Did Strom Thurmond like 'em dark?

[ladysycamore]

Originally posted by Undertoad
Well that's the thing I understand the least about racists.

I grew up around some level of racism, and never understood how someone could like Bill Cosby's comedy albums, or Jimi Hendrix, or any of the origins of RnR, or... you name it,... and still be racist.

This morning on CNN the lawyer for the family discussed how amazed they were that the Thurmond family didn't put up a legal fight at all. Then they described the relationship between father and daughter as a real, loving father/daughter relationship, and at that point I'm just confused.

They say he was loving eh? Interesting choice of words for a segregationist (One that advocates or practices a policy of racial segregation):

"He fought school desegregation tooth and claw. In 1957, in an attempt to defeat civil-rights legislation, he embarked on the longest filibuster in Senate history: 24 hours 18 minutes. When Lyndon Johnson nominated Thurgood Marshall as the first black justice of the Supreme Court in 1967, Mr. Thurmond tormented him at the confirmation hearing by asking 60 arcane legal questions."

*from The Detestable, Decrepit Strom Thurmond


Also see:
Strom's Skeleton:

"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."