President Biden on Monday appeared to be trying to rehabilitate the image of the late Sen. Strom Thurmond, a notorious racial justice advocate, in one of his final speeches as president.
Biden made the comments while speaking at a reception for new Democratic members of Congress at the White House. The president offered some redemptive details about Mr. Salmond but said he was not defending him.
“During my career, I have been asked to memorialize some of the most incredibly different people. Strom Thurmond, 100 years old. On his deathbed, I got a call from the hospital. , from outside Walter Reed and his family. His wife, Nancy, said, “Joe, I'm here with the doctors at the nurses' station. Strom asked me if I could give the eulogy.'' ” Biden said, adding that he accepted the offer.
“Strom Thurmond decided that blacks and whites should not be together, that it was not right to be separate but equal. But if they were to be equally segregated, black schools would have the same By the time Strom Thurmond left United, he was advocating for that in the state senate, and I'm advocating for him,'' Biden continued.
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President Joe Biden speaks at a reception for Democratic new members of Congress in the State Dining Room of the White House on Sunday, January 5, 2025 in Washington. (AP Photo/Manuel Balce Seneta)
“But he had more African Americans on his staff than there were U.S. senators. Strom Thurmond had an illegitimate child with a black woman.” [and he] I never denied it. Never paid his child support. There are a lot of strange people, a lot of different people. I mean, if I look at you, I'm sure I'll find some weird things,” Biden added.
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Mr. Biden has repeatedly mentioned his relationship with Mr. Thurmond at various times during his presidency. He claimed in August 2023 that Thurmond “literally” persuaded him to vote for the Voting Rights Act before his death in 2003, when he was 21 years old.
President Joe Biden and the late Sen. Strom Thurmand. (Getty Images)
“I was able to convince Strom Thurmond, literally, not figuratively, to vote for the Civil Rights Act before he died,” Biden said at the time.
“And I thought, 'Well, maybe there's going to be real progress,'” he added. “But hate doesn't go away, it just hides. It hides under a rock.”
Biden was born on November 20, 1942. The Civil Rights Act passed the Senate on June 19, 1964.
President Joe Biden speaks to the media after signing the Social Security Fairness Act at the White House on January 5, 2025 in Washington, DC. (Chris Kleponis/AFP via Getty Images)
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Mr. Thurmond and Mr. Biden were contemporaries in the Senate, but the president would have been 21 at the time of the landmark bill's passage, far short of the Senate seat he won at age 29.
FOX News' Houston Keene contributed to this report.
