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77TH DOCUMENT of Level 1 printed in FULL format.
Public Papers of the Presidents
Dinner for Senator Strom Thurmond of South Carolina
Remarks at the Fundraising Dinner in Columbia, S.C.
19 Weekly Comp. Pres. Doc. 1284
September 20, 1983
LENGTH: 2920 words
Senator Thurmond, Strom, thank you very much for a very warm and very
flattering introduction. Governor Jim Edwards, Senator Baker, George Graham,
Bill Cassels, Members of the Congress who are here, and all of you ladies and
gentlemen:
I don't have the words to thank you properly for the welcome that I've had.
I'm delighted to be back in your beautiful State ------------------------- the location that Sir Walter
Raleigh decribed as paradise on Earth. And I'm delighted to be here, speaking
for someone who is a true legend in his time. Strom Thrumond is a man of
character, wisdom, energy, and leadership, and he's one big reason America is
back on the road to greatness again.
He's a man of the people. His heart treasures those values that make us a
good and loving people - family, work, neighborhood, peace, and freedom. They
say you can't live in South Carolina for long without meeting Strom in person.
Not many can match his sense of responsibility to his State.
You know, it's been said that experience is the yeast of success. Well, take
a look at the chapters in Strom's life. He's been a teacher, superintendent of
schools ----- he helped start the tech schools that transformed South Carolina from
an agrarian to an industrial-based economy - then a judge, major general in the
Army Reserve, Governor, and now Senator, not to mention being a patriot,
husband, father, and a kind and good man. Strom, I couldn't grab that many
roles if I'd spent the rest of my life in Hollywood. [Laughter]
Maybe you'll understand why I way Strom is my friend, and I like him by my
side giving me counsel and advice. And I trust the good sense of his friends.
I'm confident that come November 1984, you'll send him right back to Washington
to keep on doing a great job as your Senator.
And Strom, we're grateful to you for giving us one of your most talented and
trusted advisers, the man who managed your 1978 campaign, Lee Atwater, from
right here in Columbia.
Strom speaks with a voice of common sense, and common sense is about as
common in Washington, D.C., as a Fourth of July blizzard in Columbia, South
Carolina. [Laughter] There's a great sympathy in Washington for practically any
scheme to spend money. But for years, Strom has been one of those lonely voices
telling the awful truth: that government can only spend what it borrows or taxes
away from the people. And hard-working people in South Carolina need higher
taxes like they need a plague of locusts. You don't need to be taxed more;
government needs to spend less.
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19 Weekly Comp. Pres. Doc. 1284
We didn't go to Washington to raise taxes. We went there with a radical
idea: to put this economy and the destiny of this great nation back in the hands
of you, the people. And that's exactly what I think we've begun to do. With
your support and Strom's, we came to the rescue of a nation whose house was on
fire. We put out the flames and, brick by brick, we're rebuilding a foundation
of strength, safety, security, and prosperity for America, and that's not bad
for a new beginning.
Now, it's true, some people don't seem to like anything we do. Our opponents
resist our budget savings. They oppose our tax cuts. And they complain that
all their special interests have been hurt. Well, pardon me, but let them
resist and oppose and complain, because I intend to remind the people the big
spenders who saddled America with double-digit inflation, record interest rates
- as Strom has told you - huge tax increases, too much regulation, credit
controls, farm embargoes, no growth, and phony excuses about malaise are the
last people who should be giving sermonettes on fairness and compassion.
I'm a firm believer in the need for bipartisan cooperation, especially in
foreign policy where politics should stop at the water's edge. And sometimes we
succeed. But there just isn't much sympathy among some there in Washington for
reducing the tax burden on hard-working American families. And if the liberals
in the Congress had their way, the American people would never have received any
tax cut -- no first year, no second year, or, as the girl in the TV ad says, "no
nothin'. " If we had followed their blueprint for compassion, the average family
of four would be paying, as Strom told you, nearly $700 in higher taxes this
year. And isn't it strange that we never hear a fairness argument that is
framed that way?
But never mind, because that average family won't be paying the higher taxes
some of those complainers on the Hill tried to pass. Thanks to the help of
Strom Thurmond, his Republican colleagues here with us tonight, and a lot of
responsible Democrats, we passed the first decent tax cut for every working
American since 1964.
Despite all the threats from the other side, we kept our promise to the
people. And we still have one more promise that must and will be kept.
Indexing, an historic reform, will begin in 1985 -- it's already been passed --
so that never again will government be able to profit from inflation at your
expense.
Now I'll be the first to admit that we still have a long way to go. But take
a look around us. America is getting well, and she's getting strong. We've got
a recovery train going. And rather than whine and carp and complain, the misery
merchants should get on board and help us keep America moving forward. And if
they can't do that, then let them get out of the way.
Inflation has plummeted by four-fifths, 80 percent, as Strom told you. And
it's been under 2 1/2 percent during the past 12 months, and that's the lowest
12-month rate in more than 15 years. The prime rate is almost half what it was
when we took office. Estate taxes on family farms and businesses are being cut
sharply. Strom and Iⱼ happen to believe widows and children shouldn't be forced
to sell the family farm or the family business just to pay Uncle Sam, and now
they won't have to.
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19 Weekly Comp. Pres. Doc. 1284
Factory orders, industrial production, auto sales, and housing starts are up
since the beginning of the year. Housing starts, we just learned yesterday
afternoon, were up last month to the highest level since December of 1978. The
stock market has come back to life and today hit a new record. Workers' real
wages are rising for the first time in 3 years - that's real wages, constant
dollars. And while unemployment remains too high, we're putting people back to
work across the country. Since December, more than 2 million of our fellow
citizens have found jobs. More Americans are on the job than any time in United
States history. We're moving forward again, and as Al Jolson used to say, "You
ain't heard nothin' yet."
You know, you can recite all these facts and figures or you can use an easier
way, a kind of a layman's way to tell our economic program is working: Our
oppenents don't call it Reaganomics anymore. [Laughter] You know, I never did
call it that. I just called it America getting back on track.
Increasing housing starts, greater automobile production, rising personal
income should be music to the ears of one crucial industry in South Carolina -
your textile industry. And no one in the United States Congress works harder
for the textile industry than your Senator, Strom Thurmond.
Recognizing the importance of that industry to the national economy - an
employer of nearly 2 million people - I told Strom our administration would
seek to relate imports to growth in the domestic market. We believe progress is
built with competition, keeping faith with the magic of the marketplace, but WE
also know there are times when exceptions must be made due to special
circumstances in market conditions. And that's why we've continued to support
the Multifiber Arrangement which gives us the ability to protect our domestic
textile and apparel manufacturers within the international system.
Reflecting the concerns of Strom Thurmond, we've negotiated a series of
bilateral agreements which are far tigher than any existing before we took
office. Our new China agreement contains 33 categories of textiles and apparel,
as opposed to eight in 1981. Where other threats to our import textile and
apparel industry have appeared, we've tried to counter them. And as you know,
we have much to do, and I pledge to you tonight, our administration will strive
to work toward an ever closer relationship of textile imports and domestic
market growth, consistent with our existing international obligations.
Strom, I hope the good people of your State won't mind if I also tell them
what a determined and effective advocate you are for South Carolina's farmers.
Senator Thurmond and I share a very profound belief: We must preserve the
American system of family farming. Strom has fought to protect the tobacco
price support program from those who don't unerstand it. You know, talking
about our family farms and what they can do - every person out there is farming
in America, feeding not only himself and his family but feeding more than 50
other people in the world - there's a story that's going the rounds in Russia.
I've kind of become a collector of the stories that the Russian people tell
each other which reveals their cynicism about their own government. And this
story is just one of my favorites. The commissar goes out to one of their
collective state farms, corrals one of the workers and says, "How is everything
going? Any complaints?" "Oh," he says, "I've never heard anyone complain,
comrade, sir." He says, "No nothing. "How are the crops?" "Oh," he said, "the
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19 Weekly Comp. Pres. Doc. 1284
crops are wonderful, never been better. "Potatoes?" He said, "If we pile
potatoes up in one pile, they'd reach the foot of God. " And the commissar said,
"This is the Soviet Union; there is no God." The worker says, "That's all right;
there are no potatoes." [Laughter]
Strom personally traveled to Chicago on September 2d to meet with Secretary
Block and discuss drought conditions in South Carolina and request appropriate
aid.
And I can't finish these words about Strom without mentioning what I think
might be his most important contribution not just to his fellow South
Carolinians, but to free people everywhere. Strom Thurmond has been on the
frontlines in our struggle to strengthen our foreign policy. He said some nice
things about me on this, but he stands up for a strong national defense to make
America second to none.
The debate on defense is about protecting lives and preserving freedom,
because they're the source of all our other blessings. We both believe it's
immoral to ask the sons and daughters of America to protect this land with
second-rate equipment and weapons that won't work.
The savage Soviet attack against the unarmed Korean airliner reminds us we
live in a dangerous world with cruel people who reject our ideals, who don't
even understand them, and who disregard individual rights and the value of human
life. We can only keep our families safe and our country free and at peace when
the enemies of democracy know America has the courage to stay strong. And Strom
and I intend to stay strong. And Strom and I intend to make sure they do. His
leadership will be important on key appropriations votes that are coming up on
defense and the MX.
And let me just add how much it meant to me when I returned to Washington
after the downing of that Korean plane to have Strom over at the White House for
advice and support.
But when we talk about defense, I think we should remind people what things
were like back in 1980. Remember all those planes that couldn't fly, the ships
that couldn't sail for lack of crew or spare parts, troops who couldn't wait to
get into civilian clothes? One weapons program after another was being
eliminated or delayed. America was falling behind. The free world was losing
confidence in our leadership. But what we heard from our leadership was
lectures on our inordinate fear of communism.
Well, just as we're turning the economy around, we're also strengthening the
Armed Forces and bringing a new sense of purpose and direction to America's
foreign policy. In the military, the number of combat-ready units has gone up
by a third since 1980. The deployable battle force in the Navy has risen from
about 480 ships when we took office to 510 today --- well on its way to our goal
of 600. The percentage of new recruits with high school diplomas has risen
throughout our Armed Forces. And since 1980 the reenlistment rate has gone up
by more than a fourth. We're attracting better recruits. We're keeping them
longer, because we're giving them better pay and better equipment and because
we're giving them the respect and appreciation they've always deserved.
Let me just interject something here, because the last time I gave a speech
in Columbia during the 1980 campaign I said one of the most important ways to
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19 Weekly Comp. Pres. Doc. 1284
control Federal spending is to control waste, fraud, and abuse. Perhaps you've
seen those headlines and the TV news about the Pentagon paying $100 for a 4-cent
diode or $900 for a plastic cap. Now, what is missing or buried in all of those
stories is the most important fact of all: It was Cap Weinberger's people --
Defense Department auditors and inspectors -- who ordered the audits in the
first place and who conducted the investigations that revealed those figures.
Those are our figures. We're the ones who formed a special unit to prosecute
Department of Defense fraud cases. And in just an 18-month period, the
Department has obtained 650 convictions, and this dosen't count the number of
settlements that have been made not going to court. So despite all the
headlines, we are keeping that promise to weed out waste, fraud, and abuse.
In foreign policy, we've let the world know that America stands up for
democratic ideals again. And one other thing: Under our administration, this
nation is through with hand-wringing and apologizing. We don't have to put up
walls to keep our people in. We don't use an army of secret police to keep them
quiet. We don't imprison political and religious dissidents in mental
hospitals. And we don't coldbloodedly shoot defenseless airliners out of the
sky.
What WE are doing is working tirelessly for a just peace in the Middle East,
promoting human rights in southern Africa, giving firm support to the forces of
democracy in Central America, and negotiating for balanced and verifiable arms
reductions. In fact, in our search for peace we have more major arms control
negotiations underway with the Soviets than any other administration in history.
And this is the first time that the Soviets have agreed to go beyond nuclear
arms ceilings to negotiate actual reductions in nuclear weapons.
They haven't done it as well as they should; WE haven't got them to the point
that we think they should be. But at least they're there talking. And I don't
think they would be there talking if it wasn't for the buildup in the military
strength of the United States, the sort of signal they've gotten.
We can hold our heads high. I believe with all my heart that the United
States is safer, stronger, and more secure today both economically and
militarily ---------- than before. And if enough of you would just make your voices
heard, we can make two more powerful contributions to the cause of good; We can
welcome God back into America's classrooms, and we can finally protect the life
of the unborn child.
I believe one word sums up the difference between today and 1980: Hope. Hope
in being reborn in America. A better future awaits us, and together, we can
make America a nation of winners again. So let us have faith. Let us go
forward, remaining true to our vision of progress - the vision Strom Thurmond
has worked so hard to achieve. It begins with your families, churches, schools,
and neighborhoods. We don't ask the people to trust us; we say trust
yourselves, trust your own values, and working together, we'll make America
great again.
Too many of our opponents are only comfortable trusting government. Their
solutions --- higher taxes and more spending --- could bring us back full circle
to the source of our economic problems, with the Government deciding that it
knows better than you what should be done with your life. Their road is timid
and appeals to fear and envy. We have a great message. We can keep dreams
alive in the hearts of our people. And one sure way to do that is to reelect
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19 Weekly Comp. Pres. Doc. 1284
in 1984 our friend, Strom Thurmond, Senator of South Carolina.
I want to thank all of you. I just have to say this afternoon I had a most
thrilling afternoon out on the campus of South Carolina, at the University of
South Carolina, and seeing thousands of those wonderful young people. And you
looked out at them, andy you know I did some of my life in public office back in
the riotous days when if I went to a campus, I started a riot. And to see those
thousands of young people out there was to see the future of America. To see
these young people, also from that campus, and hear them up here tonight is to
see the future of America. And I assure you, the future is very bright indeed.
Thank you very much, and God bless you all.
Note: The President spoke at 7:45 p.m. in the Cantey Building at the South
Carolina State fairgrounds. Prior to the dinner, the President attended two
Republican Party fundraising receptions at the fairgrounds. Following the
dinner, the President returned to Washington, D.C.
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1ST STORY of Focus printed in FULL format.
The Associated Press
The materials in the AP file were compiled by The Associated Press. These
materials may not be republished without the express written consent of The
Associated Press.
December 3, 1992, Thursday, AM cycle
SECTION: Domestic News
LENGTH: 658 words
HEADLINE: Thurmond's Recipe for 90th Birthday: Diet, Exercise and Optimism
BYLINE: By GARY KARR, Associated Press Writer
DATELINE: AIKEN, S.C.
KEYWORD: Thurmond at 90
BODY:
Sen. Strom Thurmond, who turns 90 on Saturday, rarely misses a chance to
tell people his recipe for a vigorous life.
"The secret to long life is good diet, exercise and an optimistic attitude,"
Thurmond told an audience recently. It's a well-worn phrase for the South
Carolina Republican.
Thurmond, who first was elected to the Senate in 1954 and is the oldest
member of Congress, shows little signs of giving in to age.
He exercises for 50 minutes a day, either bicycling, lifting weights, doing
calisthenics or swimming. He stopped jogging to go easier on his joints. He also
avoids fried foods, caffeine and alcohol.
"As long as I'm in good health physically and mentally, I'm going to continue
to serve. If that wasn't the case, I wouldn't stay five minutes," Thurmond said
in a recent telephone interview from Washington.
He ticks off a long list of projects ahead of him: budget cutting, protecting
the state's military bases and legalizing fetal tissue research.
Questions about his age and effectiveness surfaced last year when Thurmond,
the Senate Judiciary Committee's ranking Republican, faded into the background
during the televised confirmation hearings for Supreme Court Justice Clarence
Thomas.
Other Republicans took the lead in questioning Anita Hill, who accused Thomas
of sexual harassment.
When The State, a Columbia newspaper, quoted some people questioning
Thurmond's performance, it received a flood of letters praising him.
For his part, Thurmond dismisses the questions. "I didn't try to hog the
whole show, he said.
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Some Republicans say privately that Thurmond should step aside in 1996 for
Republican Gov. Carroll Campbell. But when rumors swirled that the governor had
contemplated challenging Thurmond, Campbell quickly denied it.
In his latest campaign, Thurmond's television commercials showed him bounding
up the steps of the U.S. Capitol and doing push-ups in his office.
A large part of his image of eternal youth is his family. His second wife,
Nancy, a former beauty queen, married the senator when he was 66 and she was 22.
They had four children. The couple separated last year.
The Judiciary Committee's chairman, Democratic Sen. Joseph Biden of Delaware,
tells of a meeting with then-Attorney General Dick Thornburgh a few years ago at
which Thornburgh was discussing the department's objections to part of a crime
bill.
"No one thinks Strom is listening and then he comes in and says, 'Mr.
Attorney General, if I'm not mistaken, you had the exact same language in your
bill a few years ago,"' Biden said.
Thurmond's father was a campaign manager for "Pitchfork" Ben Tillman, a
governor of post-Reconstruction South Carolina. Thurmond became a school
superintendent in 1929, then, as a Democrat, was governor from 1947-51.
He was part of a group of southern Democrats who split from the party to form
the Dixiecrat, or States Rights, party. In 1948, he won 39 electoral votes as
the Dixiecrat presidential nominee.
Although he led Southern politicians opposed to federal civil rights laws,
Thurmond was known as a relatively liberal southern Democrat. As governor, he
recommended repealing the poll tax that kept many poor blacks from voting.
To this day, Thurmond says the issue wasn't race, but "federal power versus
state power" - although the state power he wanted preserved was the power to
segregate.
In 1950, Thurmond lost a bid for the Senate. He tried again four years later
- this time as a write-in candidate - and won.
Thurmond switched to the GOP in 1964 after becoming disenchanted with the
liberal tilt of the Democratic Party.
Thurmond has moved away from his segregationist stance of the 1950s. He
lobbied President Nixon to appoint a black to the federal bench, hired black
staff members and supported legislation making Martin Luther King Jr. 's birthday
a national holiday.
For his epitaph, he suggested: "He loved the people, and the people loved
him."
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3RD STORY of Focus printed in FULL format.
Copyright 1992 The Washington Post
The Washington Post
August 4, 1992, Tuesday, Final Edition
NAME: STROM THURMOND; ESSIE MAE WASHINGTON
SECTION: STYLE; PAGE E1
LENGTH: 3886 words
HEADLINE: Thurmond & the Girl From Edgeville;
Old Stories Have Reemerged About the Senator And His Longtime Ties With a Black
Woman
SERIES: Occasional
BYLINE: Marilyn W. Thompson, Washington Post Staff Writer
BODY:
In the fall of 1947, the official car of the governor of South Carolina
pulled into the narrow driveway of South Carolina State College, a small,
all-black school nestled in a dirt-poor farming hamlet. Driven by a state
trooper, the long sedan rolled to a halt directly in front of the president's
office.
The car's dramatic entrance set off laughter among students gathered on a
grassy rise overlooking the administration building. The visit was part of the
private life of then-Gov. Strom Thurmond -- an arch-segregationist who, the next
year, would launch a campaign as the Dixiecrat candidate for president of the
United States.
During the visit to Orangeburg, some remember seeing Thurmond talk with a
young woman - a quiet, studious business major from Pennsylvania who kept such
a low profile on campus that her picture was regularly omitted from the student
yearbook. The woman, Essie Mae Washington, was believed by many on the campus
and throughout the state's black community to be Thurmond's daughter, the
offspring of a relationship he allegedly had as a young man with a black woman
in his home town of Edgefield, S.C.
The story has long been a whispered part of Southern political folklore. Over
the years various journalists, including this one, have tried to piece together
the parts. I have interviewed dozens of people, some as long ago as 10 years
when I worked as a South Carolina reporter, some as recently as last week. Those
interviews, and documents from Thurmond's gubernatorial papers, show clear ties.
But both Thurmond and the supposed daughter have denied that he is her father,
and no one has provided evidence that he is.
Recently the issue has taken on a new life with yet another round of
published assertions and denials. What is undeniable - and an ironic footnote
to the tortured history of U.S. race relations -- is that at the height of his
campaign to separate the races, this most staunch segregationist had a cordial
bond with a young black woman. This intersection of Thurmond's life with that of
a black woman born in poverty is a story that has accompanied his long political
life, a career that spanned seven decades and in many ways defined the
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The Washington Post, August 4, 1992
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changing course of Southern politics in modern times.
"As long as she was enrolled in State, we'd see the limo come down from time
to time. The story was that he helped her out whenever she had troubles down at
the college. She never talked about it. Everybody just assumed she was his
daughter, said Frank Cain, a lawyer in Bennettsville, S.C., who knew the woman
while they both were students at the school.
"Nobody needed to talk about it," said Robert Bellinger, a cousin of the man
Essie Mae married while enrolled at the school. "I used to tease my cousin that
he had married the governor's daughter. He'd just laugh and say, 'Well, I wish I
could get some of that money. 11
The money was apparently financial aid from the governor. That Halloween of
1947, Washington typed a simple letter to Thurmond that was logged into the
official files of the governor's office.
"Dear Sir," it read.
"This is to acknowledge receipt of your loan received on Saturday, October
25.
"Thank you very much."
In carefully rounded penmanship, it was signed "E.M. Washington."
Washington, 66, said she has received money from Thurmond, but in several
interviews she has denied that he is her father, calling him "a close friend of
my family -- a wonderful man who's helped a lot of people." She said he provided
her some financial help, "but not a lot."
There is nothing in Thurmond's official papers from that time to suggest that
the governor provided financial aid to other indigent blacks during that era.
"He visited me one time [at South Carolina State], one time, that's all,"
said Washington, who later changed her last name when she married, in a
telephone interview from her Los Angeles home last week. "He was on campus on
other business, and knowing me and knowing my family, he asked to see me. That's
all there was to it." Washington declined to discuss her parentage.
Thurmond has said he does not recall "an inordinate number of visits to the
school," according to spokeswoman Susan Pelter. While governor, he was an ex
officio member of its board.
For Washington, the rumor has followed her throughout her life, trailing her
through four states, her long career as a public school teacher, her marriage to
a Georgia lawyer and the births of four children.
The story also has recurred throughout Thurmond's career as a potential
Achilles' heel. At the time Thurmond provided her financial aid, he was
positioning himself as the symbol of stubborn white supremacy in the last years
before the dawn of civil rights.
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The Washington Post, August 4, 1992
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His political enemies repeatedly looked for ways to use information about
Washington to ruin him, at one point surreptitiously photographing her on the
State College campus.
Black Democratic Party leaders used rumors about Washington to generate an
enduring hatred within their ranks for the shrewd politician who once urged that
blacks be banned from the ballot box and public swimming pools, then embraced
them as their strength and numbers made them a force no politician could ignore.
Robert Sherrill, who first printed the story in his 1968 book, "Gothic
Politics in the Deep South," said yesterday it was "one of the most frequently
repeated rumors I've ever encountered."
About to turn 90, his views on race recast into more moderate language years
ago, the oldest U.S. senator last week saw that story resurrected once again in,
of all places, Penthouse magazine, in an account immediately picked up by the
South Carolina press.
Thurmond's response was confused. Confronted by Penthouse gossip columnists
recently with anecdotal evidence of his relationship to Washington, Pelter, his
spokeswoman, first brought back word that her boss did not even recall the
woman's name. A few days later, she changed the story, telling Penthouse that
Thurmond did remember Essie Mae Washington, and yes, he did recall giving her
financial aid while she was a college student, as he did with many other needy
young people.
Later, Pelter said the confusion was due to miscommunication. "The reporter
gave me a name and I asked the senator the name and he did not recall it. Then
the reporter called back and gave me another name - a maiden name or a married
name ---- and he did remember that one. That was the source of the discrepancy,"
she said.
Thurmond refused interviews, and Pelter called the Penthouse column "untrue
and unworthy of publication," the same response Thurmond has used in years past
when the rumor surfaced in print. Washington, too, said the Penthouse story is
"full of lies" and that she is now being hounded by reporters.
But in the senator's home state, where Penthouse is widely considered too
sinful to buy at the newsstands, the recent flap has resurrected hope among
Thurmond's detractors that finally an unwritten chapter of his life will be
told.
"It's a belated exposure," said Thurmond's archrival W.W. Mims, the elderly
publisher of the 156-year-old Edgefield Advertiser, the weekly newspaper in the
senator's home town, which first printed the allegation in 1972.
"This conspiracy by the mass media has protected Thurmond all these years,
but it is my strong opinion that we, as journalists, have a duty to expose this.
It's a shame that now, as an old man, he'll have to suffer the consequences.
It's a story that should have been told long ago," he said.
Born to Politics Set amid the scrubby pine forests and cotton fields of
southern South Carolina, Edgefield is a village frozen in the late 19th century,
a place where the exploits of the Confederate heroes carved into stone on the
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town square often come up in casual conversation, as if they were still alive.
In a segregated section of town known as Old Buncombe is a street named for
Preston "Bully" Brooks, the cane-wielding U.S. senator whose merciless beating
of one of his colleagues on the Senate floor was a precursor of the Civil War.
On the unpaved part of Brooks Street, where the tended lawns of prosperous white
families merged into a depressing shantytown for the city's blacks, a young
woman named Essie was one of a large family who lived in bleak poverty in the
1920s. In a town where segregation was strictly enforced, where the Ku Klux Klan
was SO accepted that it occasionally publicized its rallies in the local
newspaper, she struggled to make a living in a white man's world.
Some remember her working as a teacher in the one-room schoolhouses assigned
to black children (the state at that time allocated $ 5 a year for a black
child's education). Another of her jobs, her neighbors and daughter later
recalled, was working as a maid in one of the finest residences in Edgefield,
the Thurmond family home.
Strom Thurmond at the time was a rural schoolteacher destined for bigger
things. Born in 1902, he was one of six children of prominent Edgefield attorney
William Thurmond. Strom had been raised on politics as his father carried out
local duties for U.S. Sen. "Pitchfork" Ben Tillman, a legendary race-baiter and
the kingpin of state politics.
Although Thurmond's father had once hoped to run for public office, his
political aspirations were quashed after he shot a man in cold blood on the town
square during a political feud. Strom, who later said he began shaking hands at
political meetings when he was 6, was left to wear the mantle.
His ambition from an early age was to extend an Edgefield tradition and win
the governorship (the town had produced more governors than any other city).
Even as a teacher, he began thinking of ways to cultivate loyalties among his
students that would someday translate into votes.
He wrote long letters to the editors of weekly newspapers, offering his
services as a free tutor to help fight illiteracy. But he made it clear the
offer was for whites only. "I shall be glad to teach white adults
the
fundamental principles, even the alphabet itself, and will do this any time,
night or day
without remuneration," he wrote in 1924.
The Thurmonds led a prosperous life, always employing a crew of black
household servants and laborers for their farm. "Daddy was always 50 good to the
blacks who worked on the farm. He was always ready to help them. When they
needed food, they would come over and tell him that they needed so much [money]
and he would just say, 'Go on up to Reel's store and get what you need, "
recalled Thurmond's sister, Mary, in an interview several years ago. "We had a
big family. We really needed help. In those days, just about everybody had a
cook and a maid and a farm boy."
Young and robust, a health enthusiast who liked to run marathons long before
it was the fashion, Thurmond was one of the town's most eligible bachelors. He
coached a girls' basketball team and flirted constantly with the players, former
students recalled. He was active in the Southern Baptist Church, where women
swooned over the poised graduate of Clemson College, then a military school.
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In Old Buncombe, Essie's neighbors began to talk about young Thurmond when
she became pregnant around 1925, telling friends that Thurmond was the father of
her child, according to taped interviews conducted many years later by Mims, the
local newspaper editor. Modjeska Simkins, a now-deceased civil rights leader
with roots in Edgefield and Orangeburg, told me that Essie was destitute when
she gave birth to a light-skinned baby girl, Essie Mae, who was believed by many
in the black community to be Thurmond's daughter, but that Thurmond never
acknowledged the child. It was a source of considerable ill will among Edgefield
blacks, she recalled.
Mims discovered a number of witnesses to the child's birth and early years
when he set out in the early 1970s to prove that Thurmond was the father, an
issue he pursued relentlessly for years. Though Essie is long since deceased, he
taped interviews with her neighbors and later shared the transcripts with me,
including one account by a black woman, Frances Dunton, whose mother helped feed
and clothe the child. Thurmond, she said, did nothing for the girl in her early
years.
Birth records in South Carolina are confidential, and a check of California
public records provides only her birth date.
At a very young age, the child, named Essie Mae after her mother, went away
to live with a maternal aunt in Coatesville, Pa., a small town in southern
Pennsylvania that had become a Northern refuge for oppressed Edgefield blacks.
She moved into a house in the shadow of the Lukens Steel Mill on a street
populated by many friends of her family.
One elderly Pennsylvania neighbor now in her eighties, who asked last week
that her name not be printed for fear she would be found "hanging from a tree,"
said the young Essie Mae arrived with nothing. But the woman, a close friend of
the aunt's, said the aunt told her that Thurmond gave support to the girl. "He
did help her out. I guess he's helped her out since the time she was a young
girl. When she was born, she didn't have nothing -- that's why her aunt took
her," the woman said.
As the girl grew up through the 1930s and '40s, Thurmond's political star
rose rapidly back in South Carolina. Elected in an upset to the post of
superintendent of the 4,000-student Edgefield County school system, he vowed to
improve the low-ranked system, particularly schooling for the 30 percent of the
black population who could neither read nor write. He hired black teachers to
work overtime for $ 1 a night and give lessons in hygiene and "good principles
of living." He touted the successful campaign several years later when he ran a
winning race for state Senate.
Liberal Turned Dixiecrat When Thurmond assumed the governor's office in
1947 after a bitter, racially charged campaign, the national press billed him as
the great liberal hope of the Southern Democratic Party. He was taking unusually
progressive positions for a South Carolina politician, such as demanding
prosecution of a group of white cabdrivers accused of the roadside lynching of a
black man. He also made for lively copy. He married a young secretary in his
office, a newly graduated college beauty queen named Jean Crouch, and when Life
magazine showed up to profile him, he stood on his head in a pair of skimpy gym
shorts to demonstrate his fitness - a picture that scandalized some of his
Southern Baptist constituents.
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But blacks, who had begun to hope that perhaps Thurmond could make a
difference, were stunned when he did a quick about-face and became the leader of
a brewing Southern revolt over the proposed civil rights reforms of President
Truman. Enshrining some of the code words of the segregation movement, he
blasted Truman for attacking "the traditions, customs and institutions in which
we live." Truman, he said, wanted to break down laws that "have proven to be
essential to the racial integrity and purity of the white and Negro races
alike."
Not long after, he led a bolt from the Democratic Party and emerged as the
States' Rights or " Dixiecrat" - candidate for president in 1948. In a
keynote address, he urged Southerners to fight "as long as we breathe
to
preserve our civilization in the South. All the laws of Washington and all the
bayonets of the Army cannot force the Negro into our homes, our schools, our
churches and places of recreation," he thundered in some of the most virulent
rhetoric in the nation's history.
Back at home, blacks who were familiar with the Essie Mae rumor could not
believe Thurmond's gall. Simkins remembered hearing the speech and declaring to
her mother: "I'm going to fight Thurmond from the mountain to the sea. He will
not get away with saying these things about my people."
'The Connection With Us' Essie Mae Washington returned to Edgefield
occasionally for visits with her remaining family. Mims later quoted blacks who
said they remembered Thurmond's sisters visiting the house one summer to deliver
money to the girl. But Thurmond's sister, Mary, told me such a visit never took
place.
After graduating from a Coatesville high school, where she excelled in public
speaking and led the Bible club, Washington enrolled in 1946 at South Carolina
State, a meagerly funded institution closely linked to the state's building
racial tensions.
The next year, the year students remember he came to visit her, Thurmond set
up a "separate but equal" law school at the college to accommodate a black
student who had been denied admission at white schools. As Thurmond explained in
a letter to a constituent, white leaders felt that was "the only way we can
retain segregation and prevent the entrance of Negroes to the law school at the
University [of South Carolinal."
Although Washington kept to herself, her movements about the Orangeburg
campus attracted great interest. One of the most repeated stories among students
involved Washington asking school officials to call Thurmond when she was
disciplined for violating curfew. She later denied this.
John McCray, a now-deceased civil rights leader who helped lead the fight for
the black law school, told me that the college's president, M.F. Whittaker, said
Washington was Thurmond's daughter and that Whittaker had to arrange meetings
with her during the governor's campus visits. McCray said NAACP leaders and
Thurmond's white enemies in the Democratic Party arranged for the woman to be
secretly photographed in their effort to obtain material they could use against
Thurmond politically.
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She also showed up on more than one occasion at the State House in Columbia,
according to Randall Johnson, a now-deceased superintendent of "colored help" at
the Capitol. Johnson told me in a 1983 interview that Thurmond confided he was
"someone he could trust" and asked him several times to pick up Washington at
the train station and drive her on shopping trips to Tapps, a large department
store in downtown Columbia. She would enter the State House, where the
Confederate flag flew proudly on the front lawn, through a back door, Johnson
said.
Before graduating, Washington married a handsome World War II veteran and one
of 10 students enrolled in the new law school. The couple lived in a small
apartment and struggled financially, going on to incur debt in several cities
and eventually moving in for a time with his family in Savannah, Ga.
Her husband's sister said last week that Essie Mae never talked about
Thurmond, but it was assumed he was her father.
"She'd borrow money from my husband, saying she was going to get the money
back from her father," she said. "I think she used him whenever she'd get into
trouble."
Thurmond came to the campus occasionally, official records show, before Essie
Mae left the campus in the spring of 1950. In an April 1950 letter to Thurmond,
Mrs. C.E. Watermann, a teacher at the school, wrote, "Sorry you are fixing to
get away from the connection with us at the school but trust you will still
remember us wherever you go."
But his connection with Essie Washington endured. On June 29, 1950, soon
after the couple left South Carolina State, she wrote Thurmond again at the
state Capitol - this time from her aunt's home in Coatesville - and the letter
was logged into the official files.
"Dear Gov. Thurmond," it read.
"Please let me have a loan of seventy-five dollars.
"I plan to leave here in about two weeks, SO may I hear from you within that
time.
"With best wishes."
"In the time you're talking about, $ 20 or $ 50 would have been a lot of
money," said Bellinger, her husband's cousin.
Reconstruction Thurmond carried just four Deep South states in the
Dixiecrat campaign of 1948, and in doing so he alienated the Democratic Party
and an emerging bloc of newly enfranchised black voters back in South Carolina.
But he also sparked a massive shift of Democratic voters to the Republican
Party. As his term as governor came to an end, he took on a potentially suicidal
challenge, offering himself as a Democratic candidate for the U.S. Senate seat
held by the venerable Olin D. Johnston. The ensuing campaign was one of the most
vicious, racially charged battles in the state's political history, with the
candidates eventually challenging each other to a fistfight after a particularly
heated stump meeting. But as bad as it got, the heaviest ammunition was never
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used. An investigator for a state agency had secured the Essie Mae Washington
photos and they made their way to Johnston aides, who kept them on file.
Advisers to Johnston's campaigns said in interviews that the photos were never
made public, largely because of a "gentlemen's agreement" in old-school Southern
politics that candidates should not indulge in smear tactics.
Thurmond lost the election, but made a stunning comeback when he won as a
write-in candidate in 1954. He came to Washington and established himself as a
civil rights obstructionist, fighting the renewal of the Civil Rights
Commission, trying to link black judicial nominee Thurgood Marshall to the
Communist Party and waging the longest filibuster in Senate history in
opposition to a civil rights package. Blacks, he frequently argued, were being
used as dupes by the Communists to destroy the American way of life.
Spurned by the Democratic Party leadership, Thurmond in 1968 switched to the
GOP. By 1972, his war against civil rights lost, Thurmond began reconstructing
his racial views, arguing that his Dixiecrat campaign had not been anti-black
but simply an ardent defense of Jeffersonian states' rights. His top aide, Harry
Dent, told reporters the image change was designed to "get him in a position
where he can't be attacked as being a racist." Thurmond appointed blacks to his
Senate staff, nominated blacks for judgeships and public offices, and slowly
cultivated a network of black support in his state. Old wounds healed and he
became something of a harmless curiosity. The most recent public glimpse of
Thurmond was as the frail, at times rambling and unintelligible, defender of
Clarence Thomas, the controversial black nominee to the Supreme Court.
He continues to SEE Essie Mae Washington occasionally when she drops by his
Senate office on trips to Washington, his press spokeswoman Pelter said. She is
like a number of people who "are grateful for his assistance
and do stay in
touch with him."
Washington, widowed in 1964, had been living the quiet life of a
schoolteacher until her peace was interrupted weeks ago by reporters seeking a
new line on an old story.
"That's just not true," she said again and again. "They're making up Iies
about me. I wish they would leave me alone."
To South Carolina lawyer Frank Cain and other blacks who know Essie Mae
Washington, the relationship -- whatever it is --- becomes a profound epilogue on
a dismal period of Southern history. The contrast between Thurmond's private
paternalism and public intolerance, they contend, is just the sort of thing that
kept blacks in political bondage for so long. "Senator Thurmond is like many
other Southern politicians," says Cain. "He's a man descended from slave owners
-- that's how he came to know black people."
Metro resource director Bridget Roeber contributed to this report.
GRAPHIC: PHOTO, SEN. STROM THURMOND, THE RECONSTRUCTED SOUTH CAROLINA
SEGREGATONIST WHOSE RELATIONSHIP WITH A BLACK WOMAN PERSISTENT RUMORS SAY SHE IS
HIS DAUGHTER MAY BE AT ODDS WITH HIS PUBLIC IMAGE. TWP; PHOTO, AP
TYPE: BIOGRAPHY
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SUBJECT: RACIAL DISCRIMINATION; PARENTS; SEXUAL RELATIONS; BLACKS; POLITICAL
ISSUES AND PHILOSOPHY; MEMBERS OF CONGRESS; SOUTH CAROLINA
NAMED-PERSONS: STROM THURMOND; ESSIE MAE WASHINGTON
ENHANCEMENT: AGE
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10TH STORY of Focus printed in FULL format.
The Associated Press
The materials in the AP file were compiled by The Associated Press. These
materials may not be republished without the express written consent of The
Associated Press.
February 13, 1990, Tuesday, PM cycle
SECTION: Political News
LENGTH: 499 words
HEADLINE: Oldest Member of Congress to Seek a Seventh Term
BYLINE: By BRUCE SMITH, Associated Press Writer
DATELINE: AIKEN, S.C.
KEYWORD: Candidacy Announcements
BODY:
Sen. Strom Thurmond, who at 87 says the secret to long life is good diet,
exercise and optimism, has announced he'll run for re-election in November. He
has no formal challengers.
Thurmond became the oldest member of Congress when Rep. Claude Pepper,
D-Fla., died last year at age 88. If Thurmond wins, he would be 94 when his new
term - his seventh - ends.
His announcement Monday came a day before planned announcements by candidates
elseswhere.
In Indiana, Republican Sen. Dan Coats announced his candidacy today for the
Senate seat he was appointed to fill after Dan Quayle was elected vice
president. Coats faces Baron Hill, a Democratic state representative.
"Our first challenge is to sustain and expand the remarkable economic growth
of the last six years," Coats said. "That means making 'made in the USA' what
the world wants to buy, no new taxes, and finally mustering the will to balance
the budget."
Sen. Pete Domenici, R-N.M., also was expected to announce his re-election bid
today. He has no announced opposition.
In Maine, Sen. William S. Cohen, was embarking on a bid for a third term. He
will be challenged by state Rep. Neil Rolde, a Democrat from York.
In Minneapolis, Democrat Ted Mondale, son of former Vice President Walter
Mondale, today planned to announce his first bid for elected office as a state
Senator a western suburban area of Minneapolis. His opponent would be Republican
Phyllis McQuaid, who holds the seat.
In Ohio on Monday, auto dealer Steve Tatone said he would seek the Democratic
nomination for the state's 7th Congressional District. Tatone will face another
Democratic, a retired Air Force officer, Jack Schira, and state Sen. David
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Hobson, a Republican. Michael DeWine, the GOP incumbent, is running for
lieutenant governor.
In his western South Carolina hometown, Thurmond told a small gathering he
was proud to be a South Carolinan, working to make it the greatest state in the
Union.
"I wouldn't elect a man just because of his seniority, but if he has all the
other qualifications then it should be counted, and it is very helpful," said
Thurmond, a Republican who has served in the Senate since 1955.
"In all my years of public service I have never felt a stronger obligation to
continue my work for the future of our state and our nation," he told a small
group of supporters.
Thurmond has campaign funds of about $$700,000 for the campaign, according to
the Federal Elections Commission, and no formal opposition.
Still, he did not seem overly confident he would be victorious in November.
"I've had opponents every time," said Thurmond, who wore a red-white-and-blue
tie and an American flag pin in his lapel. "The office belongs to the people.
I'm a temporary occupant of the office."
A former governor, state senator and judge who ran unsuccessfully for
president as a Dixiecrat in 1948, Thurmond switched from the Democratic to the
GOP in 1964. He served as president pro tempore of the Senate from 1981 through
1987.
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18TH STORY of Focus printed in FULL format.
Proprietary to the United Press International 1982
March 28, 1982, Sunday, AM cycle
SECTION: Washington News
LENGTH: 732 words
HEADLINE: Thurmond rights vote marks milestone
BYLINE: By ED ROGERS
DATELINE: WASHINGTON
KEYWORD:
Voting
BODY:
For the first time in his life, veteran Sen. Strom Thurmond, R-S.C., has
cast his vote for voting rights - a milestone that passed almost unnoticed.
The Senate Judiciary Committee chairman last week joined in a 3-2
subcommittee vote backing an extension of special voting rights enforcement.
Thurmond's vote is being viewed as a symbol of how far conservatives are
reaching out to satisfy civil rights advocates.
Thurmond, 79, as Democratic governor of South Carolina in 1948, ran for
president in 1948 as the Dixiecrat' I candidate after the Democrats adopted a
strong civil rights plank.
Since the Voting Rights Act of 1965 enfranchised thousands of black voters in
his home state, Thurmond, who became a Republican in 1964 out of enthusiasm for
Barry Goldwater, has courted the black vote in his re-election campaigns.
Thurmond voted last Wednesday in the Judiciary subcommittee for a straight,
10-year extension of the voting act's current enforcement procedures - with no
'bail out'' provision - covering all or part of 22 states.
He had voted against the 1965 Voting Rights Act and against two previous
enforcement extensions, both in committee and on the Senate floor.
Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, chairman of the subcommittee on the Constitution,
uses the example Thurmond to make a point about the conservative position on
civil rights.
'What we are trying to do is show that three of us are totally for the
Voting Rights Act,' Hatch told United Press International, referring to
himself, Thurmond and Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa.
'Even Thurmond agreed to this resolution of the problem, Hatch said. ''It
is a tremendous concession at this point.'
What Hatch is up against is 65 senators who have formally endorsed a far
tougher House-passed bill that includes a clause Hatch believes could place
local elective office across the country on a racial quota basis.
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The Republican counterproposal was introduced by Grassley and supported by
Thurmond and Hatch. Opposed were Sen. Dennis DeConcini, D-Ariz., and Sen.
Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., who voted by proxy.
Thurmond called Grassley's bill a ' ' tough proposal. It would extend special
enforcement, aimed largely at the South, for 10 years compared to previous
extensions of five years and seven years.
This enforcement requires jurisdictions that used literacy tests and had low
voter turnouts before 1965 to obtain federal ''pre-clearance'' of any voting
changes - including even the locations of polling places.
Finally, the measure does not include any provision for the nine fully
covered states and parts of 13 other states to bail out at any time before the
10 years is up, no matter how perfectly they comply with the act.
Thurmond, Hatch and Grassley laid aside their own and President Reagan's goal
of having a ''fair'' bail out provision. They wanted the bill to be precisely
what civil rights leaders asked for last spring.
''Last year at this time, Hatch said, ''virtually every civil rights leader
in America testified before the House committee in favor of exactly what the
Grassley-Thurmond amendment did. Now we give them exactly what they wanted.
The civil rights leaders argued in the House hearings for a straight, 10-year
extension of the pre-clearance provision.
But the House extension bill ended up as a permanent extension, with a bail
out provision that Republicans claim is too strict, and with another change that
had nothing to do with pre-clearance and got little attention.
That change involves a section of the law that says anyone can file suit
charging an existing government system is illegally discriminatory. The new
language says this can be proved by 'effects.'
The change was intended to override a Supreme Court ruling in a Mobile, Ala.,
case that there must be proof of intent.
Hatch said the effects test could be used to void city annexations, overturn
redistricting and require racially proportionate election results - wherever
minority candidates do not win in proportion to their population ratios.
Hatch believes many of the House bill's 65 co-sponsors in the Senate signed
up without knowing about the effects test.
''I am finding more and more senators who are becoming concerned about this
so-called results test, Hatch said. 'They are starting to realize that this
test, once institutionalized, could turn this country upside down.
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12TH STORY of Focus printed in FULL format.
Copyright (c) 1988 The Washington Post
November 2, 1988, Wednesday, Final Edition
SECTION: STYLE; PAGE C1
LENGTH: 3674 words
HEADLINE: 'Uncle Strom': The Pragmatist's Legacy;
S.C's Thurmond, From Dixiecrat Fire-Eater to Patriarch of the GOP's Southern
Strategy
BYLINE: Jim Naughton, Washington Post Staff Writer
DATELINE: MARION, S.C.
BODY:
The senator stands behind a podium perched atop a stage in a cavernous
gymnasium jammed with black voters. He has just mispronounced the name of the
guest of honor. Quiet, derisive laughter sweeps through the room.
"Opera Winfrey?" people whisper to each other. "Opera Winfrey!"
Had the leaders of the civil rights movement tried to imagine the private
hell that God devised for Strom Thurmond, they might have envisioned a scene
like this one. Only the room would have no exit and the laughter would never
end.
Forty years ago, as a maverick presidential candidate, Thurmond stood before
audiences whiter than this one is black, and promised that segregation would
last forever, that "all the laws of Washington, and all the bayonets of the
Army, cannot force the Negro into our homes, our schools, our churches and our
places of recreation."
The senator has eaten platefuls of Jim Crow since the Dixiecrats died. He
has appointed black staff members and established scholarships at black
colleges. The rushing waters of history have worn him down - that much is
obvious. What is less well understood is how the 85-year-old Thurmond, in his
rocklike opposition, has changed the course and composition of the stream.
The nature of his achievement is evident in the polls that detail George
Bush's lead in the Electoral College and on maps that show that the once solidly
Democratic South has, for a generation, been solidly Republican.
"He played the key and strategic role in pioneering and paving the way for
that change," says Harry Dent, the Thurmond adviser who became deputy counsel to
Richard Nixon. "Presidential politics have been changed by Strom Thurmond and
what he did more than by anybody in this country in these recent years."
In the process Thurmond has transformed his own image from radical to
pragmatist, from The Whitest Man in America to Uncle Strom, Our Friend in
Washington. It is in the latter role that he takes the stage at the jam-packed
James S. Williams Memorial Scholarship Fundraiser.
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The event, sponsored by a prominent black Republican family, is rich in
symbolism, an image-maker's dream. But the scene in this gymnasium
notwithstanding, the central theme of Thurmond's career is not change, it is
constancy, an enduring allegiance to states' rights, militarism and strict law
enforcement.
Even his tactical retreat on segregation has brought a strategic victory. By
surrendering their most objectionable goal, Southern conservatives, like
Thurmond, broadened their appeal without alienating their original supporters.
They also made it exceedingly difficult to campaign for the black vote and still
win a national election.
Thurmond speaks almost dismissively today about the era when his whiteness
was the essence of his public persona.
"You see down south all the states had laws providing for separation of the
races and all the governors held up their hands to support the laws and there
was no trouble about it," he says. "Everybody followed that practice until the
Supreme Court struck it down in Brown V. Board of Education. But since then, the
South has had less trouble than any part of the country
We've had no trouble
down south."
There are those who see it differently; and remember it differently, too,
wondering how much of the past can be erased by the well-aimed gestures and
easily worked acts of charity.
"The climate he created in this state was one in which people were killed,
people were injured, and people were injured financially," says William Gibson,
a South Carolinian who is chairman of the national board of the NAACP.
Or, in the words of Modjeska Simkins, the 88-year-old matriarch of the
state's civil rights movement: "The blood is on the ground."
Strom's World
The past is never over. It isn't even past.
William Faulkner, "Intruder in the Dust"
Racial prejudice and political belligerence are entwined like a single
sinuous root burrowed deep in the soil of Edgefield County, Thurmond's
birthplace. Preston Brooks, the cane-swinging congressman who nearly beat an
abolitionist senator to death, hailed from Edgefield. So did Chancellor Wardlaw,
who wrote South Carolina's ordinance of secession.
"My grandfather was in the Civil War, George Washington Thurmond," the
senator says. "He was with Lee at Appomattox when he surrendered to Grant. He
was in the Civil War, the Mexican War and the Indian Wars. Wherever there was
fighting he was there. Heh heh."
Thurmond's father, Judge J. William Thurmond, was a political ally and
personal friend of perhaps the most radical of the state's racist populists, the
legendary "Pitchfork" Ben Tillman. Strom Thurmond still remembers his first trip
to Tillman's farm in 1912 when he was 9.
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"My father told me to go up there and shake hands with him," he says. "When
we got there I went up and put out my hand. He was a very profane old fella. He
said, 'What in the hell do you want?' Enough to scare a young boy to death.
"I said, 'I want to shake hands with you. And he took my hand and he said,
'What do you want to do? Shake hands? Well why in the hell don't you shake
then?'
"I started shaking and I've been shaking hands ever since."
Thurmond's voice nasal, high-pitched - sounds very much as it does on
tapes made four decades ago at the Dixiecrat convention; his laugh, a soft heh
heh, has about it a hint of feigned surprise. The senator walks with an
impressive vigor although his upper body seems to be slowly curling around a
large oval object. His suits are tasteful, his manner courtly. The senator still
flirts with young women and is vain enough to have had two almost-successful
hair transplants.
The walls of his Washington office are barely visible behind an array of
plaques, photos and honorary degrees. He has his national wall, his state wall
and his education wall. There is a special place reserved for photos of the
senator with the seven presidents whose terms have coincided with his own. On
that wall hangs a picture of his father.
"I haven't patterned my life after anybody, except maybe my father," the
senator says. "He was always helping people and that's my motto more or less.
Helping people."
Thurmond is an odd amalgam of American political types: the angry populist as
benevolent patrician, an outsider fighting to make America safe for oligarchy.
He interprets the Constitution as literally as fundamentalist Christians
interpret the Bible. But his paradise does not loom in the millennial distance,
it recedes in the not-so-distant past. It is an inheritance squandered sometime
between the Allied victory in World War II and the 1948 Democratic convention.
Thurmond returned from that war a much-decorated hero and entered the
gubernatorial race. His subsequent victory pitched him into another battle, the
one fought to keep power in the hands of belligerent, benevolent men like the
ones who shaped his boyhood.
Day of the Dixiecrats
If the Dixiecrats at the time seemed nothing more than a short-lived
protest party, they appear in retrospect to be the forerunners of the Southern
conservative movement that would transform American presidential politics.
"In that race I was just trying to protect the rights of the states and the
rights of the people," the former presidential candidate says now. "Some in the
news media tried to make it a race fight, but it was not that. It was federal
power versus state power."
That interpretation, even 40 years later, is met with astonishment in some
quarters, anger in others.
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"Thurmond has the capacity to interpret events and his own involvement in
those events in a way that confounds others who may read his speeches or see him
in a very different context,' says James Banks, a professor of history at
Cuyahoga Community College in Cleveland, who is writing a biography of the
senator.
"States' rights wasn't the issue," says civil rights activist Joseph Rauh.
"Segregation was the issue and everybody knew it."
The plank that drove the Southern Democrats from the party seems
osteopathically mild today. It endorsed a black person's right to vote, his
right to work and his right not to be lynched or beaten. It advocated
desegregating the Army.
"The civil rights program is the most un-American law ever proposed,"
Thurmond said that fall. "It was borrowed from the Communist, who know well that
they can never gain control of America as long as our fundamental rights are
preserved to the States."
Throughout the campaign he tried, with mixed results, to keep his rhetoric
cooler than his openly racist supporters. One day he would declare that he was
"not interested one whit in the question of white supremacy." On another he
would raise the specter of Southern whites being forced to entertain blacks in
their "living rooms" and "swimming pools."
This appeal won him four Southern states and 39 electoral votes - a showing
considerably better than those of, say, George McGovern in 1972 or Walter
Mondale in 1984.
That achievement was not much remarked on in the wake of Truman's upset
victory and the Dixiecrats' return to the party. But, looking back, the
senator sees the race as the first step in the South's liberation from the
social engineering of Democratic liberals.
"After the Civil War, the War Between the States, the South was under
military occupation from 1866 to 1876," he says. "And all the people were
Democrats because it was the Republicans who were in power when the federal
government treated the South that way.
"Then when I ran, they voted for me. And the sky didn't fall because they
didn't vote for the Democratic Party. So people began to see that they could
vote. in the way their conscience directed. That was really the race that
emancipated people from the Democratic Party."
Breaking Away
Actually 1948 was only a dress rehersal for 1964, the year the Republicans
took their first steps toward becoming a national conservative party and Strom
Thurmond decided to join them.
On Sept. 16, he went on statewide television in South Carolina to announce an
impending apocalypse: "If the American people permit the Democratic Party to
return to power, freedom in this country as WE know it is doomed."
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To forestall this disaster, he planned to support Barry Goldwater in the
upcoming election and work to build the Republican Party in the South.
"I didn't put any pressure on people to join me," Thurmond says. "I just told
them where the two parties stood and I said the thinking of our people in the
South is more in line with the Republican Party and you might as well face it."
Goldwater got trounced, adding only his home state of Arizona to the four
Thurmond captured in 1948. But a movement had been born and Thurmond was among
its most effective Southern spokesmen.
One reason was his willingness to do favors for the people of his state.
"He's not afraid to flex his muscles on constituent services," says Mark Goodin,
deputy press secretary for the Bush campaign and Thurmond's former press
secretary. "Stuff that would have made other people blush, he would just wade
into."
None of the senator's benevolence was evident to supporters of the civil
rights movement on whom he kept up a venomous attack. In 1954 he helped draft
the Southern Manifesto, which pledged to resist the Supreme Court's
desegregation ruling "by all legal means." Three years later he staged the
longest single-person filibuster in Senate history (24 hours and 18 minutes) to
oppose a fair housing bill.
Looking back on Thurmond's career in this period it is hard to know which of
his outbursts to take seriously. At one point he threatened a congressional
investigation of Washington bookstores because they weren't stocking a
right-wing novel that he liked. On another occasion he chastised the Army for
lending outdated equipment to the producers of a film that "glorified Communist
guerrillas." The movie was "For Whom the Bell Tolls."
Thurmond opposed the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of
1965. At the zenith of the Great Society, one colleague called him "a leaky
faucet in an empty house."
But there were millions of alienated voters who admired Thurmond and what he
stood for. They were about to play a crucial role in the making of the
president. In 1968 and all the years that followed.
The Southern Strategy
"There are four key main issues with the people of the South," Strom Thurmond
says. "They're strong for national defense. They're strong for fiscal
responsibility. They're strong for support of the family, and they're strong for
law enforcement."
For much of his career he preached these virtues in the Senate with an anger
that assured his rejection. But in 1968, the senator became a pragmatist. The
Democrats had nominated Hubert Humphrey for president, the Republicans were
being courted by Nelson Rockefeller. There was no lesser of these two evils.
Thurmond went to the Republican convention in Miami with a simple strategy:
to help establish Richard Nixon as the perfect alternative to the undesirable
Rockefeller and the unelectable Ronald Reagan. In one closed-door meeting
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after another he lined up his fellow Southerners behind the former vice
president.
"My philosophy was a little more in line with Reagan's than it was Nixon's,"
he says. "But I wasn't too sure that the people were ready to jump that far. I
wasn't too sure that after Goldwater was defeated so decisively being a
conservative that Reagan, another conservative, could quite make it. Whereas
Nixon was a little more liberal but yet would be so much better. I felt we stood
a better chance to elect Nixon."
Meanwhile, he and Harry Dent were outlining what became known as the Southern
Strategy, a sophisticated appeal to Southern Democrats on school desegregation
and other issues that separated them from their Northern counterparts.
The senator stumped throughout the region with his own organization, Thurmond
Speaks for Nixon, pushing what have since come to be known as hot buttons. His
task was made all the more difficult by the candidacy of Alabama Gov. George
Wallace.
"We argued that a vote for George was a vote for Hubert," Dent says. And that
logic carried the day: Nixon won 63 electoral votes in the deep and upper South
to 45 for Wallace and just 25 for Humphrey.
"That was a model campaign," says Lee Atwater, a Thurmond prote'ge' who is
now campaign manager for George Bush.
"I've used that as a blueprint for everything I've done in the South since
then."
Keeping the Faith
Those who supposed that political success might somehow soften Strom Thurmond
were disabused of that notion with the publication of his 1968 book "The Faith
We Have Not Kept.' It is a curious volume and what is even more curious is that
Thurmond still hands it out.
In its pages the senator voices his admiration for South African and
Rhodesian programs to educate "the natives," and attacks the appointment of
Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall as "clearly symbolic." He makes passing
mention of the Dred Scott decision, claiming it was more legally sound than
Brown V. Board of Education.
At one time, that sort of slightly veiled racial appeal was a sure bet to
rally the faithful. But in the wake of the Voting Rights Act, even South
Carolina was beginning to change. In the 1970 South Carolina gubernatorial race
a moderate Democrat defeated a Thurmond-backed Republican who had run 50
egregiously racist a campaign that members of his own party felt obliged to say
SO.
The coalition of black and moderate white voters posed a potentially grave
threat to Thurmond's 1972 reelection bid and he set out to dismantle it. In an
interview that year, Harry Dent said it was time to "get [Thurmond] on the high
ground of fairness on the race question," to make him less an ideologue and more
'South Carolina's indispensable man in Washington."
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It was the dawn of the age of Uncle Strom.
Since few Southern senators had displayed conspicuous bravery in the struggle
for civil rights, getting Thurmond to the high ground of fairness proved
surprisingly easy. In 1971 he became the first Southern senator to name a black
person to his staff. In 1976 he became the first Southern senator to sponsor a
black man for a federal judgeship. But it was not until the following year that
the issue hit home: Thurmond walked his oldest daughter, Nancy Moore Thurmond,
to her first day of school at A.C. Moore Elementary. Half her classmates and
nearly half her teachers were black.
Thurmond was wooing blacks the way he had always wooed whites, using personal
charm and political influence. He forged a particularly close bond with
Armstrong Williams, the son of a prominent black farmer.
The two met 12 years ago at the Dry Dock Seafood House in Marion when
Williams' father James, the man for whom the scholarship is named, introduced
them after a speech.
"Senator," the 16-year-old said, "all my friends say you are a racist."
Thurmond told Williams that he shouldn't believe everything he heard, that he
seemed like a bright young man and that he should send him a re'sume' when he
graduated from high school. "Then you can judge for yourself," Thurmond said.
Four years later Williams was working in Thurmond's Washington office. In
1981, the president appointed him to a position in the Department of
Agriculture.
Williams and Thurmond have remained friends. In 1983 they attended the Howard
versus South Carolina State football game together as part of Thurmond's
continuing efforts to attract black voters. Williams remembers Thurmond plunging
into the crowd to do a little flesh pressing.
"People said to me, 'Armstrong, I did not want to shake his hand, but you
gotta respect the man for coming out here,' # Williams recalls.
Blacks in South Carolina may respect Thurmond, but they don't vote for him.
In 1978, the last time he faced serious opposition, Thurmond got just 8 percent
of the black vote.
"As a practical matter," says Laughlin McDonald, an Edgefield native who
tries civil rights cases for the ACLU, "the black voters in his own state have
never forgiven him."
Past and Prologue
Washington is a difficult city in which to keep track of the past. It is not
that memories are shorter here, but that politicians re-create themselves,
sometimes retroactively, and with such regularity that it becomes too confusing
to keep track.
The Whitest Man in America is now one of the Hill's great compromisers. The
unpleasant matter of a segregationist past is now ascribed to his lifelong
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devotion to his own peculiar interpretation of the Constitution. The
obstructionist is being recast as a philosopher statesman.
"When you are in disagreement with 50 many things that Lyndon Johnson wanted
to do, you naturally are attacking more," he says. "You are confronting more,
don't you see? Now once you get in the chairman's position, or a position of
power, then instead of confronting, you want to pull people in all you can."
His causes are not much different - better bombs, tougher judges. But he's
also written legislation to keep former White House officials from lobbying the
government. He's authored a crime bill with Ted Kennedy, and a plastic gun ban
with Howard Metzenbaum. He was among Joe Biden's first defenders in the wake of
plagiarism charges. He's pushing for alcoholic beverages to be labeled a health
hazard.
"Times change and people change, and people who can't change don't stay in
office long," he says. "You got to meet changing conditions."
But Thurmond still knows where the hot buttons are. Digging into his
briefcase, he withdraws a Bush brochure and begins to enumerate the faults of
the Democratic presidential nominee. The performance has the feel of a litany,
with Thurmond serving as both priest and people.
"Michael Dukakis supports gun control," Thurmond says. "Well, the South
believes in owning guns.
"Michael Dukakis did not ban placing foster children with homosexual parents.
Well, the Southern people wouldn't believe in putting children with homosexual
foster parents.
"Opposes aid to the contras. Well, the Southern people are wholly in favor of
supporting the contras.
"Michael Dukakis opposes capital punishment. The Southern people are in favor
of capital punishment.
"Michael Dukakis is a card-carrying member of the ACLU. The Southern people
are not strong for the ACLU."
But with the Bush campaign nearly over, Thurmond is looking ahead to his own
reelection bid in 1990 when he will be 87. "It is my intention to run again if
my health is as good as it is now," he says. "And I try to do the things
necessary to keep good health, and very few people will."
He is also looking beyond that, to the judgment of time.
"I've always felt kindly toward black people, he says. "I worked down there
with them in the cotton fields. I represented them as an attorney whether they
could pay or not." He points to his education wall on which hang honorary
degrees from every black college in the state, save one. Supporters say his
votes in favor or extending the Voting Rights Act and establishing a federal
holiday honoring the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. represent his redemption on the
race issue.
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That doesn't impress his critics. "He had no conversion," says Joe Rauh.
"What he's had is a political change. The man has never owned up to how bad he
was."
But Strom Thurmond, who says he believes God's hand has guided his life, sees
no evil in his own motivations. And all the plaques and photos and honorary
degrees, all the thank-you notes and testimonials tell him he must be right.
One senses that Thurmond would like to be judged by the same standards he
applies to his father's old friend, "Pitchfork" Ben Tillman.
"People today might not agree with some of the positions he took, but you
have to consider the time when he lived," the senator says. "He must have done
something to be so strong with the people."
He, like Tillman, is strong with the people. And he expects you to find that
reassuring.
GRAPHIC: PHOTO, STROM THURMOND IN HIS SENATE OFFICE. JAMES K.W. ATHERTON
TYPE: BIOGRAPHY
SUBJECT: U.S. SENATE; SOUTH CAROLINA; POLITICIANS; CONGRESSMEN; RACIAL
DISCRIMINATION
NAMED-PERSONS: STROM THURMOND
ENHANCEMENT: AGE
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29TH DOCUMENT of Level 1 printed in FULL format.
Public Papers of the Presidents
Remarks at the Presentation Ceremony for the Presidential
Citizens Medal and and Informal Exchange With Reporters
25 Weekly Comp. Pres. Doc. 78
January 18, 1989
LENGTH: 444 words
The President. Well, we're here for a ceremony this morning that's going to
begin with my reading the citations for the Presidential Citizens Medal.
Whether on the battlefield or Capitol Hill, Senator Robert Dole has served
America heroically. Senate Majority Leader during one of the most productive
Congresses of recent times, he has also been a friend to veterans, farmers, and
Americans from every walk of life. Bob Dole has stood for integrity, straight
talk, and achievement throughout his years of distinguished public service.
I'm very proud and pleased to present him with the Presidential Citizens
Medal.
Bob Michel, a man who could always be counted on by his President, his
constituents, and his country. Selfless and devoted to his work as House
Minority Leader, Bob Michel steered through Congress some of the most
revolutionary and wide-ranging legislation of the postwar era. His legislative
skills and distinguished service played a critical role in restoring America's
economic and military strength and opening a new era of world peace through
freedom.
And I am very pleased and very happy to present the Presidential Citizens
Medal. Congratulations.
His 65 years of public service to the country he loves speaks not only to
Strom Thurmond's legislative achievement but his character, fortitude, and
strength of mind and heart. A former judge, Presidential candidate, and
President pro tempore of the United States Senate, he worked to appoint
conservative judges and strong performance of constitutional law. The
achievement of more than six decades have made the name of Strom Thurmond
synonymous with distinguished public service and devotion to America.
Strom, I'm very pleased and proud to present to you the Presidential Citizens
Medal.
Thank you. Thank you very much.
U.S. Trade With Libya
Reporter. Mr. President, do you plan to relax the restrictions on the five
oil companies trading with Libya?
The President. Do I plan what?
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25 Weekly Comp. Pres. Doc. 78
Q. There has been some discussion that you may relax restrictions on five
oil companies trading in Libya 50 that they can maintain their own assets and
profits.
The President. I can only tell you it's under study right now as to that
situation.
Presidental Pardons
Q. Do you have any plans to pardon anyone in the final days? Any plans to
pardon anyone?
The President. Well, there are always pardons coming across my desk from the
Justice Department.
Q. Patty Hearst?
The President. No, that hasn't come to my desk for attention.
Note: The President spoke at 10:35 a.m. in the Cabinet Room at the White
House.
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7TH STORY of Focus printed in FULL format.
The Associated Press
The materials in the AP file were compiled by The Associated Press. These
materials may not be republished without the express written consent of The
Associated Press.
September 10, 1991, Tuesday, AM cycle
SECTION: Washington Dateline
LENGTH: 566 words
HEADLINE: Senators Read His Words to Him and Ask What He Meant
BYLINE: By MIKE FEINSILBER, Associated Press Writer
DATELINE: WASHINGTON
KEYWORD: Thomas-Scene
BODY:
Clarence Thomas began his confirmation hearing Tuesday with a little joke
about his age and a lot of pointed reminders from his inquisitors that at 43 he
is young enough to write Supreme Court decisions for the next 30 or 40 years.
Young enough, said Sen. Arlen Specter, R-Pa., to sit through 10 presidential
terms and thus to be, "more important than any president."
Young enough, said Sen. Joseph Biden, D-Del., chairman of the Senate
Judiciary Committee, to write case law for the rest of this century and for an
even longer period in the next century.
"Judge," said Biden to Thomas, "because of your youth - and God bless you for
it - I never thought I'd be sitting here talking about the youth of a nominee to
the Supreme Court, but I am. How old are you, judge?"
"Well," said Thomas, "I've aged over the last 10 weeks, but - 43."
That brought a laugh and those were the only words the nominee got to speak
for some hours.
He sat alone at a table covered by green felt, with a microphone and a glass
of water. Not five yards away sat the committee members, talking about him as
though he were in another room, reading prepared statements about their role,
his role and the importance of the occasion.
Sen. Herb Kohl, D-Wis., reading his statement, implored Thomas not to give
canned answers.
"You can only help your cause by being forthcoming," said Kohl. "Don't hedge,
don't give us answers prepared for you by others and don't hide behind the
argument that you can't prejudge issues."
The senators, one at a time, quoted Thomas' written words - he has submitted
36,000 pages to the committee - and asked him to explain what he meant by
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them.
Thomas looked tense, staring intently ahead, chin in his hand. The room,
columned, chandeliered, high-ceilinged room, scene of much past drama, was full
of journalists and lawyers. The sense was that Thomas was sure of confirmation
unless he muffed it here in this room.
Beside Thomas sat his wife, Virginia, and other family members, including his
sister, Emma Mae Martin, whom Thomas has publicly berated - despite her years of
work in a hospital cafeteria - as dependent on the welfare dole, living from
check to check with trash in the yard and beer cans in the driveway.
Tourists waited in the corridors outside for a chance to observe. Betty Finn
of Oceanside, Calif., said she slipped away from a United Methodist Church
conference "to experience history" and to hear what Thomas had to say about
affirmative action - necessary, she thought, "because WE still have a society of
racism."
Inside, Biden said Thomas brought "a philosophy different from what we have
seen" from other nominees - a reference to his writings on the "natural law"
doctrine that humankind is endowed with inalienable "natural" rights beyond
those in the Constitution and beyond the reach of government.
Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, took note of another profound difference,
Thomas' race.
He said Thomas had risen from the stinging experience of segregation as
exemplified by a drinking fountain labeled "colored."
Sen. Strom Thurmond, R-S.C., who ran for president as the segregationist
candidate of the Dixiecrat Party in 1948, the year Thomas was born, said
Thomas' "personal struggle to overcome difficult circumstances early in his life
is admirable.
He is a man of immense courage" and fully qualified to a place
on the court.
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