In one of his last speeches in office, Biden is trying to rehabilitate the image of the late segregationist Strom Thurmond
President Biden appeared to try to rehabilitate the image of notorious segregationist late Sen. Strom Thurmond Monday during one of the final speeches of his presidency.
Biden did he made the comments while speaking at a White House reception for new Democratic members of Congress. The president offered few details about Thurmond, though he said he was not defending the man.
“In my career, I’ve been asked to speak about incredibly different people. Strom Thurmond, 100 years old. On his deathbed, I get a phone call from the hospital. From the hospital, from Walter Reed and his wives, Nancy said, I’m here with to the doctors at the nurses’ station, he asked me to ask you if you would deliver his eulogy,” Biden said, adding that he had accepted the offer.
“Strom Thurmond decided that separate but equal was wrong, not that blacks and whites should be together. But if you separate equal, you had to spend as much money on black schools as white schools. By the time Strom Thurmond left The United States Senate, he did it, and I’m defending him,” Biden continued.
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President Joe Biden speaks at a reception for new Democratic members of Congress in the State Dining Room of the White House, Sunday, Jan. 5, 2025, in Washington. (AP Photo/Manuel Balce Cenet)
“But he had more African-Americans on his staff than any United States senator, more. Strom Thurmond had an illegitimate child with a black woman [and he] he never denied. He never stopped paying for his upbringing. There are a lot of strange people, a lot of different people. And I mean, well, I bet I can look at you and find some weird stuff,” Biden added.
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Biden has repeatedly referred to his relationship with Thurmond at various times during his presidency. He claimed in August 2023 that he “literally” convinced Thurmond to vote for the Voting Rights Act before his death in 2003, when he was just 21 years old.
President Joe Biden and the late Senator Strom Thurmand. (Getty Images)
“I was able – literally, not figuratively – to persuade Strom Thurmond to vote for the Civil Rights Act before he died,” Biden said then.
“And I thought, ‘okay, maybe there’s some real progress,'” he added. “But hate never dies, it just hides. It hides under rocks.”
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 into law at the White House in Washington, DC on January 5, 2025. (CHRIS KLEPONIS/AFP via Getty Images)
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While Thurmond and Biden were contemporaries in the Senate, the president would have been 21 at the time of the landmark legislation — and nowhere near the Senate seat he won at age 29.
Fox News’ Houston Keene contributed to this report.
