Children of segregationists want to be on ‘right side of history’
A Confederate flag outside the Statehouse in Columbia, S.C. (Photo: Brian Snyder/Reuters)
Sometimes the apple falls far from the tree.
The children of segregationists from the civil rights era have taken steps to differentiate themselves from the actions of their parents.
They want to drive home the point that just because your forefathers were on the wrong side of history does not mean you need to follow the same trajectory.
Paul Thurmond
A South Carolina state senator whose father was a vocal proponent of segregation came out forcefully in favor of bringing down the Confederate battle flag from the Statehouse grounds.
In a speech on the Senate floor of the Statehouse on Wednesday, Republican Paul Thurmond, of Charleston, said the “time is right and the ground is fertile” for the state to transfer the controversial emblem from the Statehouse to a museum.
“It is time to acknowledge our past, atone for our sins and work towards a better future. That future must be built on symbols of peace, love and unity. That future cannot be built on symbols of war, hate and divisiveness,” Thurmond said from the podium.
Paul Thurmond, son of the late Sen. Strom Thurmond. (Photo: Alice Keeney/AP)
His late father, Strom Thurmond, was a U.S. senator for nearly half a century and ran for president in 1948 as a pro-segregation Dixiecrat (a member of the short-lived States’ Rights Democratic Party).
The elder Thurmond holds the dubious Senate record of delivering the longest individual speech — 24 hours and 18 minutes — for his filibuster against the Civil Rights Act of 1957.
After the Civil Rights Act of 1964, Thurmond was so dissatisfied with the liberalism among Democrats that he became a Republican.
Despite Thurmond’s high-profile resistance to civil rights, a statue honoring him now stands on the Statehouse grounds.
Strom Thurmond fought against civil rights for African-Americans during his lifetime. (Photo: John Duricka/AP)
His son, now 39, said he is proud to speak out against the Confederate battle flag and “be on the right side of history.”
The younger Thurmond noted that many see the flag as a symbol of oppression and slavery, whereas others see it as a symbol of Southern heritage.
He acknowledged that his family has been in South Carolina for many generations. And, he’s been told, his great-grandfather was with Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee when he surrendered in Appomattox, Va.
“Think about it for just a second: Our ancestors were literally fighting to continue to keep human beings as slaves and continue the unimaginable acts that occur when someone is held against their will,” he said. “I am not proud of this heritage. These practices were inhumane and wrong, wrong, wrong.”
Peggy Wallace Kennedy
Alabama Gov. George Wallace, a Democrat, may have been the most infamous opponent of civil rights from the 1960s.
As he took office in 1963, he pledged to fight for “segregation now, segregation tomorrow, and segregation forever.”
Later that year, Wallace stood in a doorway at the University of Alabama in a failed attempt to stop two black students from enrolling for classes.
Peggy Wallace Kennedy, one of his three daughters, was only 13 when her father fought against equal rights for African-Americans, but his actions have followed her for the rest of her life.
“At that time, I just didn’t understand why he would just stand and not let two African-Americans enter a university,” she said in a 2013 interview with the Associated Press.
In 1963, Gov. George Wallace blocked the entrance to the University of Alabama as he turned back a federal officer attempting to enroll two black students at the campus in Tuscaloosa. (Photo: AP)
“That day was kind of the end of our hope for a simple life. It was really the beginning of our living under the shadow of the schoolhouse door for my whole life.”
Kennedy distanced herself from her father’s views by endorsing Barack Obama for president in 2008 — saying his leadership “will give us back our power to heal.“
The following year, she attended the commemoration of Bloody Sunday in Selma, Ala., and held hands with the original march’s leader, U.S. Rep. John Lewis of Georgia.
Back in 1965, her father’s state troopers used billy clubs and tear gas to attack nonviolent protesters near the Edmund Pettus Bridge. They were marching for African-Americans’ right to vote.
Peggy Wallace Kennedy (Photo: AP)
John Hampton Stennis
Late Democratic Mississippi Sen. John C. Stennis was a fierce supporter of segregation during the 1950s and ’60s.
In 1956, Stennis signed the Declaration of Constitutional Principles, also known as the Southern Manifesto, which opposed the integration of public schools. Thurmond had conceived of and partially written the document.
Decades later, in 1983, Stennis voted against establishing Martin Luther King Jr. Day as a federal holiday.
Longtime Sen. John C. Stennis of Mississippi fought against civil rights for African-Americans in the ’50s and ’60s. (via Wiki Commons)
His only son, John Hampton Stennis, of Jackson, Miss., became a lawyer and state legislator who learned from his father’s mistakes, said Jere Nash, a Democratic political consultant.
According to Nash, speaking to the Mississippi Business Journal, the younger Stennis eschewed the “raw” resistance to civil rights that dominated Mississippi politics during the mid-20th century.
“John saw that up close, and to his credit, wanted to do something different,” Nash said around the time of John Hampton Stennis’ death in 2013.
