Strom Thurmond was an ancient politician who I can basically describe as being the last Democrat to get the software updates. He was born in 1902 and was in office for over half of his 100 year life. I've heard on multiple occasions that he was a grand wizard in the KKK, and while I've never actually confirmed that, he was arguably the single loudest and proudest voice against black integration and rather infamously voted against Hawaii joining the US because he felt it wasn't white enough. Finally in the 1960s, he left the party to join the Republicans, presumably incensed over not being issued the treasured N-Word Pass.
He was basically a living punchline for racism, like this weird proto /pol/tard that existed like 75 years before the internet, and it was even funnier because he had been a Democrat for most of his life, representing a history that the party was really hilariously not proud of. The dude was a fucking living meme before we knew about the term, a subject of ridicule for both the left (who saw him as a relic of a former era, best left behind) and right (who saw him as their racist uncle that we all respect but wish he would stop screaming about them uppity negroes every time we get together for holiday dinner).
Like a lot of more aggressive politicos, he mellowed out a bit over the next few decades, in a fashion not too dissimilar from Fred Phelps realizing he had gone too far in his declining years.
The funniest part however, would come out after his death, where it came out that despite his constant anti-black rhetoric in his time, at the absolute height of his I hate the darkies arc, he turned out to have fathered an illegitimate black child in his 20s. There's not really much to say here, it is what it is and it's fucking hilarious.
God damn.
