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Thank You, Senator Booker. Elected Legislators, Which of You Will Stand Up Next?
Senator Cory Booker’s historic 25-hour and four-minute speech is invigorating beleaguered Americans. And not just because the poetic justice of a Black legislator breaking a racist’s 1957 filibuster record for protesting the passage of the Civil Rights Act is life-giving.
Strom Thurmond was an unrepentant segregationist who impregnated his family’s 15-year-old Black maid when he was 20–22 (reports vary)¹ and co-authored the Southern Manifesto. Almost 75 years ago, he was criticized for his “grandstanding” and “personal aggrandizement” when he spent 24 hours and 18 minutes filibustering the proposed Civil Rights Act. He protested the racial integration of public spaces as hard as he could.
Two hours after Thurmond’s marathon, though it lacked support from Democrats, President Eisenhower signed the bill into law — the first civil rights legislation since Reconstruction.²
Detractors will criticize Senator Booker, too. Ignore them. Experts will debate whether or not it was a true filibuster or a long speech.³
“ … he’s just another disempowered Democrat trying to placate angry constituents and activists who may have unrealistic ideas about what a minority party in a governing trifecta regime can actually do to throw sand in the gears of…
