senator Strom Thurmond dies






2003
June 26



Strom Thurmond, who served in the United States Senate for a record 46 years,
dies on June 26, 2003. Thurmond’s long and controversial political career had
ended with his retirement one year earlier.

Thurmond was born on December 5, 1902, in Edgefield, South Carolina, where
he also died. He graduated from what is now Clemson University in 1923 with
a degree in horticulture and became a teacher and coach, and, later, a
superintendent of schools. While working in education, he studied law at night,
and passed the bar in 1930. He worked as an attorney and, eventually, a judge,
before serving in WWII, where he participated in D-Day at Normandy with the
Army’s 82nd Airborne division.

Thurmond’s political career began in 1946 when he became governor of
South Carolina, a position he held for one term. As governor, as well as in
the early part of his Congressional career, he was famously pro-segregation,
even saying in a 1948 speech, “I want to 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 Negro race into our theaters, into our
swimming pools, into our homes and into our churches.” It was also in 1948
that Thurmond made his one and only run for the presidency, as the candidate
of the Dixiecrat party, in protest of Harry Truman’s nomination by the
Democratic Party, of which he was a member. He was easily defeated, but did
win the states of South Carolina, Mississippi, Alabama and Louisiana, and
their combined 39 electoral votes.

In 1954, Thurmond ran for the United States Senate as a Democrat on a
pro-segregation platform and became the only candidate ever elected to the
Senate by a write-in vote. Three years into this first term, he notoriously
staged a record-breaking one-man filibuster to defeat a civil rights bill that
lasted more than 24 hours. Although it is unknown whether his personal beliefs
regarding racial equality ever changed, his political behavior became more
moderate in the 1970s, perhaps as part of an effort to extend his political career
in changing times. This change of heart, whether genuine or not, was exemplified
by his endorsement of a renewal of the Voting Rights Act in 1982 and his vote
in favor of creating the Martin Luther King, Jr. federal holiday in 1983.

Throughout his career Thurmond was by any account a divisive force in American
politics. His critics thought him to be an unabashed racist and condemned his
alleged habit of skirt-chasing. Thurmond was married twice, the second time when
he was 66 years old to a 22-year-old former Miss South Carolina, but also had a
reputation for making frequent advances on a wide variety of women who crossed
his path. His fans, however, seemed amused by his reputation as a “rascal” and
admired his feistiness and personal discipline–Thurmond never smoked or drank
coffee and only rarely indulged in alcohol–as well as his personal strength. Even
in his 90s when his health began to fail, Thurmond refused to use a wheelchair or
hearing aid in public. He was well known for personally helping out his constituents
on a regular basis.

Thurmond retired from the Senate in 2002 and died about a year later in his
South Carolina home. In December 2003, Essie Mae Washington-Williams
announced that she was his illegitimate daughter, born to Thurmond and her
mother Carrie Butler, a Black maid who had worked in his family’s home.
Thurmond was 22 when she was born; Butler was only 16. Although he never
publicly acknowledged her while he was alive, a representative for his family
did confirm Washington-Williams’ statement and it was reported that the two
had a relatively close relationship.




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