Running a campaignas a war hero, he was elected governor of the state in 1947. Although it is unknown whether his personal beliefs regarding racial equality ever changed, his political behavior became more moderate in the 1970s, perhaps as part of an effort to extend his political career in changing times. Thurmond died at age 100 on June 26, 2003, of natural causes in his hometown of Edgefield. Ultimately, he left a legacy through his segregationist policies and the transformation of the major U.S. political parties. This article was most recently revised and updated by, https://www.britannica.com/biography/Strom-Thurmond, University of South Carolina - University History - Strom Thurmond Wellness and Fitness Center, Strom Thurmond - Student Encyclopedia (Ages 11 and up), Comprehensive Thrift and Bank Fraud Prosecution and Taxpayer Recovery Act. Essie Mae grew up with her cousin, seven years older than she, who she believed was her half-brother. Washington-Williams claimed there were no hard feelings, and she kept quiet for the sake of her father's reputation and career. In his final campaign, for his eighth Senate term, in 1996, he told voters: "We cannot and I shall not give up on our mission to right the 40-year wrongs of liberalism.". A month after he took office in 1947, a mob in Greenville lynched a black man accused of robbing and killing a white taxi driver. In December 2003, Essie Mae Washington-Williams announced that she was his illegitimate daughter, born to Thurmond and her mother Carrie Butler, a Black maid who had worked in his familys home. They separated. He was one of six children born to John William Thurmond and Eleanor Gertrude Strom. University of South Carolina, Columbia ( BA, JD) Thurmond and Gerald Ford in 1974. The relationship between the rhetoric ofstates' rightand thinly veiled racist politics became a tenet of Thurmond's political agenda. As his term as governor expired in 1950, Mr. Thurmond ran for the United States Senate as a Democrat and lost to Olin D. Johnston, the incumbent. After graduating from Clemson College in 1923, he became a teacher and quickly rose to the job of county school superintendent. On this day in 1954, Strom Thurmond of South Carolina became the only person ever elected to the U.S. Senate on a write-in ballot, winning the seat with 63 percent of the vote. At the time of conception, Thurmond was in his 20s and had yet to hold a public office; he was actually a localteacher and coach. Thurmond decision to switch to the GOP in 1964 switch anticipated a broader trend. He then served as a city and county attorney until 1938 and was also a state senator (193338) and a circuit court judge (193841). It also showed in some of the votes he cast -- votes in favor of extending the Voting Rights Act in 1982 and putting teeth into the Fair Housing Act in 1988. He became a fairly conventional senator, focusing on pork barrel projects that would help his home state. After the Republicans nominated Mr. Goldwater to oppose President Johnson in the 1964 election, Mr. Thurmond switched parties and endorsed him. (2020, December 24). American blacks who served in the Revolutionary War, Janofsky, Michael. [6] Washington was a longtime member of Delta Sigma Theta sorority, which she joined while at South Carolina State. And it was at this precise moment that the Republican party gained the racist connotations that still plague it today. He wastutored in law by his father and was admitted to the South Carolina bar in 1930, at which point he became a county attorney. he returned and began talking again. He faced no further opposition and was elected with 26,520 votes, the 10th governor to come from Edgefield. Even in his 90s when his health began to fail, Thurmond refused to use a wheelchair or hearing aid in public. In the wake of JFK's assassination, President Lyndon Johnson made a push to pass a comprehensive piece of civil rights legislation, something that had been a dream of Kennedy's. #inline-recirc-item--id-92c8e8b8-8c88-11e2-b06b-024c619f5c3d ~ .item:nth-child(5) { Strom Thurmond Dies Retired Sen. Strom Thurmond of South Carolina -- who spent nearly half his life in the U.S. Senate -- is dead at 100, mere months after leaving office. [1] At the same time, Thurmond was becoming involved with politics, and in 1932 he was elected as a state senator, a position he held in 1938. Following the tumult of the 1960s, Thurmond forged a somewhat more moderate image, leaving behind his reputation as a segregationist firebrand. In preparation for the marathon filibuster, Thurmondallegedly spent hours in sweat tanks to allow his body to absorb fluids while limiting the need to excrete. Mr. Nixon promised to consult Mr. Thurmond before he made his choice. HISTORY reviews and updates its content regularly to ensure it is complete and accurate. There is an argument to be made, Constitution Daily says, that Thurmond isn't the true record holder. After the invasion of Normandy, his civil affairs unit was among the first to arrive at the Nazi death camp at Buchenwald. Thurmond was 22 when she was born; Butler was only 16. ", If Thurmond had needed to relieve himself again, the Village Voice says his staff had come up with a solution: "Aides tried to avoid defeat by the toilet by setting up a bucket in the cloakroom where Thurmond could pee, keeping one foot on the Senate floor while doing so. #inline-recirc-item--id-92c8e8b8-8c88-11e2-b06b-024c619f5c3d, #right-rail-recirc-item--id-92c8e8b8-8c88-11e2-b06b-024c619f5c3d { Strom Jr., Thurmond's son and a U.S. attorney, did not return a phone call seeking . But in 1954, Sen. Burnet Maybank died unexpectedly. ''It helped to realign the conservative and more racist Democrats. The lake is created by the J. Strom Thurmond Dam 2) of water with a shoreline of 1,200 miles (1,900 km). Throughout his career, Thurmond was by any account a divisive force in American politics. display: none; But he remained a die-hard conservative. Though Thurmond never publicly acknowledged his daughter, he provided financial support for her education, and Washington-Williams occasionally visited his Washingtonoffice. They ruled him guilty without mercy, leaving Thurmond to sentence Thomas to death. "Thurmond said one time, politicians don't last if they don't change," said CBS News Early Show contributor Craig Crawford. Sen. Strom Thurmond of South Carolina after his 24+ hour filibuster in 1957. While it may have shocked most of the nation that Thurmond, a career politician who had made a name for himself by ardently advocating a segregationist platform between the 1940s and '60s, had a child of mixed race, many who knew the Senator suspected that he had fathered Washington-Williams. His opposition to integration, which he often attributed to Communism, was the hallmark of his career in Washington until the 1970's. An arrest warrant said Ms. Koenig's blood alcohol level was .16; the legal limit is .10. The mother was a 16-year-old African American maid who worked for his family. He got 143,444 votes to Mr. Brown's 82,525. She published a memoir, Dear Senator: A Memoir by the Daughter of Strom Thurmond (2005), written with William Stadiem. Emmett Till and the Civil Rights Movement, Colorizeds Photos from the Civil Rights Era, Deeply Unsettling Facts About Strom Thurmond, Biographical Directory of the United States Congress, uttered perhaps the most backward, least accurate, Thurmondcame to support making Martin Luther King Jr. Day a federal holiday. The most blatantly racist death sentence passed by Thurmond was that ofAfrican American George Thomas in 1940, a man accused of raping a white woman in Georgetown, S.C. Not surprising of the time or place, the white townsfolk took part in mob mentality, storming Thomas's holding cell, where the local sheriff somehow successfully prevented a lynching. Thurmond spokeat the convention, where he denounced Truman and claimed that Truman's program of civil rights reforms "betrayed the South.". But one would be wrong. When party officials tapped a state lawmaker to run for the post, Thurmond challenged as a write-in candidate, saying the voters, not the party's leaders, should decide who got the nomination. Despite his boorish rambling against a severely watered-down civil rights bill, Thurmond was unsuccessful, and the bill passed, serving as a fundamental stepping stone for the better-remembered and more effective civil rights legislation of the following decade. The record-long filibuster is the 1957 talkfest by then-Democratic Sen. Strom Thurmond of South Carolina. He said nothing comparable to the analogy by Senator Richard B. Russell of Georgia that using the Federal Bureau of Investigation on civil rights cases was comparable to Hitler's use of the Gestapo. His death was announced on the floor of the Senate last night by Senator Bill Frist, the majority leader. Later, Thurmond would switch to the Republican Party. He was 100. Thurmond's. In one of his many sorry-but-not-really later in life turnabouts, Thurmondcame to support making Martin Luther King Jr. Day a federal holiday. He died in 1964. display: block; Thurmond was the longest . ", -- And Time magazine wrote shortly after the filibuster that after Thurmond had been speaking for about three hours: "Arizona Republican Barry Goldwater approached Thurmond's desk, asked in a whisper how much longer Strom would last. After President Truman announced a broad civil rights program and issued an executive order to integrate the armed services in 1948, Mr. Thurmond was not among the president's most strident early critics. And everything has turned out all right. His support of the right was much in evidence in 1962, when he was an active participant in a special subcommittee of the Senate Armed Services Committee, which held hearings on accusations that the Kennedy Administration had ''muzzled'' officers of the armed forces and prevented them from teaching their soldiers about the menace of Communism. He was also Governor of his home state South Carolina and a Presidential candidate. Despite the role of civil rights in his political evolution and his record-breaking filibuster of 24 hours and 18 minutes against the civil rights bill of 1957, Mr. Thurmond always insisted he had never been a racist, but was merely opposed to excessive federal authority. ''Believe me, I love Reagan, but Nixon's the one,'' he said. Senator Strom Thurmond's elder daughter died on Wednesday after being hit by a car, and a woman was later charged with drunken driving. He later served 48 yearsan astonishing eight termsas a U.S. Retrieved from https://www.thoughtco.com/strom-thurmond-biography-4161322. At the Democratic National Convention of 1948, however, Thurmond led the bolt of Southern delegates angry over the civil rights plank in the party platform. Strom Thurmond was the governor of South Carolina from 1947 until 1951, then a senator from the same state from 1954 until 2003. In 1968, Mr. Thurmond played a central role in Mr. Nixon's nomination and election. The Democratic Party in the South had long stood for segregation and Jim Crow rule, and as Democrats gathered for their national convention in Philadelphia, southerners reacted fiercely. On August 28, 1957, Strom Thurmond, then a Democratic United States senator from South Carolina, began a filibuster intended to prevent the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1957.The filibusteran extended speech designed to stall legislationbegan at 8:54 p.m. and lasted until 9:12 p.m. the following day, a duration of 24 hours and 18 minutes. Mr. Thurmond helped Mr. Goldwater carry the four states he himself had won in 1948. Thurmond was married twice, the second time when he was 66 years old to a 22-year-old former Miss South Carolina, but also had a reputation for making frequent advances on a wide variety of women who crossed his path. Strom Thurmond of South Carolina, a central figure in the political transformation of the South and the longest-serving senator in American history, died yesterday in Edgefield, S.C. Goldwater asked that Thurmond temporarily yield the floor to him for an insertion in the Congressional Record. Now, if it was that clear that Washington-Williams was Thurmond'sdaughter;that he never objected to helping her or her family;and that, after her announcement, Thurmond's remaining family readily accepted Washington-Williams's claim, one might be left wondering whyThurmondhimself had never publicly acknowledged Washington-Williams as his own flesh and blood. In a raspy voice, he read, ''The Senate stands adjourned. ''I couldn't dream of men treating men in such a manner. Elected by write-in vote to the Senate in 1954, Thurmond quickly established himself in the Southern conservative mold as a vigorous champion of increased military power and spending and an archfoe of civil rights legislation. Nancy Moore Thurmond, 22, was struck Tuesday night. They'llalso mention that he was one of the most notable defectors from the Democratic party to the Republican party, and that he proceeded to guide the dogma of the GOPinto becoming one of states' rights and individual freedoms (some failing to mention that this was but a veil for his inherently racist tendencies on par with those of George Wallace). Mr. Thurmond condemned the Democratic Party for ''leading the evolution of our country to a socialistic dictatorship,'' for having ''forsaken the people to become the party of minority groups, power-hungry union leaders, political bosses and big businessmen looking for government contracts and favors,'' for invading ''the private lives of the people'' and for supporting ''judicial tyranny.''. Thurmondled the movement of southern Democrats as theymigrated to the Republican Party as an emerging conservative bloc. Corrinne Koenig, 35, was arrested and charged with felony drunken driving, the police said. Though he had little to do with her upbringing, he had paid for her college education and took an interest in her and her family all his life. As a lieutenant colonel in an Army civil affairs unit in 1944, he landed in France by glider on D-Day and captured German soldiers at pistol point. }, First published on July 1, 2003 / 1:33 PM. Harper. She was 87.. She was black and poor. And in following decades, the South itself transformed from a Democratic stronghold to a Republican bastion. He was Strom Thurmond, son of a powerful lawyer in Edgefield, S.C. She was Carrie Butler, a part-time maid in the Thurmond house. The revelation that one of the South's most ardent segregationists had abiracial daughter created controversy. One week after the Democrats convened in July 1948, leading southern politicians gathered for a breakaway convention in Birmingham, Alabama. They have a younger daughter and two sons. Thurmond campaigned energetically, doing all he could to cripple Truman's campaign. By The Associated Press June 26, 2003 WASHINGTON (AP) -- Sen. Strom Thurmond of South Carolina, a one-time Democratic segregationist who helped fuel the rise of the modern conservative. Articles with the HISTORY.com Editors byline have been written or edited by the HISTORY.com editors, including Amanda Onion, Missy Sullivan, Matt Mullen and Christian Zapata. Changing the day will navigate the page to that given day in history. He held that position until 1942, when he joined the U.S. Army during World War II. Until his last years, Mr. Thurmond was a man of uncommon energy and legendary fitness. Strom Thurmond, who served in the United States Senate for a record 48 years, dies on June 26, 2003. June | 26 Choose another date 2003 Former U.S. Before a crowd of 6,000, Thurmond was nominated as the group's presidential candidate. Therewere also strict miscegenation laws in place, which made it illegal for couples of different races to marry or procreate,that could have ruined his career before it started. Occasionally the digitization process introduces transcription errors or other problems; we are continuing to work to improve these archived versions. Showing how much his world had changed, in 1977, Thurmond's young daughter, Nancy, 6, enrolled in a public school in Columbia, S.C., that was 50 percent black. In the election of 1968, the support of Thurmond and other new arrivals to the Republican Party helpedsecure the victory of Republican candidate Richard M. Nixon. [14], Washington-Williams died February 4, 2013, in Columbia, South Carolina, at age 87. [13] She also intended to join the Daughters of the American Revolution. Trending News Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act Comprehensive Crime Control Act of 1984 Legacy Federal Building and U.S. In 1938, he campaigned hard among his fellow legislators, and they elected him a circuit judge, which provided an opportunity for him to become known statewide and broaden his political contacts. Like many one-time segregationists, Thurmond insisted the issue wasn't race but "federal power vs. state power" though the state power he wanted to preserve was the power to segregate. Sen. Strom Thurmond of South Carolina after his 24+ hour filibuster in 1957. Civil Rights leader Jesse Jackson commented to the New York Times, "He fought for laws that kept his daughter segregated and in an inferior position. Late in Thurmond'scareer as a senator, he remained "convinced the death penalty does deter crime," having been "a member of the bar for 51 years" and "a circuit judge for 8 years." However, the 39 electoral votes Thurmond received did not prevent Harry Truman from winning the election. ended his nearly 13-hour filibuster early Thursday. He was a leader in drafting the Southern Manifesto of 1956, in which Southern lawmakers vowed resistance to the Supreme Court's unanimous school desegregation order. He continued to connect Communism and civil rights, calling the Freedom Riders of 1961, who sought integrated bus travel, ''red pawns and publicity seekers.''. But Thurmond . James Strom Thurmond Sr. (December 5, 1902 - June 26, 2003) was an American politician who represented South Carolina in the United States Senate from 1954 to 2003. Three years into this first term, he notoriously staged a record-breaking one-man filibuster to defeat a civil rights bill that lasted more than 24 hours. Miss Thurmond was a criminal justice student at the University of South Carolina here and had applied to law school. After a lengthy back and forth between the House and the Senate, President Eisenhower's bill was effectively neutered, leaving only the creation of a committee to investigate voting irregularities. Thurmond happily consented and used the few minute interim to head for the bathroom (for the only time during his speech). In the end, Mr. Nixon chose Gov. James F. Byrnes, a former United States Supreme Court justice and former secretary of state, Mr. Thurmond made bossism the issue and won the election as a write-in candidate. Yet he wielded political power virtually to the end, prevailing upon President Bush to appoint his 29-year-old son, Strom Jr., as U.S. Attorney in South Carolina in 2001. Essie Mae Washington-Williams, who passed away on Monday, was the daughter of Strom Thurmond, . He was a lawyer.. Thurmond spent more than 70 years of his life on public career. But a closer look by the prominent criminal defense attorney David Bruck at the four cases in which Thurmond sentenced people to death reveals that three of the four men sentenced were black, and each of those cases was riddledwith racist overtones. Born Dec. 5, 1902, in Edgefield, S.C., James Strom Thurmond Strom was his mother's maiden name was elected county school superintendent, state senator and circuit judge before enlisting in the Army in World War II. As the news spread through Washington, the Senate temporarily suspended debate on Medicare legislation to pay tribute to Thurmond. Still, Thurmondthought this went too far. Thurmond Lake is a man-made lake bordering Georgia and South Carolina on the Savannah, Broad, and Little Rivers. To preserve these articles as they originally appeared, The Times does not alter, edit or update them. When Barry Goldwater ran for president in as a Republican in 1964, Thurmond broke from the Democrats to support him. Any Senator StromThurmondbiography is likely to paint the United States' longest-serving senator as a complicated man who had a strong hand in shaping American politics for nearly half a century. Jack Bass, a Thurmond biographer, said: ''Thurmond would . The civil rights movement was gathering steam, but he held fast to his segregationist views for years. Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist said, "Strom Thurmond will forever be a symbol of what one person can accomplish when they live life, as we all know he did, to the fullest." WASHINGTON (AP) Sen. Strom Thurmond of South Carolina, a one-time Democratic segregationist who helped fuel the rise of the modern conservative Republican Party in the South, died Thursday.. Nancy Moore Thurmond, 22, was struck Tuesday night while crossing a street; she died of head injuries at Richland Memorial Hospital. As the 11 candidates traveled around South Carolina for joint meetings, he regularly denounced ''the Barnwell ring.''. As governor, as well as in the early part of his Congressional career, he was famously pro-segregation, even saying in a 1948 speech, I want to tell you, ladies and gentlemen, that theres not enough troops in the army to force the Southern people to break down segregation and admit the Negro race into our theaters, into our swimming pools, into our homes and into our churches. It was also in 1948 that Thurmond made his one and only run for the presidency, as the candidate of the Dixiecrat party, in protest of Harry Trumans nomination by the Democratic Party, of which he was a member. The splinter faction of the Democratic Party, which became known in the press as the Dixiecrats, pledged opposition to President Truman. American school teacher and writer (19252013). Senator Russell said the bill would lead to ''concentration camps'' and the use of the military to ''destroy the system of separation of the races in the Southern states at the point of a bayonet.'' Enter a date in the format M/D (e.g., 1/1), https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/former-u-s-senator-strom-thurmond-dies, Same-sex marriage is made legal nationwide with Obergefell v. Hodges decision, President Clinton punishes Iraq for plot to kill George H.W. Once in Washington, he attacked the Supreme Court decision requiring that segregation in public schools end. Thurmond died at 9:45 p.m. Strom Thurmond, who has died aged 100, was the senior Republican senator for South Carolina until his retirement last January, the oldest person ever to have served in the US congress, and the . Courthouse Lake Strom Thurmond Strom Thurmond High School J. Strom Thurmond Dam v t e Strom Thurmond served in the United States Senate from 1956 to 2003. He was a Democrat then. He drew up a bill to create a civil rights commission and a civil rights division in the Justice Department and outlaw efforts to bar people from voting in federal elections. She sent her daughter from South Carolina to her older sister Mary and her husband John Henry Washington to be raised in Coatesville, Pennsylvania. His political career seemed to have ended with the Dixiecrat campaign, as establishment Democrats resented the danger he had posed to the party in the 1948 election. In so doing he creates resentment and counter-resentment [and] assists communist purposes.". Thurmond, Strom 1902-2003 BIBLIOGRAPHY [1] Strom Thurmond [2] was born James Strom Thurmond [3] on December 5, 1902, in Edgefield, South Carolina [4]. After Thurmond returned from World War II, she started college at the all-black South Carolina State College (SCSC) in the fall of 1947. The next weekend in Birmingham, Ala., Mr. Thurmond became the leader of an effort to capture the Democratic Party and its electoral votes in the South -- a first step in a strategy of trying to deadlock the electoral college and force the election into the House of Representatives, where the South had power to bargain for its positions. His father was an attorney and prosecutor who was also deeply involved in state politics. Washington-Williams, in her announcement, went sofar as to notethat "all those on his staff knew exactly who I was.". Thurmond became Edgefield County's director of education in 1929.
