Lindsey Graham autobiography sheds light on record on race

A little-known autobiography from Lindsey Graham published in 2015 sheds light on his complicated record of acknowledging and addressing racism in South Carolina.

Graham, born in 1955, came of age in a small textile town in the segregated south, located in Pickens county, the site of the last documented lynching in South Carolina in 1947. My Story, which came across as political spin to anyone who knew the background of Graham’s unlikely rise to political prominence, is a window into the conservative white man’s view of the south’s enduring racial tensions.

By Graham’s account, he was the one who convinced his reluctant parents, Millie and Florence James, “FJ”, to finally open their popular Sanitary cafe to Black people – until then they only served Black neighbors through a take-out window. His high school, like others in the state, had been forced to admit a handful of Black students by a supreme court decision.

His parents died 15 months apart while he was in college, and he took custody of his teenage sister, Darline, to whom he remained close. (Donald Trump on Monday recommended that Darline Graham Nordone be appointed as interim senator, “a fabulous tribute to Lindsey, who loved her dearly”. Later on Monday Henry McMaster, South Carolina’s governor, appointed her to serve the rest of Graham’s term.)

The racial climate remained tense as Graham, then the city attorney in Central, a city of about 3,000 people, entered politics in 1994 as a congressional candidate in the third district.

To win, he relied on an endorsement from Strom Thurmond, a leading segregationist who ran for president in 1948 as a Dixiecrat on the States Rights Democratic party ticket. Graham took over Thurmond’s Senate seat in 2003, absorbing some of the late senator’s longtime staff and trying to match Thurmond’s record of constituent service.

Throughout his long career in public office, Graham faced questions from Black voters about his commitment to racial justice.

In 2020, Graham faced negative headlines when he ran against Jaime Harrison, the national Democratic party chair and a former aide to congressman James Clyburn, both of whom are Black.

On the campaign trail, Graham denied that the nation was plagued by systemic racism, especially in his home state. He said that minorities, including immigrants, could “go anywhere” in South Carolina, but they “just need to be conservative”.

At one point, he invoked the election of Barack Obama as proof that systemic racism did not exist.

Graham continued the trend in a 2021 interview after the guilty verdict of police officer Derek Chauvin in the murder of George Floyd. “Our systems are not racist,” he told interviewer Chris Wallace on Fox News. “America is not a racist country.”

His views were tested again when he and other conservatives got into a tussle in 2022 over his support of a Black jurist, South Carolina district judge J Michelle Childs, for a supreme court vacancy. She was under consideration but did not receive Joe Biden’s nomination, which went instead to Ketanji Brown Jackson. Jackson was confirmed to the court.

Mississippi senator Roger Wicker called Graham’s support of Childs “affirmative action”. Graham fought back, saying the label did not apply for qualified minority candidates such as Childs.

In 2021, Clyburn condemned Graham for calling Covid aid to Black farmers “reparations”. Clyburn told CNN Graham “ought to be ashamed of himself” and might need to get in touch with his Christian values.

On Sunday, Clyburn paid tribute to Graham in a post on X.

“For more than three decades, we served the people of the Palmetto State together in Congress. Throughout that time, we maintained a relationship grounded in mutual respect, even when our political differences were significant. His commitment to public service and the people he represented will remain an enduring part of his legacy,” wrote Clyburn.

Graham acknowledged in his book that his parents’ agreement to allow Black customers inside during the 1970s, was “much later than it should have”.

But he said the culture was so entrenched that white customers at first refused to patronize the cafe. “It is just the way it is,” he said his father told him.