Longest-Serving Senator Led Segregationist South

Former Sen. Strom Thurmond of South Carolina, a onetime symbol of fierce Southern resistance to integration and the longest-serving senator in U.S. history, died Thursday night. He was 100. Thurmond died at 9:45 p.m. at Edgefield County Hospital in Edgefield, S.C., his son, J. Strom Thurmond Jr. said in a statement issued by the hospital. “Surrounded by family, my father was resting comfortably, without pain, and in total peace,” the statement said.

Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-Tenn) interrupted Senate debate on a Medicare prescription drug benefit to announce Thurmond’s death, describing him as a “close friend, confidant and colleague of most of us in this body.”

“A great oak in the forest of public service has fallen,” said Thurmond’s longtime South Carolina colleague, Democratic Sen. Ernest “Fritz” Hollings.

Thurmond, a Democrat-turned-Republican who first came to the Senate in 1954, bade farewell to his colleagues last November. “That’s all,” he told the Senate chamber in his last appearance. He remained in Washington until the official date of his retirement in early January.

“South Carolina has lost its favorite son,” Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), who succeeded Thurmond, said Thursday night.

Thurmond, who was born Dec. 5, 1902, had been in frail health. Late in his final Senate term, he lived at Walter Reed Army Hospital, where doctors could monitor his health. Upon returning to South Carolina, he lived in a recently renovated wing at Edgefield County Hospital.

Thurmond remained a controversial figure until his retirement. A remark by Sen. Trent Lott (R-Miss.) at Thurmond’s 100th birthday party, praising the 1948 presidential campaign of the then-segregationist candidate, cost Lott his job as Senate GOP leader.

Thurmond’s ardent opposition to the growing civil rights movement in the late 1940s established him as a national figure -- and created a legacy for which some never forgave him.

Initially a Democrat, he bolted the party in 1948 to protest the national convention’s inclusion of a civil rights plank in its platform. Serving as South Carolina’s governor at the time, he ran for president in the general election as a “States’ Rights Dixiecrat,” winning Alabama, Louisiana, Mississippi and South Carolina.

Preaching a segregationist creed, he declared defiantly during the campaign: “All the laws of Washington and all the bayonets of the Army cannot force the Negro into our homes, our eating places, our schools, our churches, our swimming pools and our theaters.”

Thurmond returned to the Democratic fold after winning his first Senate term in 1954 as an independent write-in candidate -- a feat unique in U.S. history. But he continued to find himself at odds with the party as the issue of equal rights for blacks gained momentum.

In 1955, Thurmond initiated the “Southern Manifesto,” a petition he circulated in Congress calling for all-out resistance to the Supreme Court’s 1954 decision outlawing segregation in schools.

In 1957, he set what remains the Senate record for longest filibuster, talking for 24 hours and 18 minutes against a civil rights bill. After he finally sat down, the measure passed, 60 to 15.

In 1964, he helped lead opposition to that year’s landmark Civil Rights Act, which banned discrimination in public accommodations. He denounced it as a traitorous measure promoted by “Negro agitators spurred on by communist enticements.”

Later that year, Thurmond officially switched parties, becoming a Republican and campaigning for GOP presidential nominee Sen. Barry Goldwater of Arizona. As he changed parties, he altered his agenda, focusing less on race and more on traditional conservative issues, such as opposing “big government” and championing a strong national defense.

An astute politician, Thurmond also adapted quickly to the changed reality of Southern politics -- the sudden influx of black voters after the Voting Rights Act of 1965 swept aside the discriminatory laws that had kept them from the polls.

Thurmond opposed the measure but wasted little time attempting to court black support. He became the first senator from the Deep South to hire black staff members and appoint blacks to patronage jobs. He brought home federal projects that benefited black communities. He voted for renewal of the Voting Rights Act and the federal holiday honoring the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.

His share of the black vote remained relatively small, but his efforts defused the intense opposition he once sparked and showed his willingness to adjust to the changing South.

“When the times change and people change, you’ve got to change too,” he commented during his 1996 reelection campaign. “If you don’t change, you don’t stay around long.”

His challenger in that race sought to make Thurmond’s age an issue, and polls showed a majority of state voters thought that he should retire. But with his status as a political legend long since entrenched in South Carolina, he still won, with relative ease, what he vowed would be his last contest.

As his Senate tenure grew, Thurmond emerged as a GOP leader, serving stints as chairman of the powerful Judiciary and Armed Services committees.

Thurmond, since 1996 the oldest person to serve in Congress, at one time held the largely honorary post of Senate president pro tempore, which put him behind only the vice president and the speaker of the House in the line of presidential succession. Thurmond lost that title in 2001, when Democrats regained control of the Senate after James M. Jeffords of Vermont quit the Republican Party to become an independent.

As Senate president, he gaveled to order the start of President Clinton’s impeachment trial on Jan. 7, 1999. Thurmond administered to U.S. Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist the oath of office as the trial’s presiding officer.

Although slowed in recent years by age, Thurmond was a lifelong physical fitness buff. A teetotaler, he ate mostly fresh fruits and vegetables, particularly turnip greens.

He also engaged in strenuous exercises -- swimming, lifting weights, doing push-ups and running. In a legendary 1964 confrontation, he handily wrestled a colleague, Sen. Ralph Yarborough (D-Texas), to the floor of a Capitol corridor in a dispute. Both men were then 61, but Yarborough was 20 pounds heavier.

In a chamber filled with backslappers and glad-handers, Thurmond had few rivals when it came to such gestures and was noted particularly for his strong grip.

Thurmond also was known for his fondness for women, which he rarely failed to display, as many female Capitol elevator operators over the years could attest.

During a celebration of his 96th birthday, Thurmond found himself surrounded by enthusiastic cheerleaders at a football game; clad in a jersey that bore the number 96, a beaming Thurmond declared in his thick Southern drawl: “I may be 96 years old, but I still like young women!”

As he grew older, both his politics and image mellowed.

Jokes about his age became a staple for late-night comedians. In a typical remark, “Tonight Show” host Jay Leno observed that Thurmond had made money “from shrewd investments when he was younger. You know, he actually invested in the wheel.”

But Thurmond’s frailty became increasingly evident. During roll-call votes, as he shuffled his way from his office to the Senate chamber, Thurmond had to steady himself by gripping the arm of a staff member. And during a 1998 memorial service for two slain Capitol police officers, Thurmond held the hand of Vice President Al Gore for support when all attending were required to remain standing.

Still, Thurmond remained capable of surprising stamina. During the long hours of Clinton’s impeachment trial, when all senators were required to sit in silence during the presentation of evidence and arguments, few seemed to pay more attention than Thurmond, who cast his vote against the president.

He was born and raised in Edgefield, where today a statue of him stands in the middle of the courthouse square. Although a small town, it is the birthplace of nine others who served as South Carolina governors; Thurmond worked there as a teacher, coach and school superintendent.

He studied law under his father and was elected a state senator at age 29, launching a political career that also included a judgeship.

During World War II, as a member of the 82nd Airborne Division, he parachuted into Normandy on D-day in June 1944. He was awarded the Purple Heart and Bronze Star for his military service. He also received the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation’s highest civilian award.

Much of the public notice Thurmond attracted over the years arose from domestic matters.

As governor, he was the subject of a three-page photo spread in Life magazine in 1947. The occasion was his marriage in the governor’s mansion to his young secretary, Jean Crouch. It was Thurmond’s first marriage; he was 44, she was 21.

Jean Thurmond died in 1960 of a brain tumor. They had no children.

Thurmond remarried when he was 66. His bride, Nancy Moore of Aiken, S.C., was 22 and a former Miss South Carolina in the Miss America contest. They had four children, two daughters and two sons, before separating in 1991.

Three of Thurmond’s children survive him -- J. Strom Thurmond Jr., Julie Thurmond Whitmer and Paul Thurmond -- as does his first grandson, Martin Taylor Whitmer III, born June 16. His eldest child, Nancy, died in 1993 after being struck by a drunk driver. Her death intensified Thurmond’s opposition to efforts to liberalize laws regulating alcohol use.

Funeral services are pending.