Strom Thurmond Dies at 100:Only 9 members of Capitol HIll attend funeral

[enlightenment06]

Originally posted by class&elegance

I must say, though, as racist as he was, Strom loved Black women. When I was in high school, we went to the capital and he was all over the Black girls-hugging, "mistakenly" touching them. Just makes you wonder...

That's not surprising. It falls in line with the American paradigm of Black women being "the seductress" who "white men can't resist." Just like slave times when this excuse was used by white men who raped our mothers, daughters, and sisters. Even today we continue to be seen for our physical attributes instead of our minds. Evidence: The Williams' sisters who get talked about for their "beauty" and "power" rather than their skill. Beautiful and power, sounds kind of like how one refers to animals to me. Hmmm...

[Munchkin03]

http://slate.msn.com/id/2085087/

Here's an article, with links to others, about Strom's daughter. The editorial cartoon linked at the end is right in line with the discussion...

[iceandivy]

I am from Aiken, SC, his hometown.
Went to high school with his daughter (oh yeah, old dude was still strokin at like 70 something).

I knew it wouldn't be long after he retired that he would kick the bucket. Now, I will give him this... he was a politician. He said what was popular at the time. At the time, to get elected in SC, he had to be a segregationist. There is a longstanding rumor that he has a black daughter that he actually put through school and took better care of than most fathers take care of their illegitimate kids today. I've read the article, and knowing my hometown... I believe it!

I don't think he's the devil at all. I think that he did what he had to do to stay in office. Was he still preaching that segregationsist stuff after desegrigation? No. That would have been unpopular. He protected his job, and put on the good ol' boy face that would see that he remained in office. Was what he did right? Of course not. But I know people who have done even less noble things to keep their jobs. How many of us can say we've been at the same job for that long? Not many... because like him, we'd probably have to sell our souls to do it.

Just giving the unpopular opinion. Remember, no hate mail please, I am sensitive....

[RedefinedDiva]

Originally posted by iceandivy
Just giving the unpopular opinion. Remember, no hate mail please, I am sensitive....

WE are not terrorists (unlike others on GC). Here, no one sends hate mail or deletes posts simply for opposite opinions. I respect what you say and I like to hear from all sides of the spectrum. Of course, some people see him as a "devil," as some of us just see him as someone who will say and do whatever it takes to get what he wants. Some of us are guilty of doing that at one time or another. I think that the overall consensus is that he did horrible things in terms of keeping minorities down. Sometimes, those deep wounds are hard to heal...

Either way, he has to face the demons of his past now. Who knows? All these people that claim to be racists or segregationists may get a rude awakening if the head honchos in Heaven are Black....

[AlphaGamDiva]

Originally posted by iceandivy
I am from Aiken, SC, his hometown.
Went to high school with his daughter (oh yeah, old dude was still strokin at like 70 something).

I knew it wouldn't be long after he retired that he would kick the bucket. Now, I will give him this... he was a politician. He said what was popular at the time. At the time, to get elected in SC, he had to be a segregationist. There is a longstanding rumor that he has a black daughter that he actually put through school and took better care of than most fathers take care of their illegitimate kids today. I've read the article, and knowing my hometown... I believe it!

I don't think he's the devil at all. I think that he did what he had to do to stay in office. Was he still preaching that segregationsist stuff after desegrigation? No. That would have been unpopular. He protected his job, and put on the good ol' boy face that would see that he remained in office. Was what he did right? Of course not. But I know people who have done even less noble things to keep their jobs. How many of us can say we've been at the same job for that long? Not many... because like him, we'd probably have to sell our souls to do it.

Just giving the unpopular opinion. Remember, no hate mail please, I am sensitive....

ya know....i read this whole thread and this is the most interesting view point i've read yet, honestly. i was on chit chat, and i saw the heat......just like to stress again that i don't believe that strom was a saint, either.....i personally just didn't think that was the particular place to bash someone who had just died. everyone just started out wanting their share of respect for their feelings, and it didn't really happen.

and the listings of all that he voted yes and no on.....real eye opener for me. i'll be the first to admit, i don't always know everything about everything.....i hope everyone on here, though, was able to recognize those who were being out of control on there, and who was not telling anyone to mourn, but just be a tad more respectful.....and that i came across how i wanted to!

but anyway.....i think maybe he was partly only trying to keep his job...ya gotta change with the times....so who knows.

[Eclipse]

Originally posted by RedefinedDiva
Either way, he has to face the demons of his past now. Who knows? All these people that claim to be racists or segregationists may get a rude awakening if the head honchos in Heaven are Black....

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.

[CrimsonTide4]

Originally posted by Eclipse
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.

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

[gamma_girl52]

Originally posted by CrimsonTide4
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

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

[iceandivy]

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."

[enlightenment06]

Originally posted by CrimsonTide4

HAHAHAHAHA

[Bamboozled]

Originally posted by AlphaGamDiva
.....i personally just didn't think that was the particular place to bash someone who had just died. everyone just started out wanting their share of respect for their feelings, and it didn't really happen.

.....i hope everyone on here, though, was able to recognize those who were being out of control on there, and who was not telling anyone to mourn, but just be a tad more respectful.....and that i came across how i wanted to!

You know I think you're addressing me specifically with the out of control comment, right? Maybe it's my vanity. 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" (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.

[Eclipse]

Originally posted by CrimsonTide4
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

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

[CrimsonTide4]

Originally posted by Eclipse
Thank you! Truth be told, I was just to lazy to look for it and figure out how to post it on here!

Dat's ok.

[iceandivy]

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.

Originally posted by Bamboozled
You know I think you're addressing me specifically with the out of control comment, right? Maybe it's my vanity. 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 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" (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.

[RedefinedDiva]

Originally posted by iceandivy
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.

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.