Well before dawn, Thurmond’s voice faded to a whisper and a monotone. When one member asked him to speak up, Thurmond suggested he move a little closer. Others gently snoozed, including Clarence Mitchell, the chief lobbyist of NAACP (the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People) watching, or not, from the gallery. Thurmond began speaking about new levels of racial disquiet he believed had been brought on directly by the commotion surrounding the Civil Rights Bill. In previous months, he said, ‘it was urged that property be made available to Negroes of means who wanted to build better homes away from congested homes in which Negroes tend to congregate. Subsequently, a fairly exclusive Negro residential section, near white neighbourhoods, was started. There were no objections. This sort of thing would be more difficult now, if not impossible, because the Negro is reluctant to cooperate . . . The Negro apparently has been led to believe the moon may be within his grasp; and lawless and more extreme whites have been aroused.’
Twice Thurmond almost lost the floor: once, when he sat down during an interruption (sitting down, even while speaking, was not permitted, and nor was leaning), and once when he bit into a sandwich in the cloakroom, forgetting that he needed to retain one foot on the chamber floor if he didn’t want to be deposed. Fortunately Richard Nixon, the vice-president in charge of the Senate at the time, was consulting some papers and didn’t notice Thurmond’s absence (such was Thurmond’s compelling performance).
So Thurmond grumbled on. At 1.40 p.m. he declared, ‘I’ve been on my feet the last 17 hours and I still feel pretty good.’ He was described by Time as ‘a dull, droning speaker at best’, the magazine noting that at 7.21 p.m. Thurmond broke the Senate record ‘for long-windedness’, beating out Oregon’s Wayne Morse, the previous record holder who could only manage 22 hours and 26 minutes four years earlier when he talked against the passing of a law concerning state oil ownership.6 (Morse himself had claimed the crown from Robert ‘Fighting Bob’ La Follette, who had spoken for 18 hours in 1908.7 ‘I salute him,’ Morse said of Thurmond. ‘It takes a lot out of a man to talk so long.’
After about a day, Thurmond received a strict admonishment from Harry Dent. His assistant had become increasingly concerned about his health and been to see the Senate doctor. He returned to the chamber with the instruction ‘You tell him to get off his feet or I’m going to take him off his feet.’ And then, heeding the advice, at 9.12 p.m., after 24 hours and 18 minutes, Strom Thurmond shut up.
In her biography, Nadine Cohodas reported that by the time he left the chamber his stubble had visibly thickened. Dent was waiting in the corridor with a bucket in case of dire need. Jean Thurmond was also waiting for him, and the kiss she planted on his cheek made the morning papers. But he was not acclaimed as a hero, even by his allies. Many of his Southern constituents couldn’t understand why his fellow ‘Dixiecrats’ hadn’t supported him and continued the filibuster in a relay (this was the common way with filibusters, or at least their threat: a daisy chain of objections that could tie the Senate up for weeks). But rather than champion him, his colleagues accused him of grandstanding. In attempting to wreck the bill at the end of a session, he risked destroying what the Southern Democrats believed was the best deal they could hope for, something they hoped would concede almost nothing. ‘Under the circumstances we faced,’ Richard Russell, formerly one of his closest allies, said, ‘if I had undertaken a filibuster for personal aggrandizement, I would have forever reproached myself for being guilty of a form of treason against the South.’
Thurmond’s effort was in vain: the following day the bill was passed in the Senate 60 to 15, and Eisenhower signed it into law on 9 September 1957. But filibusters have always been about more than just attaining victory; they are about passionate intent, and about intensity of belief; the greater the intensity, it is argued, the more voters and politicians should take note of a cause, for the more it will dominate the agenda. This was certainly true about civil rights, albeit not in the way Strom Thurmond intended.
Filibusters are about democracy in its purest form, the right of an opposing view to be heard above the din. They are about deep conviction, and this is one reason at least why they have prevailed against decades of opposition and continue to capture our imagination. But increasingly these days there is another view. It argues that less is more, that the filibuster is less a symbol of passion than a sign of pigheadedness and unconstitutional chaos. These days, in debating chambers as elsewhere in the world, we are seldom impressed by things that take a long time, except perhaps in the realms of underwater swimming and pornography.8
The term filibuster derives from the military and from revolution. It originally described a man attempting to cause upheaval in a foreign state, usually for financial gain; the term grew in popularity after incursions into Latin America and the Spanish West Indies in the nineteenth century (the word has Spanish roots – filibustero, out of the Dutch vrijbuiter, the word that also spawned ‘freebooter’.)
In current use, the term doesn’t generally apply in debating chambers beyond the Senate; in the UK, for instance, such a performance is broadly known as a very long speech. The longest political speeches have of course claimed their own league table, though not every entry was intended as a delaying tactic. The list usually begins with Henry Brougham (about six hours on law reform in the House of Commons in 1828, two years before he became lord chancellor), Tommy Henderson (Independent Unionist speaking in Northern Ireland in 1936 for nigh-on 10 hours on individual spending budgets of government departments), and Sir Ivan Lawrence, the former Conservative MP (4 hours, 23 minutes in 1985 against a bill controlling the extent of fluoridation of water, the twentieth-century Commons record). European stars such as Green MP Werner Kogler speaking in Austria for more than 12 hours in 2010 was a mere blink when stacked up against Mustafa Kemal Ataturk (36 hours 31 minutes in 1927, albeit over six days). The most heroic filibuster of recent times was conducted by Wendy Davis in the Texas State Senate in June 2013, an 11-hour marathon successfully blocking the passage of more restrictive abortion laws. The senator afterwards revealed how she had been fitted with a catheter for her marathon, and her speech made her a star for a while, or rather a star again: two years before she had filibustered in the Senate against a cut in public-school funding. On both occasions, her speeches delayed rather than reversed the bills. But her stand was the thing – the provision of hope, scrutiny, visibility and voracious commitment.
What do most of these speeches have in common, beyond endurance and isolation? The Charlotte Observer put it well at the height of the civil rights movement in February 1960 (it was a movement by then): ‘Here is a fight of words against time, of men against inevitability, of voices against the ebbing strength that portends eventual silence.’
In 2005, Andrew Dismore, then Labour MP for Hendon, spoke for 3 hours and 17 minutes to successfully defeat a bill proposing to give homeowners more powers to defend themselves against intruders. ‘The aim is not to run out of steam,’ he reflected some years later in the Guardian. ‘You want to build up a tree of points that you wish to make. You must make them in a coherent order or the speaker could stop you. You are allowed to pause for three to four seconds, but it is risky to go any longer than that.’ He said that a good support team is essential. ‘You need your colleagues to make interventions when you are starting to flag. The best thing that can happen is that an opposition member tries to make a point. Ideally, over a three-hour speech, you would want 20–30 interventions. Arguing over the meaning of terms such as “could” and “might” is a useful delaying tactic, too.’
In Britain, as in America, the rules have tightened in recent years to ensure speakers remain on-topic; you can no longer read out a list of shellfish, as Dismore once did, or a recipe for fried oysters as Louisiana senator Huey P. Long did in a 15-hour filibuster in 1935, a feat that inspired an episode of The West Wing, in which a senator from Minnesota named Stackhouse protests a healthcare bill by reading out lists of ingredi
ents for seafood dishes and creamy desserts.
Thurmond never forgave his colleagues for hanging him out to dry. But the real issue is, can we forgive Strom Thurmond? And to what extent can one forgive being on the wrong side of history? If voiced publicly today, his inflammatory comments would land him in jail. But his opinions were a product of the times, and popular too; certainly he would have regarded his views towards black people as more progressive than the English who had sent them to plantations in slave ships.
Thurmond’s speaking record still stands. No one seems to have the stamina these days. Lesser filibusters still make news, because any test of endurance is a public spectacle, and we frequently enjoy seeing politicians suffer. But the application of the filibuster in the twenty-first century has dramatically changed, and an objector is rarely expected even to get to their feet; just the threat of filibuster is enough to register resistance.9 To combat this, a process of ‘cloture’ must then be invoked, requiring that 60 out of the 100 senators be in agreement over limiting the length of a debate. Effectively, because of the vast number of filibusters threatened on any controversial or unpopular piece of legislation or presidential appointment, the Senate commonly runs on a three-fifths majority rather than a simple split of 51:49.
Thurmond was a product of his times. His denial of social justice paints him as a reactionary white supremacist, and that he was, albeit of the non-violent kind. His prejudice is not lessened or excused by what came after it, although what came after it is interesting.
In later years, Thurmond became a Republican, supporting Barry Goldwater’s unsuccessful presidential bid against Lyndon B. Johnson, but he also edged moderately towards racial equality (he supported the appointment of black judges to the higher courts, albeit of a conservative hue). In this, he was also a product of his times; he would have been a lousy politician if he hadn’t recognised the growing significance of the black vote. He would come to regret his most virulent outbursts, but he never publicly renounced his general views on segregation; he would, ten years before his death, make it clear to a biographer that he acted on a belief system that was perfectly acceptable to hundreds of thousands who supported him, and was based on strong democratic principles.
And times did change, or at least catch up with him. In 1971 Thurmond appointed Thomas Moss, an African American, to his Senate staff, and in 1983, he supported legislation to make the birthday of Martin Luther King, Jr a federal holiday (although his pronouncements seemed like apologia: ‘I fully recognize and appreciate the many substantial contributions of black Americans and other minorities to the creation and preservation and development of our great nation.’).
Any difficulty we may have in accepting an old shameful value system is usually a sign of healthy ethical improvement, and an undeniable corollary of progress. What was once considered acceptable is now disreputable, and hence banished. Beyond the fanciful time trials of Thurmond’s most dramatic moment in 1957 lies a transformation in the lives of black Americans. What is an arguable case one day will, if it’s worth arguing about at all, eventually be revealed as either visionary or anachronistic, and if we knew which way it would go we’d be both wise and wealthy, should we live that long.
In the days directly after Thurmond’s filibuster, another product of the times emerged in the energised dawn. As Time reported, the South had ‘a new weapon’. The Reverend Dr Martin Luther King, Jr announced his ‘get-out-the-Negro-vote drive’, a campaign that included the establishment of ‘voting clinics’ to explain registration and the ballot, and an awareness-raising crusade that would enable ‘Negroes to realize that in a democracy their chances of improvement rest on their ability to vote’. (Fifty-eight years on, in the last quarter of the Obama presidency, the black president spoke publicly about the possibility of ending the provision of the Senate filibuster once and for all; it was outdated, he said: ‘The filibuster in this modern age probably just torques it too far in the direction of a majority party not being able to govern effectively and move forward its platform.’)
And there is one more dramatic development in the story, another racial alteration of the legacy. Shortly after Thurmond’s death in 2003, a woman named Essie Mae Washington-Williams came forward with startling news. She had been waiting a long time for this moment, but finally, at the age of 78, she could reveal herself as Strom Thurmond’s illegitimate mixed-race daughter. Her mother was called Carrie Butler, a fitting name for a black servant of Thurmond’s parents. Carrie was 16 when Thurmond got her pregnant. Thurmond had paid for his daughter’s education and sent her family money while keeping her and his secret under wraps. Her published account of her life – she became a teacher in LA and had four children – was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize. She had frequent conversations with her father about race issues, a factor she believed broadened his understanding and softened his approach. She died in 2013, a fortnight after Obama was sworn in for his second term, at which time there were 43 black members in the House of Representatives, and one in the Senate. The sole member in the Senate was Tim Scott, a Republican from South Carolina, the place Essie Mae Washington-Williams was born, the state Strom Thurmond served for 48 years.
The most famous filibuster of all did not take place in the Senate or the House of Commons; it took place in Hollywood. In Frank Capra’s Mr Smith Goes to Washington (1939) James Stewart plays a greenhorn who believes so passionately in exposing the corruption surrounding the building of a new dam that he speaks for more than 23 hours before collapsing. His female co-conspirator (Jean Arthur) cheers him on, while equating his chance of success to ‘a 40-foot dive into a tub of water’. Smith comes prepared with a thermos and fruit, and threatens to stay ‘until Doomsday’ to get his way. Gleeful reporters rush from the chamber shouting ‘Filibuster!’ The most romantic among them calls it ‘the most titanic battle of modern times. A David without even a slingshot . . .’ Smith triumphs in the end, an outcome that surely came as a surprise to no one. It was the movies, after all, and the movies have always had their blissful way with time.
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1 He also achieved notoriety when he married his second wife, who was more than forty years his junior.
2 His motivation for candidacy in the 1948 election was clear: to oppose the civil rights agenda of President Truman. Thurmond won four Southern states with 2.4 per cent of the vote; Truman won a shock re-election (at least according to the pollsters) against Thomas Dewey with 28 states and 49.6 per cent.
3 When, as president, Johnson signed the far-reaching Civil Rights Act of 1964, he gave her the pen that made it law: ‘You deserve this more than anyone else.’
4 Thurmond’s biographer Nadine Cohodas has noted that the precise duration of his speech would be as much a surprise to his wife as anyone: she ‘had known her husband would not be home for dinner, but she had no idea he wouldn’t make breakfast either’.
5 For the full text of his speech see: http://www.senate.gov/artandhistory/history/resources/pdf/Thurmond_filibuster_1957.pdf
6 See ‘The Last, Hoarse Gasp’, Time, 9 September 1957.
7 La Follette ran two big filibusters – one in 1908, and one in 1917 as America was poised to enter the war (he argued against arming merchant ships against the Germans). His 1908 speech is primarily remembered for the glass of milk he drank during his oration: the Senate kitchen staff, apparently dismayed at having to remain open as La Follette droned on, conspired to lace his milk with bad eggs, and after more than 18 hours the senator declared himself too sick to continue.
8 For the long view see Filibustering by Gregory Koger (University of Chicago Press, 2010), and the lengthy article ‘The Filibuster’ by Catherine Fisk and Erwin Chemerinsky (Stanford Law Review, vol. 49, no. 2, 1997).
9 There are exceptions, and we may regard them as vainly glorious irrespective of our political slant: Wendy Davis in Texas, and Kentucky libertarian Republican Rand Paul speaking for almost 13 hours in the Senate on the use of drones for espionage (and in so
doing deliberately delaying the appointment of President Obama’s choice of John Brennan to run the CIA). Rand mentioned Strom Thurmond not long before he sat down, admiring the strength of his bladder.
Harold Lloyd: hanging on for us all.
Chapter Six
Movie Time
i) How You Get to the Clock
The image of a man in glasses hanging from the hands of a clock above the streets of Los Angeles is one of the most enduring in all cinema. Symbolism simply doesn’t get more tantalising. Harold Lloyd, the man on the clock, once said that the image came to him easily, but the tricky part was working out how he would get to be hanging there in the first place. This is how he did it.
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Harold Lloyd was born in Burchard, Nebraska, in April 1893. The village was tiny, just a few wooden houses holding on against the high winds, and the place only made it onto the US map in 1881, when the Chicago, Burlington and Quincy Railroad came through. Trains made Harold his first money: his mother made popcorn, and he would put it in bags, hop on at his nearest station, work his way down each carriage of the train, and usually make it halfway before he was thrown off by a man called The Butcher, who had established his own train business selling sweets and tobacco. ‘I made quite a bit of money for a youngster who had only half a train,’ Lloyd remembered many years later. He also learnt something about the underdog. Though rather fragile in appearance, Lloyd was once a young amateur boxer; after a while he was heard to complain, obviously if understandably, that he didn’t enjoy his face being punched by men who earned their money by erecting circus tents. Fortunately his face endured the onslaught, and his biographers note that he appeared extremely attractive to women, many of whom wanted to mother him.
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