The Last, Hoarse Gasp

Holding their final caucus on the all-but-passed civil rights bill, Southern Senators decided that a filibuster would be both futile and dangerous: it might result in a harsher bill, it might bring about a change in the Senate's cloture rule, and it would certainly build up ill will that could only harm the Southern cause in future years. Among the first to agree with the no-filibuster decision was South Carolina's Strom Thurmond, the 1948 Dixiecrat candidate for President of the U.S.

Therefore, when Strom Thurmond arose on the Senate floor at 8:54 one night last week, his fellow Southerners had every reason to expect that he, like the rest of them, would make a brief, denunciatory speech and then sit down. They were wrong as they could be.

A Soft Snore. A dull, droning speaker at best, Thurmond began by reading the texts of the election laws of all 48 states--from Alabama to Wyoming. By 11:30, Republican Everett Dirksen was passing the word: "Boys, it looks like an all-nighter." But at 1 a.m. Arizona Republican Barry Goldwater approached Thurmond's desk, asked in a whisper how much longer Strom would last. Back came the answer: "About another hour." Goldwater asked that Thurmond temporarily yield the floor to him for an insertion in the Congressional Record. Thurmond happily consented--and used the few-minute interim to head for the bathroom (for the only time during his speech). He returned and began talking again. His promised hour passed; Strom spoke on. Gallery attendance dropped to three: Thurmond's wife Jean, N.A.A.C.P. Washington Representative Clarence Mitchell, and an unidentified man who was snoring softly.

At 9 Thursday morning 54-year-old Strom Thurmond was still on his feet. Wires from back home began to pour in on other Southerners, demanding that they help Strom Thurmond in his heroic effort. They realized quickly how Thurmond's doublecross had put them on the spot with their constituents. Urgently, angrily, they put in phone calls to home-state newspapers, explaining the harsh facts: Thurmond was not helping the cause; he was playing with dynamite.

Grandstand Wind. Strom Thurmond mumbled on, sipping orange juice sportingly brought to him by Illinois' liberal Paul Douglas, munching diced pumpernickel and bits of cooked hamburger. At 1:40 p.m. he allowed: "I've been on my feet the last 17 hours and I still feel pretty good." At 7:21 p.m. Thurmond broke the old Senate record for longwindedness, set by Oregon's Wayne Morse in the 1953 tidelands oil filibuster.* And at 9:12 p.m., 24 hours and 18 minutes after he started, Thurmond shut up and sat down.

The civil rights bill rolled toward final passage. But before the vote could be taken, Georgia's Herman Talmadge stood up to speak for the doublecrossed Southerners. To Herman Talmadge, who yields to no man as a segregationist. Thurmond's effort was a "grandstand of longwinded speeches" which could "in the long run wreak unspeakable havoc upon my people." When Talmadge finished, a dozen Senators--including some Southerners--rushed over to shake his hand. The U.S. Senate then got on with its business: it passed the watered-down civil rights bill, a half-loaf foreign aid appropriation, a compromise bill aimed at protecting the FBI files from random inspection (see box). Then the 85th Congress, First Session, adjourned. It was tired of itself and especially of Strom Thurmond.

* Morse had nothing but congratulations for the new recordholder. "I salute him," said Wayne. "It takes a lot out of a man to talk so long." But Morse still holds the Senate record for Spartan retention of the body's juices: he had no benefit of parliamentary pause.

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