Tuesday, July 9, 2003
On Strom - THE COMMENTARY
By Joseph Planta
VANCOUVER – To say that Strom Thurmond's death was a shock would be stretching credulity just a tad. He retired from the United States Senate six months ago, weeks shy of his one hundredth birthday. He had been elected to the South Carolina Senate in 1932, going on to be governor of the said state, and remained politically active to his retirement in January.
Strom Thurmond because of his age and the years he served in the Senate is noteworthy. He is the only centenarian ever to serve in either houses of congress and he is the only Senator ever elected as a write-in candidate. He was a presidential candidate running under the banner of ‘states rights' in 1948. Essentially he was a segregationist emanating from a faction within the Democratic Party, who refused to endorse civil rights.
The Wall Street Journal summed up Thurmond's 48-year career as an US Senator, and the meaning found in the span of his 100 years. In Thurmond's lifetime the United States has changed fundamentally, said the Journal. They note two court cases in the US Supreme Court: Plessy v. Fergusson and Grutter v. Bollinger. The first, six years before his birth talked about the idea of "separate but equal," which was the doctrine of the times, and for years to come. Four days before his passing in Grutter v. Bollinger, the US Supreme Court was now embracing a concept, the Wall Street Journal regarded as, "together therefore unequal." Essentially, according to them, in Thurmond's lifespan: "America went from an oppressive regime of discrimination against blacks, to a purportedly benign one of discrimination in their favour."
Thurmond, waxen and deaf in his later years, was still a political presence. There for sittings of the Senate, or trotted out for the State of the Union addresses, his longevity was also his apparent noteworthiness. Even in his final years in the Senate, if he wasn't collapsing on the chamber floor, he would be groping female staffers, as well as fellow Senators in the elevators of the Capitol.
The controversy over his segregationist views had sort of softened over the years. However it did contribute to the unmaking of at least one political career, namely Trent Lott's last winter. Remember when Lott said at his retirement party that if Thurmond had been elected president, there wouldn't be as many problems in America today. Clearly, even Thurmond had not embraced such ideas anymore, and Lott was a buffoon for blabbing so. He wasn't necessarily a segregationist, as much as he vigorously opposed the impeding the federal government was doing on states' jurisdictions, as they did with civil rights. He filibustered the 1957 Civil Rights Act, speaking for an unprecedented 24 hours and 18 minutes, without pause.
He was also instrumental in eliminating one party rule in the southern United States, with his switching from the Democrats to the Republican side in 1964. His candidacy in 1948, for president, did not earn more than 3% of the popular vote, however it began a landmark shift in voting patterns in the United States, whereupon white support for Democrats began to dip.
And though he was an ardent segregationist, as governor of South Carolina, he did take swift measures to prosecute lynchings in his state in 1947, and he fought "the most abominable type of lawlessness" of the KKK in 1940. He was also one of the first officials in Congress to hire a black staffer. Whatever will be written about Thurmond about his politics and such, one cannot deny his longevity in the field of public service.
- 30 -
Questions and comments may be sent to: editor@thecommentary.ca
An archive of Joseph Planta's previous columns can be found by clicking HERE .