Thurmond, Strom, 1902-2003

THURMOND, JAMES STROM, a Senator from South Carolina; born in Edgefield, S.C., December 5, 1902; attended the public schools; graduated, Clemson College 1923; taught in South Carolina high schools 1923-1929; Edgefield County superintendent of education 1929-1933; studied law and was admitted to the South Carolina bar in 1930; city and county attorney 1930-1938; member, State senate 1933-1938; circuit judge 1938-1946; served in the United States Army 1942-1946, in Europe and in the Pacific, and participated in the Normandy invasion; was awarded the Purple Heart; major general, United States Army Reserve; Governor of South Carolina 1947-1951; unsuccessful States Rights candidate for President of the United States in 1948; unsuccessful candidate for the Democratic nomination for United States Senator in 1950; practiced law in Aiken, S.C., 1951-1955; appointed as a Democrat to the United States Senate to complete the term of Charles E. Daniel, who resigned, and served from December 24, 1954, to January 3, 1955; had been previously elected as a write-in candidate in November 1954 for the term commencing January 3, 1955, and ending January 3, 1961, but due to a promise made to the voters in the 1954 election, he resigned as of April 4, 1956; again elected as a Democrat on November 6, 1956 to fill the vacancy caused by his own resignation and took the oath of office on November 7, 1956; reelected in 1960, 1966, 1972, 1978, 1984, 1990 and 1996 and served from November 7, 1956, to January 3, 2003; was not a candidate for reelection in 2002; changed from the Democratic to the Republican Party on September 16, 1964; President pro tempore of the Senate (January 5, 1981-January 5, 1987, January 4, 1995 to January 3, 2001, January 20 to June 6, 2001); President pro tempore emeritus (June 6, 2001-January 3, 2003); chair, Committee on the Judiciary (Ninety-seventh through Ninety-ninth Congresses); Committee on Armed Services (One Hundred Fourth Congresses); turned 100 years old on December 5, 2002, while still in office, the oldest person ever to serve in the U.S. Senate; awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom on January 12, 1993; died in Edgefield, South Carolina on June 26, 2003; interment in Willowbrook Cemetery in Edgefield.

<p>James Strom Thurmond Sr. (December 5, 1902 – June 26, 2003) was an American military officer and politician who served for 48 years as a United States Senator from South Carolina. He ran for president in 1948 as the Dixiecrat candidate on a States' rights platform supporting racial segregation. He received 2.4% of the popular vote and 39 electoral votes, failing to defeat Harry Truman. Thurmond represented South Carolina in the United States Senate from 1954 until 2003, at first as a Southern Democrat and, after 1964, as a Republican.</p>

<p>A magnet for controversy during his nearly half-century Senate career, Thurmond switched parties, primarily because of his vehement opposition to the Civil Rights Act of 1964, and endorsed Republican presidential candidate Barry Goldwater. In the months before switching, he had "been critical of the Democratic Administration for ... enactment of the Civil Rights Law", while Goldwater "boasted of his opposition to the Civil Rights Act, and made it part of his platform." Thurmond left office as the only member of either chamber of Congress 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 the latter by Robert Byrd and Daniel Inouye). Thurmond holds the record as the longest-serving member of Congress to serve exclusively in the Senate. He is also the longest-serving Republican member of Congress in U.S. history. At 14 years, he was also the longest-serving Dean of the United States Senate in U.S. history.</p>

<p>In opposition to the Civil Rights Act of 1957, he conducted the longest speaking filibuster ever by a lone senator, at 24 hours and 18 minutes in length. In the 1960s, he opposed the civil rights legislation of 1964 and 1965 to end segregation and enforce the constitutional rights of African-American citizens, including basic suffrage. Despite being a pro-segregation Dixiecrat, he insisted he was not a racist, but was opposed to excessive federal authority, which he attributed to Communist agitators.</p>

<p>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. He never fully renounced his earlier positions.</p>

<p>Six months after Thurmond died at the age of 100 in 2003, his mixed-race, then 78-year-old daughter Essie Mae Washington-Williams (1925–2013) revealed he was her father. Her mother Carrie Butler (1909–1948) had been working as his family's maid, and was either 15 or 16 years old when 22-year-old Thurmond impregnated her in early 1925. Although Thurmond never publicly acknowledged Essie Mae Washington, he paid for her education at a historically black college and passed other money to her for some time. She said she kept silent out of respect for her father and denied the two had agreed she would not reveal her connection to Thurmond. His children by his marriage eventually acknowledged her. Her name has since been added as one of his children to his memorial at the state capitol.</p>