James Strom Thurmond (5 December 1902-26 June 2003) was Governor of South Carolina from 21 January 1947 to 16 January 1951, succeeding Ransome Judson Williams and preceding James F. Byrnes, and served as a United States senator from South Carolina from 1954 to 2003, succeeding Charles E. Daniel and preceding Lindsey Graham. Thurmond was a member of the Southern Democrats until the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, when he decided to join the US Republican Party due to his conservative views. Thurmond was the oldest and longest-serving senator in US history.
Biography[]
Thurmond during World War II
James Strom Thurmond was born in Edgefield, South Carolina on 5 December 1902, and he graduated from Clemson University in 1923 with a degree in horticulture. Thurmond became the superintendent of education of Edgefield County in 1929 at the age of 27, and he became a lawyer the next year. Thurmond served as county attorney from 1930 to 1938, and he served in the state senate from 1933 to 1942 as a member of the US Democratic Party's Southern Democrat faction. In 1942, he resigned from the bench to serve in the US Army during World War II, rising to the rank of Lieutenant-Colonel and landing in Normandy with the US 82nd Airborne Division on 6 June 1944. He was decorated with 18 medals due to his World War II service, and he returned home as a war hero.
Democratic politician[]
Thurmond during the 1960s
Strom Thurmond ran for Governor of South Carolina in 1946, promising to weaken the power of the Barnwell ring and to make the state government more transparent. He was considered a progressive for much of his term, as he had a lynch mob arrested for its murder of an African-American man; the lynch mob was acquitted by an all-white jury, but the NAACP congratulated him for delivering justice to the murderers. In 1948, the popular Thurmond would run for President of the United States with the segregationist Dixiecrats, with Fielding L. Wright serving as his vice-presidential candidate. The Dixiecrats carried South Carolina, Mississippi, Alabama, Louisiana, and one electoral vote in Tennessee due to their segregationist and racist stance, and Thurmond was applauded by an audience when he told them that the government did not have enough troops to force the South to allow members of the "Nigra race" into southern pools, homes, and churches. Thurmond left office as Governor of South Carolina in 1950, as state governors could only serve one term in office in the state. He lost the 1950 senatorial election with 46% of the vote, and he retaliated by endorsing the US Republican Party candidate Dwight D. Eisenhower as President of the United States during the 1952 presidential election. In 1954, Thurmond won the senatorial race in South Carolina, and he made good on his promise to continue opposing desegregation. In 1957, he made the longest senatorial filibuster in US history when he gave a 24 hour and 18 minute-long speech in defiance of the Civil Rights Act of 1957, talking about irrelevant and obscure subjects such as his grandmother's biscuit recipe.
Republican politician[]
Thurmond during his famous filibuster in 1957
Thurmond's filibuster showed the American public who Thurmond was: a rabid conservative and racist. On 16 September 1964, after the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 by Democratic president Lyndon B. Johnson, Thurmond switched his affiliation to the Republicans, who were becoming increasingly conservative as the Democrats became more liberal. Thurmond promoted Barry Goldwater and the Republicans due to their conservative views, and Thurmond convinced white southerners to destroy the Democrats' "Solid South" by voting for Richard Nixon in 1968. Nixon and Thurmond had similar ideas, and Thurmond's state received a decent share of federal aid due to his alignment with Nixon's views. After 1970, however, Thurmond would moderate his political views, hiring an African-American as a staff member in 1971 and supporting the institution of Martin Luther King, Jr. Day as a public holiday in 1983. In 2002, he ended his senate career, having turned 100 years old. Lindsey Graham succeeded him as senator, and Thurmond died in June 2003.