On August 13, 1963, in a last ditch effort to derail the pending March on Washington, Strom Thurmond took the Senate floor and hurled a series of vicious, personal attacks against the man organizing the largest protest in U.S. history.
Thurmond called him a Communist and a draft dodger.
He brought up a previous arrest and accused him of being immoral and a pervert.
The man Thurmond was attacking was not Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
In fact Thurmond used King's own words -- secretly recorded by J.Edgar Hoover -- in his attacks against the march's deputy director.
"I hope Bayard don't take a drink before the march," Clarence Jones, King's lawyer and close friend, said in the recording.
"Yes," King replied. "And grab one little brother. 'Cause he will grab one when he has a drink."
"Bayard" would be Bayard Rustin, the most important leader of the civil rights movement you probably have never heard of.
Rustin to receive posthumously the presidential medal
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