America’s oldest senator ever, Strom Thurmond, who was born before aeroplanes and was considered too old to fight in the second world war, fulfilled his last ambition yesterday, celebrating his 100th birthday while still in office.
In single-minded pursuit of his goal, the former segregationist from South Carolina has taken up residence in a Washington hospital and is virtually carried around the Senate by aides, who also do much of his talking for him.
But female interns who have worked in the Capitol building recently reported that the Senate’s most notorious womaniser still has sufficient energy to drawl a complimentary remark as they walk by.
He is due to end his eighth and final term as a senator in January, after 48 years. He threw a party yesterday on Capitol Hill, surrounded by former aides and colleagues.
”I love all of you,” he told fellow senators in a farewell speech, ”and especially your wives.”
Thurmond first stood for public office in South Carolina in 1928, and his career spanned some of the most turbulent years in the history of the South. He started out as a segregationist and racist.
Originally a Democrat, he ran for the presidency in 1948 on an independent, pro-segregationist
”Dixiecrat” ticket, winning in four southern states.
In 1957 he set the record for the longest filibuster in US political history, speaking for over 24 hours to block civil rights legislation. He finally defected to the Republicans in 1964, a milestone in the transformation of Southern politics.
However, as the South changed, so eventually did Senator Thurmond. He amended his segregationist views and eventually won 22% of the black South Carolina vote in his last campaign in 1996. – Guardian Unlimited (c) Guardian Newspapers Limited 2001