A different kind of Thurmond in South Carolina

Sen. Strom Thurmond (R-SC) is the only person ever to reach his 100th birthday while serving in the U. S. Senate (from 1954 til his death in 2003).  Arch-segregationist, Thurmond switched parties (from Democratic to Republican) in protest over the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and other liberal Democratic positions.   

Although he always insisted that he was not a racist, it's not clear how he defined a racist, since he famously stated "[A]ll the laws of Washington and all the bayonets of the Army cannot force the Negro into our homes, into our schools, our churches and our places of recreation and amusement."   It was not racism but states rights that was the issue, Thurmond claimed, when he ran for president as a "Dixiecrat" on the States Rights Democratic Party ticket in 1948.

Six months after Thurmond died, his adult, biracial daughter,  fathered with a family maid when he was 22, revealed her connection.   Although he had never publicly acknowledged her as his daughter, he had paid for her college education and had her visit him in his office.   Later, his other children accepted her into the family, and her name was added to the family names listed on Thurmon's memorial statue on the state capitol grounds.

Thurmond's son, State Senator Paul Thurmond, made history himself on Tuesday when he addressed his fellow senators about the Mother Emanuel AME Church shooting and called for the removal of the Confederate flag from the grounds of the state capitol.

As reported in the Charleston Post and Courier, Thurmond said:

“Our ancestors were literally fighting to continue to keep human beings as slaves. . . .  I am not proud of that heritage. . . These practices were inhumane and wrong, wrong, wrong. . . . It is time to acknowledge our past, atone for our sins, and work for a better future.  That future cannot be built on symbols of war, hate, and divisiveness.”

Calling the Confederate flag "an emblem from a war that is long over and one that has been tied to racism," Thurmond continued:  

“I am proud to take a stand and no longer be silent. . . .  We must take down the Confederate flag and we must take it down now. But if we stop there, we have cheated ourselves out of an opportunity to start a different conversation about healing in our state. . . . [I am] proud to be on the right side of history regarding the removal of this symbol of racism and bigotry from the Statehouse.”

Jack Bass, a longtime biographer of the elder Thurmond, said the symbolism of the younger Thurmond calling for the removal of the flag probably would have been well-received by his father.   Noting that later in his career Strom had supported an extension of the Voting Rights Act, Bass suggested that Strom himself would have supported the efforts to take down the flag.

This is remarkable.  Let's hope this outbreak of sanity and compassion is not just a temporary flash of good will that soon gets papered over.   I think we may be on the verge of some real changing of hearts and minds -- initiated by a series of public shootings of black people by white police or white supremacists, starting with Trayvon Martin's murder, going through Ferguson, Missouri, and New York streets and North Charleston and Baltimore, and now Charleston's Mother Emanuel.    It's time.

Ralph