Strom Thurmond V.G.R. (Very Good Riddance)
by Martin Lewis
Originally published in The Rip Post
on December 09, 2003

The man who personally initiated the Nixon administration persecution of John Lennon that threatened the former Beatle with deportation for nearly five years from 1972 to 1976 - has been revealed as a flagrant hypocrite with a tawdry personal life.

The family of renowned racist Senator Strom Thurmond - who died recently age 100 - has acknowledged that in 1925 (when he was 22 years old) he impregnated the 16-year-old black daughter of the family maid. The daughter of that union - 78-year-old retired schoolteacher Essie Mae Washington-Williams - revealed the secret this week. And the Thurmond family issued a statement admitting that it was all true.

Thurmond was a rabid racist throughout his long political career. In 1948 he ran for president on a segregationist ticket and declared publicly that there were "not enough troops in the Army to force the Southern people to break down segregation and admit the negro race into our theaters, into our swimming pools, into our homes, and into our churches."

(Former Senate Republican leader Trent Lott of Mississippi lost his position a year ago for declaring that things would have been better if Thurmond had won that 1948 presidential election. "I want to say this about my state: When Strom Thurmond ran for president, we voted for him. We're proud of it. And if the rest of the country had followed our lead, we wouldn't have had all these problems over all these years, either.")

The fact that 23 years prior to running for president - Thurmond had sired a child by his family's black maid was NOT declared. Nor at any time between 1925 and his death in 2003 did he EVER publicly acknowledge his African-American daughter. He strenuously opposed civil rights including the vote for black Americans for most of his life.

But in 1972 Strom Thurmond managed to find time to write a lengthy letter to Richard Nixon urging that John Lennon be immediately deported because of the danger that Lennon's influence with young people might affect Nixon's re-election chances. (The letter was discovered in the FBI files after a Freedom Of Information Act search by Professor Jon Weiner.) Nixon immediately acted on the letter and sicked FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover on Lennon.

The virulence of the harassment of John Lennon for the next few years was so intense that in 1975 the US government's lead prosecutor for the IRS resigned - stating that the Nixon administration was pursuing the deportation of John Lennon with more zeal than they were investigating numerous German Nazi war criminals residing in the USA.

Martin Luther King's co-founder of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference - the Rev. Joseph Lowery - offered the following comment on the revelations about Strom Thurmond: "He was a racist by day and a hypocrite by night. It's hypocrisy at its worst."

John Lennon's three most virulent opponents in the US - all proud conservatives deeply opposed to the liberal counter-culture espoused by the Beatles - all regarded John Lennon as morally degenerate.

Here is the record on them now:

Richard Nixon. Disgraced ex-president. Revealed as a liar, cheat, corrupt, racist, anti-semite, advocate of criminal activity - and utterly contemptuous of the American people and the constitution. (Died age 81)

J. Edgar Hoover. Disgraced ex-FBI director. Revealed as a liar, corrupt, racist, anti-semite, homophobe, closet transvestite, advocate of criminal activity - and utterly contemptuous of the American people and the constitution. (Died age 77)

Strom Thurmond. Disgraced former senator. Revealed as a liar, racist, hypocrite - and utterly contemptuous of the American people and the constitution. (Died age 100)

John Lennon died age 40. (Someone please explain the fairness of that part to me....)

(So this is) Christmas 2003

A few suggestions of further reading:

http://www.instantkarma.com/fbimenu.html http://www.iamthebeatles.com/article1037.html http://www.martinlewis.com/column.pl?col=43&cat=time http://www.oaklandtribune.com/Stories/0,1413,82~1865~1838546,00.html

Do your own research. Go to: http://www.google.com Search for: "strom thurmond" "john lennon"


Home | The Columns | The Bloggings


Copyright © 2004 Martin Lewis