On August 28, 1957, Strom Thurmond, a Democratic United States senator from South Carolina, began a filibuster intended to prevent the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1957. The filibuster, an extended speech designed to stall legislation, began at 8:54 p.m. and lasted until 9:12 p.m. the following day, a duration of 24 hours and 18 minutes. This made the filibuster the longest single-person filibuster in United States Senate history, a record that still stands as of 2022. The filibuster focused primarily on asserting that the bill in question, which provided for expanded federal protection of African American voting rights, was both unnecessary and unconstitutional, and Thurmond recited from documents including the election laws of each U.S. state, Supreme Court decisions, and George Wa