Abigail Thernstrom: A Political Moment to Savor
[Abigail Thernstrom is the author, most recently, of Voting Rights — and Wrongs: The Elusive Quest for Racially Fair Elections. She is an adjunct scholar at the American Enterprise Institute and vice chair of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights.]
State representative Tim Scott, a black Republican, has won the GOP primary in South Carolina’s First Congressional District. It’s not particularly big news in the mainstream media; perhaps Republican victories are always unwelcome — particularly ones that put a tiny chip in the image of the GOP as whites-only. In fact, it’s a moment to savor.
Scott’s opponent was Paul Thurmond, who got a mere 32 percent of the vote. Not even close, in other words. The young Mr. Thurmond is the son of the late U.S. senator Strom Thurmond, who led the segregationist Dixiecrat rebellion from the Democratic party in 1948 and filibustered the 1957 civil-rights bill for a record 24 hours and 18 minutes....
But that was a different time and another world. Such was the impact of the 1965 Voting Rights Act that even Strom was forced to change. By the 1970s, he was securing federal funds for South Carolina’s black mayors and black colleges, and extending his famed constituent services to black voters....
Read entire article at National Review
State representative Tim Scott, a black Republican, has won the GOP primary in South Carolina’s First Congressional District. It’s not particularly big news in the mainstream media; perhaps Republican victories are always unwelcome — particularly ones that put a tiny chip in the image of the GOP as whites-only. In fact, it’s a moment to savor.
Scott’s opponent was Paul Thurmond, who got a mere 32 percent of the vote. Not even close, in other words. The young Mr. Thurmond is the son of the late U.S. senator Strom Thurmond, who led the segregationist Dixiecrat rebellion from the Democratic party in 1948 and filibustered the 1957 civil-rights bill for a record 24 hours and 18 minutes....
But that was a different time and another world. Such was the impact of the 1965 Voting Rights Act that even Strom was forced to change. By the 1970s, he was securing federal funds for South Carolina’s black mayors and black colleges, and extending his famed constituent services to black voters....