Tremendous political controversy ensued following remarks Lott made on December 5, 2002 at the 100th birthday party of Sen. Strom Thurmond of South Carolina. Thurmond ran for President of the United States in 1948 on the Dixiecrat (or States' Rights) ticket. Lott said: "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 lead, we wouldn't have had all these problems over the years, either."[citation needed]
Thurmond had based his presidential campaign largely on an explicit racial segregation platform. Lott had attracted controversy before in issues relating to civil rights. As a Congressman, he voted against renewal of the Voting Rights Act, voted against the continuation of the Civil Rights Act and opposed the Martin Luther King Holiday.[citation needed] The Washington Post reported that Lott had made similar comments about Thurmond's candidacy in a 1980 rally.[11] Lott gave an interview with Black Entertainment Television explaining himself and repudiating Thurmond's former views.[12]
Under pressure from Senate colleagues, and having lost the support of the White House, Lott resigned as Senate Republican Leader on December 20, 2002.[citation needed] Bill Frist of Tennessee was later elected to the leadership position. In the book Free Culture, Lawrence Lessig argues that the resignation of Lott would not have occurred had it not been for the effect of Internet blogs. He says that though the story "disappear[ed] from the mainstream press within forty-eight hours", "bloggers kept researching the story" until, "[f]inally, the story broke back into the mainstream press."[13]
Wiki opens saying Lott was "racist" in his remarks. But David Brooks and Mark Shields on the PBS News Hour, in reviewing the controversy, were agreed that Lott's toast was not intended as anything more than a warm tribute to a 100-year-old Senator on his birthday, not some deep endorsement of Thurmond's 50-plus year old 1948 political platform. But it was used to marginalize Lott just the same.
