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Strom

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To the casual observer Strom Thurmond would not seem to be a complicated man. The 1948 Dixiecrat presidential candidate would seem to be the typical Old South politician, a white supremacist who moderated his tone as the years went by out of political necessity. Jack Bass and Marilyn Thompson have however done a masterful job of showing just what a complex man this legend of the Senate really was.

The two authors of this book are imminently qualified to write what may be for years to come the definitive biography of Strom Thurmond because both spent years as journalists covering the Senior Senator from South Carolina. Thompson was the reporter that Strom's illegitimate daughter Essie Mae Washington-Williams contacted about her story after her father's death and Bass kept such a critical journalistic eye on Thurmond that the Senator once referred to Bass as a skunk.

Strom Thurmond is presented in this book not as a stereotype but as a man, and a very complex man at that. This is a man who as School Superintendent of his home county went out of his way to fight illiteracy among blacks. He is also a man who led the fight to repeal South Carolina's poll tax and was primarily responsible for additional federal aid to traditionally black colleges. Here also was a man who counted African-Americans among his closest and most able advisors, a man who voted in favor of the King holiday, and the only Republican on the Senate Armed Services Committee who voted in favor of Bill Clinton's African-American nominee for Secretary of the Air Force. On the other hand here was a man that said that all of the armed forces of the United States could not force South Carolina to integrate and who led the segregationist bolt from the Democratic Party in 1948.

Above all, Thurmond's legacy lies in the political landscape of America today. Before his Dixiecrat campaign in 1948 most Southerners could not conceive of voting against a Democratic presidential nominee. Thurmand's candidacy allowed many such Southerners to break that habit without actually having to vote for a Republican and once that crack appeared in the solid South, the dam was bound to break and break soon. Thurmond himself then demolished the dam by switching parties and since that time the Democratic presidential candidate has only once carried the majority of states in the old Confederacy. This new solid Republican South has for better or worse irreversibly changed the political dynamics of the United States and Thurmond was more responsible for this change than any other three people put together.

Bass and Thompson have also done a nice job of chronicling Thurmond's relationship with his illegitimate daughter Essie Mae Washington-Williams. The authors do imply however that Williams' mother might become the kind of legend that Sally Hemings has become but from what I could see, if Thurmond wasn't the best father in the world, Carrie Butler was a far worse mother. Thankfully Mrs. Williams had an aunt who was willing to take the child in and raise her. Thurmond did however provide what may have been hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of financial support to his daughter over the years, which is more than many men in his situation would have or did do.

Over all this is a very readable and even-handed biography of Strom Thurmond. The warts are very apparent but so are the virtues. Thurmond never admitted that he was wrong in 1948 but sometimes actions speak louder than words and Thurmond's later record in the Senate shows a definite change of heart. One especially touching section of this book deals with the death of Thurmond's daughter who was killed by a drunk driver. This aging icon becomes all too human as he tearfully tells Vice President Gore over the phone that his baby is dying. The key to a good biography is the ability of the author or authors to make their readers both angry and sympathetic with the subject, a trait that is very apparent in this book. The only gripe that I have is that the authors both appear in the story but are referred to in the third person within the book. For some reason this began to grate on my nerves but otherwise this is an outstanding book that no reader interested in Southern history should miss.

It is easy to characterize Thurmond as the typical racist "Southern Politico." However, Bass and Thompson even-handedly portray Thurmond as a truly complicated man who was a key barometer of the last fifty years of American politics.

The authors succeed splendidly in capturing the transformation of the Southern politics and do a masterful and fair job of capturing the complex human relationship between Thurmond and his illegitimate African-American daughter Essie Mae Washington-Williams. Thus, making this book is an extremely readable, fair, and satisfying biography.

This is a must-read for anyone interested in Southern history, civil rights, politics, and biography. And, for the non-Southerner, this book is very enlightening.

Strom Thurmond is a very complex and contradictory man indeed. He at first want to help black people to progress, but later, he denounced them as being opportunists and subversives who push their way into white institutions. He then condemn "miscegenation" yet practiced it. His daughter, Essie Mae, is the clearest proof. He has a madonna/magalen complex when it comes to women in his life. He married "good, virginal" white women and have women such as Carrie Butler and Susan Logue as mistresses or concubines. He once opposed the nomination of Thurgood Marshall to the Supreme Court. Twenty plus years later, he embraced and supported Clarence Thomas and condemned Anita Hill as a liar.

This is an interesting book to read if you really want to know who Strom Thurmond really is all about.

I read this book as a companion piece to the memoirs of his bi-racial daughter; while the man's life is enigmatic and provides insights into the old Deep South mentality, the book itself is so poorly written that I found it a struggle not to give in to the temptation to put it down every couple pages.

The authors meander around each topic (usually several at a time), seemingly as if they had chosen to change who was doing the writing every couple of paragraphs. Within a couple of paragraphs-within sections that appear to be grouped together-the writers jump from decade to decade, from topic to topic and then revisit the same story hundreds of pages later in equal detail. While strict chronological order is unnecessary, and not even effective in most cases, this is more like a random collation of unedited stories rather than unrolling a cohesive view of a complicated life.

They also seemed to be trying to capitalize on the relatively recent news about his illegitimate daughter, which appeared with great regularity throughout the book. It almost seemed as if they were deliberately scanning each section for an opportunity to add it in for market value, whether or not it added to your understanding of his life or his evolving position on civil rights.

I'm still not a fan of Strom, but I am absolutely sure I'll never read these authors again. It was a very tiresome read of an interesting subject.

Jack and Marilyn did an excellent job of painting a fair portrait of a much admired, and much maligned man. I highly recommend this book for all South Carolinians, and for anyone who finds the politics of the South to be fascinating! (as I do!)

No individual displayed a higher level of influence in 20th century South Carolina politics than Strom Thurmond. The man most known for his Southern stance to maintain segregation during the mid 20th century would go on to become the "longest serving senator in United States History," when reelected in 1997.

America has obviously undergone radical changes in the last 50 years with regard to race, so how did an avid racist manage to get reelected for so many years during tremendous social change? Did Strom, ever the politician, simply pander to the inevitable black vote or did he genuinely have a change of heart about the black populace?

Dr. Bass and Marilyn Thompson's book, "Ol' Strom," was an eye-opening book for me, and I would recommend it to anyone who wants to know more about South Carolina and Southern politics within the last century. Unlike most South Carolinians, I didn't know much about Strom Thurmond because I did not grow up in this state. After reading this book, I don't believe that one can truly begin to grasp South Carolina until you understand who Strom Thurmond was because he represented the sentiment of a large portion of the people. As Strom's mentality on racial issues matured, I don't think it's any accident that a large portion of the white populace whom he represented matured with him.

Strom is an inherently interesting personality and the authors have managed to reduce him to a BORING cardboard character. This should have been a facinating story of both the man and the country over the last 5 decades. It was not! I would not have belived it was possible to mess up such a great tale, but the authors have. I looked forward to reading this and was really disappointed.