I feel very strongly that poetry is the most precise method in approaching and communicating truths that exist outside the realm of science.
So, before I talk about Strom Thurmond, I feel obligated to first give a substantial part of this column over to Nikky Finney.
Finney, acclaimed poet, National Book Award winner and USC professor, has penned what I believe to be the best poem on the U.S. Senator-turned-corpse ever written.
The following is an extended excerpt from her 2011 poem “Dancing with Strom:”
All my life he has been the face of hatred;
the blue eyes of the Confederate flag,
the pasty bald white men pulling wooly
heads up into the dark skirts of trees,
the sharp, slobbering, amber teeth of
German shepherds, still clenched inside
the tissue-thin, (still marching), band-leader
legs of Black schoolteachers, the single-
minded pupae growing between the legs of
white boys crossing the tracks, ready to
force Black girls into fifth-grade positions,
Palmetto state-sanctioned sex 101.
Now, does the kind of man who embodied these things deserve a building in his name?
This question is more prescient than ever, now that Clemson’s debate over whether or not to rename Tillman Hall is heating up.
(Ben Tillman, the man the building is named for, was the kind of guy who, let’s not forget, participated in a massacre of black militia members and was a proponent of lynching.)
Part of me says that Strom, like Tillman, was the kind of person that doesn’t deserve to have his name imprinted in stone. No matter his influence on the state, someone like that shouldn’t be remembered, especially not on a building as popular as the Strom Thurmond Wellness and Fitness Center.
But, every time I walk past Strom (the structure,) I can’t help but visualize the ghost of that wrinkly lizard hanging around the entranceway, petulant arms crossed, frowning each time a black person walks into “his” building.
The idea charms me. He was an almost-ludicrous concentration of every aspect of an 1820’s plantation owner transported into the 20th century.
I mean, this is a guy who, at 22 years old, found the time in his day to impregnate his family's black 16-year-old housekeeper.
One would think that someone with the kind of moral standards to conduct what would be considered statutory rape in modern times would have a hard time becoming an South Carolina Senator. Then again…
The point is this: the way he thought — and, therefore, acted — dehumanized people, both as a citizen and as a government employee.
And yet I can’t bring myself to feel that his name should be taken off the building.
Not because he is an essential part of our history that is worth remembering, and not because he acts as an example of how not to treat human beings. (Even though I believe these are both true.)
Strom should stay Strom because every time a black student walks into that building, a wave of irony shakes the grave of the dead demagogue, testifying again and again to the failure of race-thought to influence progress.