A History of the African-American People (Proposed) by Strom Thurmond (22 page)

SENATOR STROM THURMOND

217 R
USSELL
S
ENATE
B
UILDING
W
ASHINGTON
, D.C. 20515

December 6, 2002

My dear Mr. Everett and Mr. Kincaid,

Yes, by Jesus, I see what you mean.

That Wilkes seemed a nice boy, and very likely he is. Don’t seem to have all his apples from government inspected orchards, though, does he? As my dear mother would say, he’s a caution. You boys probably have stronger language to shitswipe him with. Don’t blame you.

I do most sincerely apologize to you for not keeping an eye on this. It has always been tough for me to keep my eyes from wandering, as you may have heard. I should have been more vigilant.

Why don’t you boys come down to Edgefield and have lunch with me? I’ll have an assistant call you and see what you’d like to eat. And when you can come of course.

The assistant calling you will not be Barton Wilkes. He the one who wears those light blue outfits? You wouldn’t know, I expect.

Over lunch, we can work all this out.

I hope you boys enjoy bourbon.

Sincerely,

Strom

L
UNCH

The following is a transcript of a lunch attended by Senator Strom Thurmond, Professor James Kincaid and Percival Everett. I am Percival Everett. You can tell because I appear last in the list of attendees. That is the polite thing to do, list one’s self last. Courtesy is a curious business at best, and one of the businesses of the American South, however little obvious profit is in it. I was taught that it is always best to be courteous and fair, even when others are not, that there is no better way to irritate your enemies, that a kind word is often appreciated and never hurts. So, it was that I put my assumptions and knowledge of history aside to share a meal with a person whom I had previously once called the Reddest Neck. I am, by nature, more polite than my associate, Mr. Kincaid, who often says to me “fuck you” when we disagree. But perhaps I should hear that as a nice thing, as Lenny Bruce suggested. Kincaid also says “get fucked,” but he says it in a friendly, jovial, brotherly way, which is troubling in and of itself.

This transcript was going to be a straight reporting of what was said, with no description whatsoever. But a glance through a couple of books of quotations worthy of repeating changed my mind, as I realized that I not once found anything uttered by the good Senator worth repeating. This will be dry enough, except for those really tedious historian types who pore over archives page by page counting the number of times a certain person refers to another person in a certain way to substantiate something most of us knew all along about the way one person felt about another. “See, Humphrey really didn’t like Nixon.”

Edgefield, South Carolina. I spent years five through seventeen in South Carolina. My parents said I was growing up. I did grow up. Apparently, South Carolina did not. Jim and I drove from the airport in Charleston to Edgefield on a Saturday. Still, I will attempt to stay with my original transcript idea by not describing much, or anything, for that matter. Just let me say that the Edgefield we drove into, in our turquoise subcompact rental (publisher’s expense), was probably no different from the Edgefield young Strom walked through when he was ten.

THE TRANSCRIPT:

THURMOND: Gentlemen, I’m glad you could join me for lunch.

EVERETT: Thank you, Senator.

KINCAID: Thank you.

THURMOND: You’re Mr. Everett.

KINCAID: How could you tell?

EVERETT: I am. I’m pleased to finally meet you.

THURMOND: No, the pleasure is mine. And Mr. Kincaid.

KINCAID: Senator.

THURMOND: Come on out and join me on the porch. You know, sitting on the porch is a Southern thing. Not that people in the North don’t enjoy their porches as well, but down here it’s special. Yes, porches are as Southern as mint juleps or kudzu. So is the enjoyment of cold drink. Hollis!

HOLLIS: Sir?

THURMOND: Hollis, what kind of refreshments can we offer our visitors?

HOLLIS: Would you gentlemen like iced tea, lemonade, a soft drink or something a bit stronger?

KINCAID: Lemonade, please.

THURMOND: Mr. Everett.

EVERETT: Just water, thank you.

THURMOND: And Hollis, I’ll have my usual.

HOLLIS: Yessir.

EVERETT: You have a lovely home.

THURMOND: Thank you. And Hollis?

HOLLIS: Yessir?

THURMOND: I’ll have my usual.

HOLLIS: Yessir.

THURMOND: This is the very porch on which my father and my dear mother would sit and watch us children at play out in the yard. There were six of us finally. Bill, myself, Gertie, George and the twins. I taught Gertie to dance out on that lawn. More than once I beat the tar out of my brother Bill. Bill’s a doctor now. History, there’s history here on this porch. On all porches, I suppose.

KINCAID: Senator, that’s why we wanted to actually meet with you. We’d like to understand what you mean by history vis-à-vis our current project.

THURMOND: That’s getting right to the point. You’re from the Midwest, aren’t you?

KINCAID: I am, indeed. Ohio.

THURMOND: And Mr. Everett, you’re a fellow South Carolinian?

EVERETT: I was born in Georgia.

THURMOND: You’re the one who gave that speech at the State House.

EVERETT: That was a long time ago.

THURMOND: Would you look at those clouds? We’re going to have a storm this afternoon for certain. My dear mother hated thunder and lightning. She’d sit on a chair in the foyer for the duration of any storm, said it was the safest room in the house. She never gave any reason for thinking that, but she believed it.

EVERETT: About the book.

THURMOND: I have to confess that the book project was not my idea, though I have grown rather fond of it. Barton Wilkes, a staff member, concocted the idea and I let him move with it. He found a publisher and now it appears the two of you are involved. I hope things are going smoothly.

EVERETT: Your reference to Mr. Wilkes doesn’t suggest the closeness that he has led us to believe exists between the two of you.

THURMOND: No?

KINCAID: No, to hear Wilkes talk, he’s in constant contact with you, you’re best buddies.

THURMOND: Perhaps in his mind I am. He’s an odd man. I think his family is from Florida. Do you know what Rhode Island and Florida have in common?

KINCAID: No, what?

THURMOND: Neither state counts in a national election.

EVERETT: That’s very funny. That aside, how do you see this project?

HOLLIS: Sirs, here are your drinks. Your lemonade, Mr. Kincaid. Your water, Mr. Everett. And your usual, Senator.

KINCAID and EVERETT: Thanks.

THURMOND: Thank you, Hollis. Hollis, isn’t this a fine day? HOLLIS: Yessir.

THURMOND: And Hollis, isn’t this a fine porch? We’ve sat out here often in the evenings, haven’t we?

HOLLIS: Yessir.

THURMOND: We’ve slapped our share of mosquitoes. They seem to favor Hollis, don’t they, Hollis?

HOLLIS: They do indeed, Senator.

THURMOND: Okay, Hollis, you can go see to lunch.

KINCAID: We’ve been wondering when the history is to begin. With slavery? The Civil War?

THURMOND: When I was a child we referred to the war as the War of Northern Aggression. [laughs] I’m not sure where the book should begin.

EVERETT: I was thinking that you might comment on the shaping influences of Reconstruction. Though I assume you didn’t live through it, I imagine the effects were still quite evident when you were young.

THURMOND: That’s true. You boys know that I don’t pretend to be a historian. However, I consider myself part of the history of the land you two know at present. I lived most of the last century and participated in running this country for three quarters of it. Does that sound like bragging to you, Mr. Kincaid?

KINCAID: Why, yes.

THURMOND: And to you, Mr. Everett?

EVERETT: It depends.

THURMOND: Depends on what?

EVERETT: Whether it’s finally true.

THURMOND: You understand of course that I’m not seeking to write this thing in order to clean up my image. I don’t think my image is in such bad shape, however much the liberals vilify me.

KINCAID: That’s refreshing.

THURMOND: I’m more concerned with addressing what I see as the unfair treatment of the South.

EVERETT: You’re not still bitter about Reconstruction, are you? You’re not out to get those carpetbaggers?

THURMOND: [half laugh] No, I’m mostly over that. No, I mean the image of the South right now, how the media chooses to paint it, the endless fun-making and stereotypes.

EVERETT: Say more.

THURMOND: You know when you get old your toenails get yellow and harder than the shell of a Brazil nut? You know what we used to call those nuts?

KINCAID: What?

THURMOND: Back to the South thing. You remember when those New York City Police shot that African boy in that doorway? Why, they shot that poor colored boy over forty times and media and the country jumped all over the policemen and the NYPD, calling them racists and pigs and such, but no one suggested anything about the character of the city of New York.

KINCAID: Your point being?

THURMOND: Well, when those rednecks, those dumbass peckerwoods down in Texas dragged that poor boy to death behind that pickup, all you heard was how awful Texas and the South remain.

EVERETT: And you disagree with that.

THURMOND: To tell the truth, I don’t. But why not offer the same judgment about the Northeast? Can you imagine the outcry if that African had been shot down dead in that fashion on a stoop here in Edgefield?

EVERETT: So, this whole project is an attempt to set the record straight, a forum for you to say that the South isn’t as bad as it’s cracked up to be. Or maybe you’re about pointing out that the whole country is as racist as ever.

THURMOND: Maybe, maybe not. I’m an old man. I just want things to be fair to the South.

KINCAID: To rewrite history.

THURMOND: That sounds awfully fancy.

EVERETT: Nonetheless.

THURMOND: You know, this is the very porch on which I first met Pitchfork Ben Tillman, former governor of this state. I walked up to him, like my daddy told me to, and I shook his hand. He glared at me with that hard face and said in that high voice of his, “Boy, if you’re gonna shake a hand, then, by God, give it a shake!” That was my first and most important lesson in politics and one I’ve never forgotten.

KINCAID: Did you have servants when you were young?

THURMOND: Why, yes we did. We had a sleep—I mean, live-in maid. Her name was Hattie. There was a yardman. I don’t remember his name but I remember he was always trimming the hedges. And there was a driver, Beau. He lived in the shed out back. He was a terrible driver. I’m not certain he had a license.

KINCAID: All African-American?

THURMOND: As I recollect, I believe they were, now that you mention it.

EVERETT: As you recollect?

THURMOND: It was a long time ago.

EVERETT: Do you recall whether Hollis is white or black?

THURMOND: Oh, Hollis, he’s a good man. He’s been with me going on forty years. He’s been with me longer that my wife. We’ve shared everything except sex.

EVERETT: Do you remember if your wife is white?

THURMOND: I’m pretty sure she’s white. She sure looks white. You know, my brother Bill used to stutter something terrible. He couldn’t say grace and have his food be hot. That’s why Daddy sent him off to a military academy.

KINCAID: Because he couldn’t say grace.

THURMOND: No, because of his stuttering. He’s a doctor now. He lives in Georgia. Well, he did anyway.

KINCAID: Is it true your father killed a man over Ben Tillman’s politics?

THURMOND: As I recall the story, Daddy was defending himself.

EVERETT: And was named a US Attorney for his trouble on Tillman’s recommendation.

THURMOND: Politics is a funny business.

EVERETT: Since we’re talking about Tillman, what will you have to say in the book about his revamping of the state constitution in 1895 instituting residency requirements, a poll tax and separate schools.

THURMOND: Those were different times.

KINCAID: So was yesterday.

THURMOND: Tillman was a hard man in hard times, but he wasn’t a racist or a bigot like that Vardaman in Mississippi.

KINCAID: Tillman’s the one who called Teddy Roosevelt a “coon-flavored miscegenationist.”

THURMOND: You boys do your homework. Well, if you gentlemen will excuse me. I have to go relieve myself often these days. My physician tells me my prostate is the size of a pimple on a flea’s ass.

Once Thurmond was out of the room, Jim bolted from his chair, took a couple of steps and turned back to face me.

KINCAID: Is he a piece of work or what? Can’t recall if the servants were black.

EVERETT: I should have asked if the slaves were black.

KINCAID: I think it’s going to take us awhile to dig through this stuff and figure out what he wants.

EVERETT: To hell with what he wants. I say we just lampoon the fuck out of him and have some fun. Still, I’m kind of intrigued.