Re: Re: From his hometown....
 

I wish I could find it on line, but the political cartoonist of the Atlanta Journal Constitution did a cartoon the other day that showed STrom and Lester Maddox standing at the Pearly Gate. The Angel at the gate had an Afro pick in his hand/ The Angel said "see this afro pick? It belongs to God."

Funniest thing I had seen in a while.

Re: Re: Re: From his hometown....
 

Do you remember the name of the cartoonist and what day? I might be able to find it and post it. :)


ETA: Never mind I found it on AJC home page :D

http://www.ajc.com/opinion/content/o...2003a_mike.gif

Re: Re: Re: Re: From his hometown....
 

Two words: HELL NAW :p :D
Only in the AJC!!!

lawd!
 

I left for NCA&T in 93, so I didn't know his daughter had died. I was in a pageant with her! Whoa.
This is an interesting viewpoint... Read on.



Strom's Skeleton
The late segregationist's black daughter.
By Diane McWhorter
Posted Tuesday, July 1, 2003, at 12:11 PM PT



In all the words spent on Strom Thurmond's life and times since his
death last week, I have seen no acknowledgment of the most interesting of
his sundry racial legacies. She is Essie Mae Washington Williams, a
widowed former school teacher in her 70s, living in Los Angeles.
Presumably she did not show up for any of the obsequies even though Strom
Thurmond was almost certainly her father. Williams is black.


Jack Bass and Marilyn W. Thompson present persuasive evidence in their
1998 biography, Ol' Strom, that Thurmond sired a daughter in 1925 with
a black house servant named Essie "Tunch" Butler, with whom he
reputedly had an extended relationship. Though "Black Baby of Professional
Racist" would seem to sail over the man-bites-dog bar of what is news, the
story has never really gotten traction. The particulars of this family
saga simply do not fit into the "redemption narrative" Americans tend
to impose on our more regrettable bygones: Better that ol' Strom
"transformed" from the Negro-baiting Dixiecrat presidential candidate of 1948
to One of the First Southern Senators To Hire a Black Aide in 1971.

In contrast to, say, George "I Was Wrong" Wallace, Thurmond has always
been an ornery redemption project. He did not repent. Even so, his
illegitimate daughter further complicates the moral picture. Does she mean
that he was even more heinous than we knew? Or that—dude!—he wasn't
such a racist bastard after all?

We need not dwell on the obvious mind-boggling hypocrisies here: that
someone who ran for president on an anti-pool-mixin' platform was party
to an integrated gene pool. Or that Thurmond's other signature
political achievement—the 24-hour-without-bathroom-break filibuster against the
Civil Rights Act of 1957—was done in the name of sparing the South from
"mongrelization." This form of duplicity has been a Southern tradition
dating back to those miscegenating slave owners. Their peculiar
conflation of shame and honor was captured in 1901 Alabama, at a
constitutional convention called to disfranchise blacks. A reactionary old
ex-governor known for being good to his mulatto "yard children" was aghast that
the insincere anti-Negro propaganda fomented by him and his peers might
bring actual injury to its objects. He demanded to know why, "when the
Negro is doing no harm, why, people want to kill him and wipe him from
the face of the earth."

Even as Thurmond was making a career of segging against his own flesh
and blood, he himself wasn't a complete cad. If he didn't exactly claim
Essie Mae Williams, neither did he disown her. He gave her money and
paid her regular visits (and probably tuition) at the black South
Carolina college where she was a "high yaller" sorority girl while he was
governor of the state. And in some ways, Williams has played the dutiful
daughter, insisting over the long years that Thurmond was merely a
"family friend." (Efforts to reach her failed.)

I do not pretend to fully understand these dynamics—and urge those
interested in the nexus of race and sex to consult Joel Kovel's White
Racism: A Psychohistory. But I know this: Thurmond's secret interracial sex
life was complementary to the conspicuously virginal choices he made to
be his public consorts. The year before being named the Dixiecrat
nominee in 1948, the 44-year-old Thurmond was photographed by Life standing
on his head for his lovely 21-year-old fiancee. Caption: "Virile
Governor." Thurmond's second bride, young enough at 22 to be the 66-year-old
senator's granddaughter, was a former Miss South Carolina. Both wives
(No. 1 died of a brain tumor at 33) were the proverbial "flower of
southern womanhood," the ideal that justified segregation's direst form of
social control, the ritual castration of lynching. Those fair and nubile
white women gave Thurmond's ugly politics a shiny emotional gloss that
blinded the Southern conscience to the shame of the Essie Mae
Williamses.

The reason the South is the most interesting region in the country is
that it's the only place where the psychic landscape is parceled out
equally among Marx, Freud, and God. Thurmond straddled all three
provinces, hard though it has sometimes been to distinguish them under the
ground cover of race. (For a different angle on this, see Clarence Thomas.)
The Marx part of Thurmond's story is the best-known: The States Rights
Party ("Dixiecrat" was the coinage of a waggish newspaper editor) that
drafted him for president in 1948 was a top-down junta of oligarchs who
had been plotting their bolt from the New Deal Democratic Party since
1941, when Franklin Roosevelt created the Committee on Fair Employment
Practice to eliminate race discrimination in war industries.

Racial conflict as a diversion from class conflict is nothing new, of
course. But somehow Thurmond's subterranean Freudian life—significant
relationships with a black daughter and her mother—brings a fresh level
of appall to the immorality of his demagoguing. That it was just
"bidness" may account for why Strom Thurmond never felt compelled to ask the
forgiveness of a race he devoted so much public capital to making
miserable—a race that included members of his own family. Then again, he had
always been an integrationist.

As for God, I can't help but wonder if Thurmond felt he had been
forsaken by the all-merciful Christian deity and stumbled into the tragic
realm of Greek fate when, in 1993, a drunk driver hit and killed the
22-year-old white daughter he did acknowledge, just before she was to enter
the Miss South Carolina contest. In any case, if Thurmond seemed to
continually elude the harsh verdict of history, now he faces divine
judgment. In Doug Marlette's recent editorial cartoon, the angel greeting Ol'
Strom at heaven's gate is black. And the sign reads: "We reserve the
right to refuse service to anyone."

Re: Re: Re: Re: From his hometown....
 

HAHAHAHAHA

You know I think you're addressing me specifically with the out of control comment, right? Maybe it's my vanity:o. I really do hate to beat a dead horse, but this concept is still beyond me. Why do you expect anyone to be a "tad more respectful" to someone they don't respect in the least bit? That is some hypocritical isht if I ever did hear it. Why did I not have the right to post my opinion about a man I loathed? Yes, even in his death, I still despise all that he stood for. It's as though people can't get it through their thick, ultra-conservative, pro-Dixie heads that there are people in this world who won't simply go along with popular opinion, *gasp*, and who won't so easily forgive and forget. Who cares that once you do that you will be accused of "attacking" :rolleyes: (LMAO) people and be labeled as the angry black person? I surely don't.

*The following is not directed only to AlphaGamDiva, but to everyone who crosses the tracks to come read this, LOL.*

It must be such a great thing to be able to live in a world where your truth is the only reality that matters. Dammit, if you think Strom was a "Great American", then he must be. Hell, if I wasn't a black woman in this country and his actions didn't effect me personally, I probably would be singing right along with y'all: O, I wish I was in the land of cotton, Old times there are not forgotten, Look away! Look away! Look away! Dixie Land.

Also, I'm still LMAO that my "bad rubbish" post was deleted, but my "nigger" posts still stand in all their glory. I think someone over there is enjoying it a tad too much, LOL. Anyway, it was fun venturing over to Chit-Chat, but I'm now going to chill out over here for a minute. But, thanks for the wake up call.

Re: Re: Re: Re: From his hometown....
 

Thank you! Truth be told, I was just to lazy to look for it and figure out how to post it on here! :o

Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: From his hometown....
 

Dat's ok. :)

Why so catty?
 

Can someone refer me to the post that had Strom Thurmond as a "Great American". I think I missed it.

No one is in love with the man, but educated ladies can always get their points across without being tactless about the subject matter or about other opinions that are expressed as freely as their own.

To truly "loathe" or hate someone, you first have to really know them. I can't say that I hate him because I was not close enough to him to know him. People do things loathesome things in public and behind closed doors every minute of every day. Disrespectful things, hurtful things. That doesn't mean that basic respect, in life and death, is not due, whether or not you feel it is deserved.

We are not here to judge him or what he has or hasn't done. Where he is now, he is being judged. You don't know what he did on his death bed. He could have reconciled with his Creator by now, and be up in heaven when you get there... if you get there. I am not making that determination... God will. Good Luck, and I hope that if you do meet Strom in heaven that you won't harbor any ill feelings...

Have a wonderful, blessed (and God willing) less bitter day.

Re: Why so catty?
 

IceandIvy, Bamboozled wasn't referring to you. She was talking to AlphaGamDiva. Her post was also referring to the Strom Thurmond thread over in Chit Chat.

I know...
 

I know who the person was referring to.

But.....

"*The following is not directed only to AlphaGamDiva, but to everyone who crosses the tracks to come read this, LOL.*"

Made me feel compelled to respond. I didn't cross any tracks... but I read it. I don't understand how people who are inherently not perfect can be so judgemental... that's all.

Re: Re: Why so catty?
 

Thanks for always having my back, RD! I'm not even going to exert energy conjuring up a response. Everyone who needs to be in the know, already is. Catty? Tactless? Bitter? Well, those are some of the nicer things I've been called as of late, so whatever, man, whatever:o.

:)

Peace and Blessings.....

actually, i wasn't referring to you at all in my post.....not to damage any ego's or anything ;), but i was just stating an "in general" type of thing.

as far as my "tad more respectful" comment....whoa, i didn't mean it as all bow down and show their respect and love or strom.....it was more of a "let's play nice with other kids on the playground" type of respect. when it comes down to someone, ANYone passing away, i tend to follow the wishes of those who are saddened by the event. if someone wants to be upset about hitler's (here we go with hitler again, but just lightly take it and go with it :) ) passing, then fine.....i will show that person enough courtesy to let them have their ignorant lil mourning session and not bug them about how he killed millions of jewish people and was a horrible person, and how Jesus was, in fact, a Jew. if i wanna bash hitler, i'll go somewhere else and do it...like you all have done here with strom (i apologize for invading, but i just wanted to make sure i was understood correctly over in chit-chat, and since i obviously was not, i'm glad i did).

i was not in any way trying to force ppl to mourn, or for ppl to show some kinda almighty homage to strom.....just trying to be courteous for the other ppl on this board who were only trying to show their respects to him....and in all honestly, i personally don't think that is something to get rowdy about. i'm sorry i came across in another way than what i had intended....and my apologies again for disrupting your board.

iceandivy....well said.

Re: I know...
 

I took this to mean folks who normally post on Chit Chat, but now "happen" to pop over here for the SOLE purpose to read/respond to this, but I digress....


It is perfectly fine for people to judge THE ACTIONS of someone. If what you did is wrong, its just wrong plain and simple. A lot of the things Strom did was not right, regardless as to his motives. And yes, he may have received forgiveness and salvation on his death bed, but just because we have done that, does not mean that we are absolved from the consequences of our past actions. Hence the strong feelings of some people here on GC.

As someone said earlier, I heart goes out to his family during their period of mourning, but I am not going to be weeping over his grave.

Re: Why so catty?
 

Faulty reasoning in my opinion. We "like" and "love" people all the time based on their actions/views without really knowing them, so why can't the opposite hold true?

What is really tacky is calling someone "catty" or "bitter" because they hold a contrary opinion to one's own. An educated lady would state her opinion, be open-minded by listening to the views of others and just agree to disagree if she still holds her stance.

This is a great discussion. I know that I have said that before, but I feel that it is good to hear from all sides and perspectives. Some of us show our "convictions" in ways that others may see as "tactless" or wrong, but it's cool. That's what makes us different and makes for hearty discussions and debates. However, sometimes, we can't strike others down for their opinions. Some of us a little more harse with getting our point across. We still have to realize that this is a message board and we can not tell someone's tone simply by what they type...

AlphaGamDiva, don't feel like you are "disrupting" the board. I can on;y speak for myself because I like to hear your (and other) opinions. That helps me to deal with some of the issues that I have. Iceandivy, I also appreciate your opinion. It seems to go against the "popular" opinion of most on this board. Bamboozled, you know that I am gonna have your back! I will have most people's back around here because y'all are like my family. I'm ADDICTED to this place! :D I like how you say what you have to say REGARDLESS!

Carry on, ladies....

lol
 

I stand by all my comments...

As my cousin would say... TACK... TACK... TACKY!!!!!
lol
That probably wasn't the right choice of words, but it has been the running joke (word of the day) with me and friends this week...

Anyhew...

I am a black woman, born in the North, of Carribean parents, raised in the south in an all white neighborhood, and educated from k-12 at a school CREATED to keep people like me out, and a graduate of an HBCU.

I know racism... I know it... I lived it... people who are from other places other than the south, cannot possibly understand what it is like. You may understand the You just can't. I've been called everything you can think of. Spit on. And I still have compassion for people.

My comments are not borne of what I read in the newspaper, or get out of some message board. I only comment on what I know intimately. I know Caribbean-American life. I know single motherhood. I know the South. I probably shouldn't be this way, but I rarely give credence to anyone's opinion if they have nothing more than someone else's opinion to back it up.

I am not putting down anyone's comments, really. I just think that when speaking about someone's actions, that is one thing, ("his politics were deplorable, "he made racist decisions) but when you say he was a bad person (evil, the devil incarnate, he should rot in hell, etc.) that isn't fair. You don't know him.

If people judged us solely on our actions, (we've all had too much to drink and made an @$$ of ourselves - bad decision, or been pissed at a boyfriend and talked about his mother - bad decision) what would the verdict be? That is the question of the day!
Any comments... anyone... anyone?

Re: lol
 

Me personally, my feeling haven't change. I'm still glad that old racist bag of bones is gone.

looking around to see if Jesse Helms is coughing :p

Lord...
 

REading your signature, I wouldn't peg you as someone to rejoice in someone else's death - no matter who it is.... doesn't seem right.

Re: Lord...
 

Are you serious or is this just a smart retort? And what makes you think I am REJOICING?

Again, this man's actions were not Christian like behavior. So I do rejoice when evil (or evil actions) are cast out. We as Christians are called to judge behavior that is not of God. i would think treating fellow human beings as animals would qualify as that. Please read my previous post for more info.


Sorry, Iceandivy, I will not apologize nor use a snappy because I don't agree with you. That's why they are called opinions.

Re: Re: Why so catty?
 

What is faulty is saying that because people are shallow enough to judge someone solely on their actions and what is seen, that it is okay, therefore, the converse is okay as well.

OH, and BTW, I didn't say anyone was catty or bitter because of their opinion. I meant that there is a way to say everything...

Like I said earlier...
"People do things loathesome things in public and behind closed doors every minute of every day. Disrespectful things, hurtful things. That doesn't mean that basic respect, in life and death, is not due, whether or not you feel it is deserved."

Re: Re: Lord...
 

Serious...

You said, "glad he is gone." Do I think you are dancing in the streets in a sombrero and some tap shoes... ummmmmm... no.

I didn't ask for an apology. This is a forum... not the Care Bears Reunion Special. Everything isn't shiny and happy ally the time! It isn't about feelings, it is about opinions.

I am not questioning your Chrisitianity... I just said it didn't seem right. Don't get upset. It isn't that deep.

"retort" = SAT word alert!

I like seeing black people use new words... oops, I assumed you were black... I like seeing PEOPLE use new words. ** I am working on being politically correct.**

Please don't take anything I say personally, really.

Re: Re: Re: Lord...
 

If you consider responding to your posts as "taking things personally", then whatever :rolleyes:

You asked and I gave. its as simple as that.

Isn't there a thread on here about post such as this quoted above? Shoot, what was it?

Now back to the dicussion...................

ETA: Sorry about the thread hijack everyone ;)

DING DING DING!!!

All everyone, back to your corners!

*GCer's go back to respective corners, spit out mouth guard and drink some water*

All right, now keep it clean, no ear biting!

Let's get it on!




Just thought the thread could use a lighter moment:p

JUST AGREE TO DISAGREE!
 

DAYUM, A sista cannot go home and spend quality time with her momma without folks going off on the dayum deep end! :rolleyes:

Honeykiss and IceandIvy....your next comments should be made via PM or email to each other NOT on this board.

I'm not locking this thread, I'll just delete posts.

MOVE THE FREAK ON!

:cool:

Another Strip
 

Yeah I saw that cartoon yesterday. I was gonna post but I thought I had already seen it here.

*Hmmm. Note to self: maybe you spend too much time on GC when you think you get all your information from there*

Soror, instead of deleting the posts I think they should serve as an example of exactly what PM is for, or what not to do. Something along those lines.

Re: Another Strip
 

CTHU. Why does the keeper of the gates remind me of Joe Seneca (the college president in School Daze)?

Re: Re: Another Strip
 

Oh, my.... he really does. I didn't remember the president from School Daze, but looking at the picture, I know exactly who you're talking about.

Re: Re: Re: Another Strip
 

I have School Daze on the brain because I watched it last night on IFC (Independent Film Channel, one of the wonders of digital cable). I was dying at the hair musical number.

My apologies moderators, memberfriends, & sisterfriends
 

To clarify....
 

Enlightenment:
I would only delete posts after my post today where there is an A and B conversation between the two mentioned previously.

Lawd! Do you all remember who used to say this all the time?

Think about the name of a popular women's store.

I was thinking the exact same thing too. ROFLMAO! :D

Ya'll are a trip...

I assumed (my bad) that you took it personally, since you so adamantly refused to give me an apology that I never asked for... :confused:

But who knew...

:)

Re: Re: lol
 

http://www.spacespider.net/emo/signs_word.gif I heard that!

Re: My apologies moderators, memberfriends, & sisterfriends
 

That is some http://www.spacespider.net/emo/sign_funnyshit.gif

Re: Re: Re: Lord...
 

Shalom Everyone~

(In my elder-at-the-pulpit-voice) Let those with ears hear....

Actually iceandivy, Honeykiss1974 is within biblical rights to "rejoice". Proverbs 11:10 puts it down clearly without leaving anything to question.

In reading Proverbs 11:10 (notice how I'm not quoting it because I want you all to go search the WORD for yourself), the word "wicked" is taken from the Hebrew word "rasha" which means ...one who is morally wrong and does morally wrong to others.

So, although it may seem strange or unkind in the carnal sense to rejoice when those who have done wicked things to others leave this earth--it is not strange for the righteous (not perfect....Righteous), to rejoice! Me, personally, I just hope that in his life before his final breath here, that he repented for the things he did to African Americans and for the residue it left and I hope he had a personal relationship with the LORD JESUS CHRIST.

Proverbs 11:10--That's the WORD...I didn't make it up, it's in your bible. Speaking of the WORD (I'm hijacking this thread as I step down from the pulpit), do any of you watch The Word Network? If you do, what's your favorite program, or least favorite...and can someone tell me (if you watch Dr. Shine's and Dee-Dee's Ministry) what is Dr. Shine calling the man at the podium who reads the WORD...is his name "dudda" or "dude". I'm sitting here trippin' trying to figure out what is he calling ole' boy.

***dipping out of the forum like I'm known to do****

Shalom Everyone~

Re: Trent Lott
 

You know!!! I heard about that and felt bad that I was=n't sad for him (even though he was a racist, he was still human (sort of ;))...