Strom Thurmond's Opening Statement - Clarence Thomas 2nd Hearing Part 3 (1991)

October 11, 1991 http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B001CP1UMO?ie=UTF8&tag=doc06-20&link... Watch the full program: http://thefilmarchived.blogspot.com/2010/10/clarence-thomas-2nd-hearing-featu...

James Strom Thurmond (December 5, 1902 - June 26, 2003) was an American politician who served as the 103rd Governor of South Carolina and as a United States Senator. He also ran for the Presidency of the United States in 1948 as the segregationist States Rights Democratic Party (Dixiecrat) candidate, receiving 2.4% of the popular vote and 39 electoral votes. Thurmond later represented South Carolina in the United States Senate from 1954 to April 1956 and November 1956 to January 2003, at first as a Democrat and after 1964 as a Republican, switching parties as the conservative base shifted.

He left office as the only senator to reach the age of 100 while still in office and as the oldest-serving and longest-serving senator in U.S. history (although he was later surpassed in the latter by Robert Byrd). Thurmond holds the record for the longest serving Dean of the United States Senate in U.S. history at 14 years. He conducted the longest filibuster ever by a lone senator in opposition to the Civil Rights Act of 1957, at 24 hours and 18 minutes in length, nonstop. He later moderated his position on race, but continued to defend his early segregationist campaigns on the basis of states' rights in the context of Southern society at the time, never fully renouncing his earlier viewpoints. After his death it was revealed that Thurmond and a black maid, Carrie Butler, had a daughter whom Thurmond never publicly acknowledged.

Thurmond became President pro tempore in 1981, and held the largely ceremonial post for three terms, alternating with his longtime rival Robert Byrd depending on the party composition of the Senate. On December 5, 1996, Thurmond became the oldest serving member of the U.S. Senate, and on May 25, 1997, the longest serving member (41 years and 10 months). He cast his 15,000th vote in September 1998. He joined the minority of Republicans who voted for the Brady Bill.

Towards the end of Thurmond's Senate career, there was controversy over his mental condition. His supporters argued that while he lacked physical stamina due to his age, mentally he remained aware and attentive and maintained a very active work schedule in showing up for every floor vote. He stepped down as Chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee at the beginning of 1999, as he had pledged to do in late 1997. Resignation of a sitting chairman, even an elderly one, was highly unusual in the Senate. (Term limits for committee chairs adopted by the Republican Conference only forced some turnover years later and were not at issue in this case.) The move suggested that Thurmond or his colleagues (or both) felt he was no longer capable of fulfilling that role.

Declining to seek re-election in 2002, he was succeeded by fellow Republican Lindsey Graham. Thurmond left the Senate in January 2003 as the United States' longest-serving senator (a record that has since been surpassed by Byrd). Thurmond still holds the record for oldest serving senator. On June 26, 2003, he died at 9:45 p.m. of heart failure at the age of 100, at a hospital in Edgefield and is interred there in Willowbrook Cemetery.

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[xs3icyfd]

@hatmap Eisenhower=Desegregated Kennedy=Appealed to racist Democrats Johnson=Segregationist Nixon=AVID Desegregator

[hatmap]

Thurmond was lucid and robust for a man of 89 years! Also, African-Americans should only be liberals and/or progressives. Conservatives/regressives never did any good for Clarence Thomas or his people, so why would he want to be one?

[hunglo1967]

@rdknight6 You lose all credibility in this world when you stick up for child molesters. Just a thought...

[rdknight6]

@summerdas You are correct, this piece of shit does the devils work!

[rdknight6]

@hunglo1967 Your full of SHIT, John Todd belong to the Collins Illuminati family, who? exposed the Illuminati agenda and was framed, one of those who framed him, was this piece of shit Storm Thurmond, Storm is an Illuminatists! He the fucking nut that should be locked up, and you should be fucking shot muthafucka!

[hunglo1967]

summerdas, are you nuts as well? John Todd was a crazy person who deserved to be locked up, either in a prison or a mental institution.

[summerdas]

This is a very evil man that had an innocent person, John Todd framed! Read about John Todd.