Strom Thurmond

Strom Thurmond (1902-2003), member of the United States Senate from South Carolina from 1954 to 2003, when he retired at the age of 100. He was the oldest person ever to serve in Congress and the longest-serving U.S. senator, with 48 years in office.

Thurmond was born in Edgefield, South Carolina. He graduated from Clemson University in 1923 and began his political career as the Edgefield superintendent of education in 1929. After stints in the state legislature and on the U.S. Court of Appeals, he served with distinction in the army during World War II (1939-1945). He was elected governor of South Carolina in 1946, shortly after his return from service in Europe. When the Democratic National Convention adopted a strong civil rights plank in its campaign platform in 1948, Thurmond reacted by running for president on a separate “States’ Rights Democratic” party ticket and won 39 electoral votes.

He first ran for the U.S. Senate in 1950 but lost in the Democratic primary. Four years later, in a special election held because of the death of the senator in office, Thurmond became the first person to be elected to the U.S. Senate as a write-in candidate. After resigning for a few months in 1956, in keeping with a campaign pledge not to run for reelection as an incumbent, he ran unopposed in that year’s Senate race. Thurmond switched from the Democratic Party to the Republican Party in 1964 and had little difficulty winning each successive race. His switch played a key part in the South’s transition during the 1960s from a Democratic stronghold to a mostly Republican region. Thurmond later worked successfully to get Republicans Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan elected president with strong Southern support.

In 1957 Thurmond set a record by filibustering for more than 24 hours against a civil rights bill. After the passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, however, when blacks first began voting in significant numbers in South Carolina, Thurmond became the first Southern senator to hire black staff members and appoint blacks to high positions.