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When it comes to YouTube, there are a few topics that you should never make a video
about unless you want the comments section to become a minefield of controversy and angry
three and four letter words: Jeffrey Epstein, the Middle East, religion, healthcare policy,
education policy, and, of course, Jar-Jar Binks.
With all of that said, please enjoy this video about two things that everyone agrees about
and that are sure to stir up no controversy at all: politics and racism.
That’s because today we’re talking about the longest filibuster in US history, conducted
by former US Senator Strom Thurmond in an attempt to prevent the passage of the Civil
Rights Act of 1957.
The filibuster is a weird, kind of confusing rule that allows US senators to stop or delay
a bill from passing the Senate by refusing to end debate on it, and while today the filibuster
is an accepted, even normal part of Senate procedure, it began just like life, the universe,
and everything—as a complete accident.
You see, back when the Senate was created in 1789, they had a rule that said debate
on a bill could be ended by a simple majority vote, but then, in 1806, then-Vice President
Aaron Burr, most famous for killing Alexander Hamilton and then starring in a musical about
it, argued that the rule was unnecessary, because it had never been used, and so the
Senate got rid of it.
A few decades later, some senators had a realization that would forever change the US Senate: because
there was now technically no rule that could force debate on a bill to end, if a senator
or group of senators just kept on talking, the Senate wouldn’t be able to stop them
to call for a vote on that bill, and without a vote, it couldn’t ever become a law, and
so, the filibuster was born and then quickly became very, very annoying.
So annoying, in fact, that eventually its power was limited.
In 1917, a group of anti-war senators kept using the filibuster to prevent the passage
of military funding for World War I, and President Woodrow Wilson—notable for being memorialized
in DC by a highway bridge—demanded that the Senate do something about it.
In a truly un-Senate like move, the Senate took decisive action and created something
called a cloture vote, which meant that a 2/3 majority of senators could vote to end
a filibuster.
Things have changed a bit since then, which I’ll get to later, but that’s how things
stood when our story begins.
The year was 1957, the bill was the Civil Rights Act of 1957, intended to protect the
voting rights of Black Americans, and the bill’s opponent was South Carolina Senator
Strom Thurmond.
Now on the one hand, trying to stop the passage of a landmark civil rights bill may seem like
a pretty bad move, but on the other hand, there is no other hand because this was definitely
bad.
While the bill was supported by the majority of senators, there was not a 2/3 majority
that would be willing to vote for cloture and end a filibuster, meaning that Thurmond
was free to filibuster for as long as he wanted.
However, it wasn’t going to be easy, because while the Senate’s rules don’t limit a
filibuster’s length, they still do put a number of limitations on filibusterers…filibusterinos…filibustereos….people
who are filibustering.
They cannot sit or lean on anything, they cannot leave the senate floor for any reason—including
bathroom breaks—and most importantly, they cannot stop talking at any point except to
take questions from other Senators.
It’s all like a big Mr Beast video but, instead of getting $10,000 if you finish,
you get to be racist.
Thurmond prepared for his filibuster by taking daily steam baths in the preceding days in
order to dehydrate his body and reduce the need for bathroom breaks, and then, at 8:54pm
on August 28, 1957, he was recognized by the Senate leader and began to speak.
One interesting facet of the filibuster is that while senators cannot stop talking, they
are no rules on what they have to talk about, and so, filibusters have included everything
from reading the phone book to reading a recipe for fried oysters to reading the Dr Seuss
book Green Eggs and Ham. Strom Thurmond, however, stayed remarkably on-topic, mainly reading
voting laws, Supreme Court decisions, and passages from pro-segregation books.
He also occasionally fielded questions from fellow senators, and snacked on diced up pieces
of pumpernickel bread and cooked hamburger meat which are almost as gross as his opinions
on civil rights.
After three hours, Republican senator Barry Goldwater decided to help out by making an
insertion to the Congressional Record, which allowed Thurmond to take his one and only
bathroom break.
In theory, other senators could have done this too, but they chose not to, presumably
because helping the racist guy stop the civil rights act was probably not the best look.
In order to combat this problem, Thurmond’s aides set up a bucket in the senate cloakroom
that the senator could use to relieve himself while keeping one foot on the Senate floor
which I wish I could say was the grossest thing to ever take place there but we all
know that that’s not true.
Eventually, at 9:12pm on August 29th, over a full day after it had begun, Thurmond’s
speech finally came to an end and despite his best efforts, the Civil Rights Act of
1957 was passed.
Filibusters have changed a bit since the days of Strom Thurmond and his bucket.
A 1970 rules change dropped the threshold for a cloture vote from 2/3 to 3/5—or 60
of the 100 senators—and made it so that in order to filibuster, senators no longer
have to actually stand and talk for as long as they can.
These days, so long as 41 senators refuse to vote for cloture, a bill can’t move to
a vote, regardless of whether or not there’s someone actually standing up and filibustering.
Today, when you see headlines that some Senator is doing a traditional filibuster, it’s
to draw attention to a cause, not to actually stop a bill from passing.
If you wanted to draw attention to a cause you care about, you might want to brush up
on your public speaking skills.
To do that, I would suggest checking out Simon Sinek’s class on how to write and present
compelling oral presentations, which is available on Skillshare.
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