Barbara Spindel reviews Joseph Crespino's new biography, Strom Thurmond's America. The long-serving South Carolina senator made a career of his associations with "unreconstructed racism," arguing in his 1948 presidential campaign speech, "There's not enough troops in the army to force the southern people to break down segregation and admit the nigger race into our theaters, into our swimming pools, into our homes, and into our churches." It was only after his death that the full complexity emerged:
He died in June 2003, six months after leaving office; six months after that, an elderly retired African-American schoolteacher named Essie Mae Washington-Williams held a press conference to announce that Thurmond was her father and had provided her financial support throughout her life. Washington-Williams spoke of her father without bitterness. It's also notable that by the end of his career the senator had won the loyalty of a number of his black constituents. Regarding race, "Thurmond would never provide his aides or posterity with any accounting of what he had believed in the past, why he had acted as he did, and how his beliefs had changed," Crespino writes. "Nor would he ever apologize."
(Thurmond bust via Wikimedia Commons)
The Dish 