Strom Thurmond

Strom Thurmond

James Strom Thurmond (December 5, 1902 – June 26, 2003) was an American politician who served for 48 years as a United States Senator. He also ran for the Presidency of the United States in 1948 as the segregationist States Rights Democratic Party (Dixiecrat) candidate, receiving 2.4% of the popular vote and 39 electoral votes. Thurmond represented South Carolina in the United States Senate from 1954 until 2003, at first as a Democrat and, after 1964, as a Republican. He switched because of his opposition to the 1964 Civil Rights Act, disaffection with the national party, and support for the conservatism of the Republican presidential candidate and Arizona Senator Barry Goldwater. He left office as the only senator to reach the age of 100 while still in office and as the oldest-serving and longest-serving senator in U.S. history (although he was later surpassed in length of service by Robert Byrd). Thurmond holds the record at 14 years as the longest-serving Dean of the United States Senate in U.S. history.

In opposition to the Civil Rights Act of 1957, he conducted the longest filibuster ever by a lone senator, at 24 hours and 18 minutes in length, nonstop. In the 1960s, he opposed the civil rights legislation of 1964 and 1965 to end segregation and enforce the voting rights of African-American citizens. He always insisted he had never been a racist, but was opposed to excessive federal authority. He notably was quoted as saying that

"all the laws of Washington and all the bayonets of the Army cannot force the Negro into our homes, into our schools, our churches and our places of recreation and amusement."

He attributed the movement for integration to Communist agitators.

Starting in the 1970s, he moderated his position on race, but continued to defend his early segregationist campaigns on the basis of states' rights in the context of Southern society at the time, never fully renouncing his earlier viewpoints.

Six months after Thurmond's death in 2003, it was revealed that at age 22, he had fathered a mixed-race daughter, Essie Mae Washington-Williams, with his family's maid, Carrie Butler, a 16-year-old black girl. Although Thurmond never publicly acknowledged Essie Mae, he paid for her education at a historically black college and passed other money to her for some time. His children by his marriage eventually acknowledged her.