WASHINGTON, Dec. 10 (UPI) -- Incoming Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott, R-Miss., apologized for his comment the nation would have benefited by electing segregationist presidential candidate-turned U.S. Sen. Strom Thurmond, R-S.C., in 1948.
Speaking at a party marking Thurmond's 100th birthday Thursday, Lott said the United States should have followed Mississippi's example and voted for Thurmond's 1948 third-party candidacy. Thurmond had temporarily left the Democratic Party to protest President Harry S. Truman's anti-segregationist policies.
"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 lea, we wouldn't have had all these problems over all these years either," Lott said last Thursday.
The statement drew criticism for seeming to endorse Thurmond's then militant desire to keep races in the South separate.
"I want to tell you, ladies and gentleman, that there's not enough troops in the Army to force the southern people to break down segregation and admit the Nigra race into our theaters, into our swimming pools, into our homes and into our churches," Thurmond said in 1948.
Lott's written statement, issued late Monday, apologized for appearing to endorse those views at the birthday speech.
"A poor choice of words conveyed to some the impression that I embraced the discarded policies of the past," the statement reads. "Nothing could be further from the truth, and I apologize to anyone who was offended by my statement."
Thurmond -- who became a senator in 1954 and went on to become both the longest serving member of the Senate and oldest serving member of Congress ever -- did not comment. He had long ago renounced the views expressed during the 1948 presidential campaign and during the subsequent fights over voting and civil rights for African-Americans.
