Strom Thurmond's America: A History
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"Do not forget that ‘skill and integrity' are the keys to success." This was the last piece of advice on a list Will Thurmond gave his son Strom in 1923. The younger Thurmond would keep the words in mind throughout his long and colorful career as one of the South's last race-baiting demagogues and as a national power broker who, along with Barry Goldwater and Ronald Reagan, was a major figure in modern conservative politics.
But as the historian Joseph Crespino demonstrates in Strom Thurmond's America, the late South Carolina senator followed only part of his father's counsel. Political skill was the key to Thurmond's many successes; a consummate opportunist, he had less use for integrity. He was a thoroughgoing racist—he is best remembered today for his twenty-four-hour filibuster in opposition to the Civil Rights Act of 1957—but he fathered an illegitimate black daughter whose existence he did not publicly acknowledge during his lifetime. A onetime Democrat and labor supporter, he switched parties in 1964 and helped to dismantle New Deal protections for working Americans.
If Thurmond was a great hypocrite, though, he was also an innovator who saw the future of conservative politics before just about anyone else. As early as the 1950s, he began to forge alliances with Christian Right activists, and he eagerly took up the causes of big business, military spending, and anticommunism. Crespino's adroit, lucid portrait reveals that Thurmond was, in fact, both a segregationist and a Sunbelt conservative. The implications of this insight are vast. Thurmond was not a curiosity from a bygone era, but rather one of the first conservative Republicans we would recognize as such today. Strom Thurmond's America is about how he made his brand of politics central to American life.
Joseph Crespino
Joseph Crespino is a professor of history at Emory University. He is the author of Strom Thurmond's America, In Search of Another Country: Mississippi and the Conservative Counterrevolution and the co-editor of The Myth of Southern Exceptionalism.
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Reviews for Strom Thurmond's America
7 ratings1 review
- Rating: 2 out of 5 stars2/5Instead of what could have been an enlightening and valuable insight into one of the United States Senate's most intriguing characters — the good, the bad, and the very ugly — Mr. Crespino has provided us with little more than a paint-by-numbers political portrait, heavily imbued with shades of crimson, such as a student might receive in a community college course on Politics 101. Basically, however, the book is not (and, in fairness, does not purport to be) an actual biography of James Strom Thurmond. Rather, its theme could be summarized as, "How a reactionary fossil attempted to remake the Republican Party, and the nation as a whole, in his own image." The only surprise in Mr. Crespino's work is that he does not identify racism (as vile as it was) as Thurmond's primary motivating force. That, according to Crespino, would have been a naked, o'erweening ambition worthy of Macbeth. Thurmond's alleged zeal for the inside track, according to this book, explains his embrace of Richard Nixon in 1968 (instead of George Wallace), and his endorsement of John Connally (instead of Reagan) in 1980. Superficially, Thurmond would seem to have had more in common with Wallace or Reagan, but he didn't perceive them as "winners," and he wanted to maintain his position of influence. One wonders if (like Wallace) Thurmond helped legitimize racism, or if he took a racist stance because it was already popular. Along the way, Mr. Crespino does make an effort to take note of Thurmond's "non-racial" positions, such as his fierce, consistent crusading on behalf of Vietnam veterans during the 1970s; his opposition to organized labor; and his opposition to the Panama Canal treaty of 1977. He also credits Thurmond, almost comically, with being one of the chief architects of the "New Right/Moral Majority," which he was not. (Thurmond was acquainted with such men as Jerry Falwell, Bob Jones Jr., and others, but as any student of politics knows, acquaintance does not imply influence.) Again, Mr. Crespino is painting by numbers, filling in blanks. But, after all is said and done, Thurmond will always be associated primarily with race. As recently as 2019, then-candidate Joseph Biden experienced a firestorm of criticism because he had given a eulogy at Thurmond's funeral in 2003.Thurmond could justly be seen as a villain by many people, for many reasons. But he was also a genuine patriot and a man of deep conviction, and was one of the true lions of the Senate. Such men, whether conservative like Thurmond, liberal like Ted Kennedy, or moderate like Everett Dirksen, deserve much more than a smirking dismissal. Not recommended. For a more balanced view of Thurmond's place in history, one might read "Ol' Strom: An Unauthorized Biography of Strom Thurmond" (2001) by Jack Bass, or "Strom Thurmond and the Politics of Southern Change" (1993) by Nadine Cohadas.