Hello and welcome to this day in esoteric political history from radiotopia.

My name is Jody Avergan.

This day, August 28, 1957, Strom Thurmond, then a Democratic United States Senator from South Carolina,

began a filibuster intended to prevent the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1957.

It began at 8.54 PM and lasted until 9.12 PM the following day.

This is 24 hours and 18 minutes of continuous talking and

filibustering the longest single person filibuster in the United States

Senate history a record that still stands to today.

So let's talk about Strom Thurmond, the Epic Filibuster, the 1957 Civil Rights Act, and yes,

listeners, we will answer the question that everyone is surely asking how did he go to the

bathroom during this and you know what the answer is actually much weirder

than you'd think so we will get to that here as always Nicole Hammer of

Vanderbilt and Kelly Carter Jackson of Wesley.

Hello Jody.

Hey there.

So I want to talk a little bit about, well we'll talk about John Thurmond who we haven't really talked about too much on this show.

And he, this is fairly recently into the Senate for him, right?

He'd been in the Senate since 1954 and this is 1957, so he is, you know, he's making his

march just a few years in. He runs as an anti-integrationist, as a segregationist.

Kelly, what do we need to know?

I mean, there's so many other civil rights acts later in the 60s that are much more well known.

What's going on with the 1957 Civil Rights Act?

...