Thurmond, then governor of South Carolina, ran for president in 1948 as the nominee of the States’ Rights Democratic Party, also known as the Dixiecrats. That same year the Dixiecrats had broken from the Democratic Party to form an explicitly racist, pro-segregation party, adopting a platform that said, "We stand for the segregation of the races and the racial integrity of each race."

During his campaign Thurmond declared, "All the laws of Washington and all the bayonets of the Army cannot force the Negro into our homes, our schools, our churches." Thurmond carried the election in Mississippi, Alabama, Louisiana, and South Carolina, receiving 39 electoral votes.

A decade later, in 1957, Thurmond made history again in his attempt to block civil rights legislation, embarking on a record-breaking 24-hour-plus filibuster on the Senate floor.

Trent Lott’s praise for the segregationist senator was denounced within a week by politicians from both parties. Former vice president Albert Gore rebuked Lott, and Democratic presidential hopeful John Kerry, senator from Massachusetts, called for Lott to step down from his leadership position in the Senate.

Lott apologized days later for "a poor choice of words."

President Bush tried to minimize the damage to the Republican Party and prove his credentials as an opponent of racism, stating, "Any suggestion that the segregated past was acceptable or positive is offensive and wrong." Bush’s spokesman added, however, that the president did not think that Lott should step down.

Senator Arlen Specter from Pennsylvania described Lott’s praise for Thurmond’s presidential bid as an "inadvertent slip, and his apology should end the discussion." One top Congressional official told the New York Times that Lott had been "Newtized," referring to Newt Gingrich, the former House speaker who came to represent sharp attacks on social entitlement programs for working people.

Under increasing pressure, Lott apologized for his "terrible" mistake again December 11 during a radio interview. His appearance on the program followed widespread publicity of the fact that he had expressed identical sentiments in similar words at a 1980 Ronald Reagan campaign rally in Mississippi. On that occasion Lott had said of Thurmond’s 1948 campaign, "You know, if we had elected this man 30 years ago, we wouldn’t be in the mess we are today." Lott insisted that his intent had been to honor the Dixiecrat’s work on military and economic issues, not to endorse racial discrimination.

Apologies from the Mississippi senator and reassuring words from the president, however, have not stemmed the debate on the history of segregation and Lott’s own record that the controversy has opened up. He has a 30-year career in the House and Senate, and became Senate Republican leader and majority leader in 1996. He was reelected majority leader last month without opposition.

Time magazine reported that some 40 years ago Lott had led an effort to block the acceptance of Blacks into his all-white fraternity at the University of Mississippi. Other critics highlighted his 1983 vote against a federal holiday for Martin Luther King, Jr., his 1982 vote against the extension of the Voting Rights Act, and his efforts to restore citizenship to Jefferson Davis, president of the Confederacy in the Civil War. In 1978, President James Carter signed into law then-congressman Lott’s bill to grant citizenship to the leader of the slavocracy.  
 
 
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