19571776 Club
Thurmond takes the floor at 8:54 p.m., vowing to talk the civil rights bill to death
He had taken steam baths for days to dehydrate himself for the speech ahead.
The Senate was hours from voting on the first federal civil rights bill since 1875. At 8:54 p.m. on August 28, 1957, South Carolina Senator Strom Thurmond rose alone, breaking a truce his fellow Southern Democrats had struck days earlier to avoid an organized filibuster. He read state election laws, Supreme Court rulings, and George Washington's Farewell Address, refusing to yield the floor through the night and into the next evening. He finally stopped speaking at 9:12 p.m. on August 29, 24 hours and 18 minutes after he began…
