Joseph Crespino discusses and signs copies of his new book, “Strom Thurmond’s America,” 7 p.m. Tuesday at the Jimmy Carter Presidential Library and Museum, 441 Freedom Parkway, Atlanta. A Cappella Books will have copies available for sale in the library lobby. The event is free and open to the public. For more information about the Carter Library, 404-865-7109, www.jimmycarterlibrary.gov. For information about A Cappella Books, 404-681-5128, www.acappellabooks.com.
Emory University historian Joseph Crespino’s new biography, “Strom Thurmond’s America,” credits the South Carolina senator who served from 1954 to 2003 with laying the foundation for the Republican Party in the South.
Crespino answered three questions about Thurmond in advance of an appearance Tuesday at the Carter Center.
Q: Thurmond wasn’t the only segregationist in public office, but he served the longest. How was he so successful at reaping the benefits of a discredited philosophy without suffering the liabilities?
A: From his Dixiecrat candidacy in 1948 through the 1960s, Thurmond carefully built his reputation as the South's most determined segregationist. Throughout this period, of course, segregation wasn't discredited at all — until the Voting Rights Act, it was the required position for every Southern politician.
In the 1970s, Thurmond changed his tone on racial matters to meet the political needs of the day. He made a variety of symbolic gestures toward the black community and was careful not to offend African-American voters — which would drive up black turnout — and increase the percentage of the white vote he’d need to win re-election. But Thurmond was very adept at transforming his old segregationist stances into conservative opposition to issues that came out of civil rights struggles, such as welfare, affirmative action and others.
Q: Your title turns its gaze away from Thurmond and toward the country he served. Does this imply that Thurmond’s politics simply reflected the people he represented?
A: Certainly Thurmond's politics reflected those of his constituents; he couldn't have stayed in office for as long as he did if that wasn't the case.
But the title is a gesture toward the book’s central argument. We tend to remember Thurmond as one of the last of the Jim Crow demagogues. … What people forget is that he was also one of the first of the post-war Sunbelt conservatives. He was a staunch anti-Communist who helped build up the military-industrial complex; a bitter foe of organized labor who helped push the agenda of free enterprise groups; and an important early leader who helped usher evangelical and fundamentalist voters into the Republican Party.
Thurmond didn’t start off as one and gradually morph into the other; in the 1950s and ’60s he was both at the same time.
Q: One of your sources suggests that Thurmond was able to sustain his famous 1957 24-hour filibuster with the help of a urine collection device or piddle-pack. Was this ever substantiated?
A: There are actually two sources — one is from a small item published in the African-American newspaper The Chicago Defender in 1957 and the other is a memoir published by Bertie Bowman, a longtime African-American employee at the U.S. Capitol and a native South Carolinian. Bowman claims that a Thurmond aide went to one of the handymen who worked at the Capitol to have him make one of these devices. Parts of Bowman's story seem a bit unlikely — I was able to track him down and asked him about the story, which he stood by. But then it's no more unlikely than the account Thurmond himself gave as to how he was able to speak for more than 24 hours with only one bathroom break. Thurmond said that he had intentionally dehydrated himself beforehand in the Senate steam room; when he drank the liquids he needed to keep his vocal chords hydrated, his body absorbed them like a sponge.
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