One of the staff member in the union mission homeless shelter told me a story..............that this man......Strom Thurmond...........personally escorted him from capital hill to the pentagon..........in his own car...........................for a racist to do that..........i don't belive him.......the man who told me is an older black man.........a vet........who went to Strom T.........to complain.........the man went on to tell me that Senator Thurmond took him into the Pentagon and personally got the sec. of the navy or army or something similar.................possible........but highly unlikely.........

In opposition to the Civil Rights Act of 1957, he conducted the longest filibuster ever by a lone senator, at 24 hours and 18 minutes in length, nonstop. In the 1960s, he opposed the civil rights legislation of 1964 and 1965 to end segregation and enforce the constitutional rights of African-American citizens, including suffrage. He always insisted he had never been a racist, but was opposed to excessive federal authority. He attributed the movement to practice constitutional rights to Communist agitators.^[5] In 1948, Thurmond stated:

"all the laws of Washington and all the bayonets of the Army cannot force the Negro into our homes, into our schools, our churches and our places of recreation and amusement."^[5]

Starting in the 1970s, he moderated his position on race, but continued to defend his early segregationist campaigns on the basis of states' rights in the context of Southern society at the time.^[6] He never fully renounced his earlier viewpoints.^[7][8]

Six months after Thurmond died in 2003, his mixed-race, grown daughter Essie Mae Washington-Williams revealed that he was her father. Her mother Carrie Butler had been 16 years old and working as his family's maid when she became involved with Thurmond, who was 22. Although Thurmond never publicly acknowledged Essie Mae Washington, he paid for her education at a historically black college and passed other money to her for some time. She said that she kept silent out of respect for her father^[9] and denied that the two had agreed that she would not reveal her connection to Thurmond.^[10] His children by his marriage eventually acknowledged her.^[9] Her name has since been added as one of his children to his memorial at the state capital.