James Strom Thurmond Sr. (;"J Strom Thurmond". Oxford Advanced Learner's Dictionary. December 5, 1902 – June 26, 2003) was an American politician who represented South Carolina in the United States Senate from 1954 to 2003. Before his 47 years as a senator, he served as the 103rd governor of South Carolina from 1947 to 1951. Thurmond was a member of the Democratic Party in the Senate until 1964 when he joined the Republican Party. He also ran for president in 1948 as the Dixiecrat candidate, receiving over a million votes and winning four states.
A staunch opponent of civil rights legislation in the 1950s and 1960s, Thurmond completed the longest single-person Senate filibuster, at 24 hours and 18 minutes in length, in opposition to the Civil Rights Act of 1957. In the 1960s, Thurmond voted against both the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Despite his support for Jim Crow laws, Thurmond denied the accusation that he was a racist by insisting he was a supporter of states' rights and an opponent of excessive federal authority. Thurmond switched parties ahead of the 1964 United States presidential election, saying that the Democratic Party no longer represented people like him, and endorsed Republican nominee Barry Goldwater, who also opposed the Civil Rights Act. With Thurmond's party switch, he became the first Republican U.S. Senator from South Carolina since John J. Patterson in 1879. By the 1970s, Thurmond started to moderate his stance on race, but continued to defend his prior support for segregation based on states' rights and Southern society at the time.
As a Republican, Thurmond served three times as President pro tempore of the United States Senate, and chaired the Senate Judiciary Committee from 1981 to 1987 and the Senate Armed Services Committee from 1995 to 1999. He retired in 2003 as the only member of either chamber of Congress to reach the age of 100 while still in office and the oldest-serving senator; he died less than six months later. His 47 years as a senator, a record at the time, is the fourth-longest in U.S. history behind Robert Byrd, Daniel Inouye, and Patrick Leahy. Thurmond was also, at 14 years, the longest-serving dean of the United States Senate.
Early life and education (1902–1933) James Strom Thurmond was born on December 5, 1902, in Edgefield, South Carolina. He was the second of six children born to John William Thurmond (1862–1934) and Eleanor Gertrude Strom (1870–1958). Thurmond's father was a lawyer and politician who served as a county supervisor and representative to the South Carolina General Assembly. In 1902, Thurmond's father unsuccessfully contested the election for United States Congress. Strom's mother came from a well-known Edgefield family. She was a deeply religious woman, known for delivering prayers.
Thurmond learned to ride ponies, horses, and bulls from an early age. When Thurmond was four, his family moved into a larger home, where they owned about of land. His parents were frequently visited by politicians and lawyers. At six years old, he had an encounter with Benjamin Tillman, a senator from South Carolina. Thurmond remembered the handshake with Tillman as his first political skill.
Thurmond attended Clemson Agricultural College of South Carolina (now Clemson University), where he studied horticulture. At Clemson, he served as the president of the Calhoun Literary Society, where he debated and learned parliamentary procedure. He was deeply influenced by his English professorDavid Wistar Daniel, namesake of D. W. Daniel High School. Thurmond graduated from Clemson in 1923 with a Bachelor of Science degree.
After his graduation, Thurmond worked as a farmer, teacher, and athletic coach.
In 1925, Thurmond fathered a child born to Carrie Butler, an African-American teenager who worked as his family's housekeeper. In 2003, the Thurmond family confirmed that Thurmond fathered a mixed-race daughter named Essie Mae with Butler. While her paternity was long hidden, he helped support her and paid for her college education.
In 1929, Thurmond was appointed as Edgefield County superintendent of education. While serving as superintendent of education, he began studying to become a lawyer by reading law under his father's guidance.
Early career (1933–1947)
South Carolina Senate (1933–1938)
In 1930, Thurmond was admitted to the South Carolina bar. He was appointed as the Edgefield Town and County attorney, serving from 1930 to 1938. Thurmond supported Franklin D. Roosevelt in the 1932 presidential election. Thurmond favored Roosevelt's argument that the federal government could be used to assist citizens in the daily plights brought on by the Great Depression. Thurmond raised money for Roosevelt and, following his victory, traveled to Washington to attend Roosevelt's inauguration.
In 1933, Thurmond began his own political career by being elected to the South Carolina Senate. He served there until 1938, when he was elected as a state circuit judge. During his days as a circuit judge, after Sue Logue participated in planning the murder of Davis Timmerman, Thurmond convinced her to surrender to authorities.
World War II In 1942, at age 39, after the U.S. formally entered World War II, Judge Thurmond resigned from the bench to serve in the U.S. Army, rising to lieutenant colonel. In the Battle of Normandy (June 6 – August 25, 1944), he landed in a glider attached to the 82nd Airborne Division. For his military service, Thurmond received 18 decorations, medals and awards, including the Legion of Merit with Oak Leaf Cluster, Bronze Star with Valor device, Purple Heart, World War II Victory Medal, European–African–Middle Eastern Campaign Medal, Belgium's Order of the Crown and France's Croix de Guerre.
During 1954–55, Thurmond was president of the Reserve Officers Association. He retired from the U.S. Army Reserve with the rank of major general.
Governor of South Carolina (1947–1951) Running as a Democrat in what was virtually a one-party state, since most African Americans (who then favored the Republican Party) were still disenfranchised by state discriminatory laws and practices, Thurmond was elected governor of South Carolina in 1946. He had promised to make state government more transparent and accountable by weakening the power of a group of politicians from Barnwell, whom Thurmond dubbed the Barnwell Ring, led by House Speaker Solomon Blatt.
Many voters considered Thurmond a progressive for much of his term, in large part due to his influence in gaining the arrest of the perpetrators of the lynching of Willie Earle. Though none of the men were found guilty by an all-white jury, in a case where the defense called no witnesses, Thurmond was congratulated by the NAACP and the ACLU for his efforts to bring the murderers to justice.
In 1949, Thurmond oversaw the opening of Camp Croft State Park. In November he was unanimously elected Chairman of the Southern Governors Conference and was considered to be a states' rights nominee.
Various reforms were also carried out in areas such as education, agriculture, working conditions, and social welfare during Thurmond's time as governor.
1948 presidential campaign
During his first year as governor, Thurmond publicly supported Truman, saying during a 1947 radio broadcast:
In the 1948 presidential election, however, Thurmond ran for president as the nominee of the States' Rights Democratic Party, which was formed by White southern Democrats who split from the national party over the threat of federal intervention in state policies regarding racial segregation and Jim Crow laws and practices.
Thurmond's supporters took control of the Democratic Party in the Deep South. Truman was not on the presidential ballot in Alabama because that state's Supreme Court ruled void any requirement for party electors to vote for the national nominee.Key, V.O. Jr.; Southern Politics in State and Nation; p. 340 Thurmond said that Truman, Thomas Dewey, and Henry A. Wallace would lead the U.S. to totalitarianism. He said civil rights initiatives were dangerous to the American constitution and made the country susceptible to communism in the event of their enactment, challenging Truman to a debate on the issue. Thurmond carried four states and received 39 electoral votes, but Truman was reelected.
During the campaign, Thurmond said in a speech met with loud cheers by his assembled supporters:
1950 U.S. Senate campaign in South Carolina According to term limits in the state constitution, Thurmond was barred from seeking a second consecutive term as governor in 1950, so he mounted a Democratic primary challenge against first-term U.S. senator Olin Johnston. On May 1, Thurmond's Senate campaign headquarters opened in Columbia, South Carolina with Ernest Craig serving as campaign leader and George McNabb in charge of public relations; both men were on leave from their state positions in the governor's office.
In the one-party state of the time, the Democratic primary was the only competitive contest. Both candidates denounced President Truman during the campaign. Johnston defeated Thurmond 186,180 votes to 158,904 votes (54% to 46%) in what would be Thurmond's first and only state electoral defeat.
In 1952, Thurmond endorsed Republican Dwight Eisenhower for the presidency, rather than the Democratic nominee Adlai Stevenson. Stevenson still narrowly carried South Carolina, traditionally Democratic, in the general election.
U.S. Senate (1954–1956, 1956–2003)
1950s The incumbent U.S. senator from South Carolina, Burnet R. Maybank, was unopposed for re-election in 1954, but he died two months before election day. The state Democratic Party selected Edgar A. Brown to replace Maybank without conducting a primary election.
Thurmond organized a write-in campaign for the vacant Senate seat. He pledged that if he won, he would resign in 1956 to force a primary election. Easily winning the 1954 election, he was the first person to be elected to the U.S. Senate as a write-in candidate. In January 1955, Thurmond expressed his view that federal encroachment on states' rights was among the biggest threats to American life and violated the Constitution. In July, Thurmond supported the Republican Eisenhower Administration bill for an expanded military reserve law over the alternate plan proposed by fellow Democratic Senator Richard Russell.
Thurmond co-wrote the first version of the Southern Manifesto, stating disagreement with the 1954 U.S. Supreme Court ruling in Brown v. Board of Education that declared that segregated public schools were unconstitutional and ordered them integrated. In early 1956, Thurmond resigned from the Senate, keeping the promise he had made two years earlier. He won the primary as well as the general election unopposed. Thereafter, he returned to the Senate in November 1956.