Crespino: Senator was among first Sun Belt conservatives
Joseph Crespino first met Strom Thurmond at the Charlotte airport on his way back from an internship in Washington, D.C.
After having cold feet at first, he introduced himself to the peculiar looking man with bright orange hair that other interns said he had to meet.
The two of them talked for about 10 minutes as he helped the 89-year-old senator to his next flight by carrying his baggage for him.
That interaction gave him a metaphor for the political heavyweight who served as a senator for South Carolina for 48 years, said Crespino, an Emory history professor.
Thurmond, he said, was a man whose baggage needed carrying and who needed to be met face to face.
Crespino discussed the longtime senator and his new biography, “Strom Thurmond’s America,” at a lecture in the Hollings Special Collections Library Tuesday evening.
During the lecture, Crespino talked about Thurmond’s contribution to Southern and conservative politics, including his influence on modern American rights.
Crespino said he wanted to write the book in a critical, dispassionate way to better understand the man and his politics.
Thurmond is arguably best known for his opposition to the Civil Rights Acts of 1957 and 1964, Crespino said.
He also famously holds the record for longest filibuster in the history of the United States Senate, talking for more than 24 consecutive hours.
That instance raised questions among some groups, Crespino said. Namely, how could he go on for so long without using the restroom?
In his research, Crespino found an African-American newspaper from Chicago that ran a brief article claiming Thurmond had been fitted with a “contraption devised for long motoring trips.”
Thurmond, Crespino said, is known as the last of the Jim Crow demigods, but he was also one of the first Sun Belt conservatives.
He pointed out that every president before Barack Obama elected in the last 40 years has been from a Sun Belt state, a region of the United States that stretches across the South and Southwest.
Crespino argued that Thurmond had a major impact on Southern politics but is often written out of the 20th century’s conservative history.
Crespino’s talk was the first in the university’s new Philip Grose Lecture Series. Grose, who died earlier this year, was a research fellow in the Southern Studies institute.